Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of both supervisory abuse and moral efficacy in the weakening or strengthening of moral courage. The study also tests how the interaction between both could influence moral courage. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of public hospital nurses in Egypt and structural equation modeling was used to analyse the data. Findings The study findings revealed that abusive supervision is negatively related to moral courage whereas moral efficacy is positively related to courage. Furthermore, moral efficacy moderates the abusive supervision-moral courage relationship in such a way that the negative association between abusive supervision and moral courage is reduced when moral efficacy is high. Research limitations/implications Because of the cross-sectional design of the study, inferences regarding causality cannot be made. Furthermore, more research is needed to identify whether the results of this study apply in other contexts. Practical implications Organizations should identify abusive supervisors and offer them abuse-prevention training to circumvent their hostile behaviour. Organizations should also try to consider follower moral efficacy when matching supervisors with followers. Originality/value The study addresses calls for research on the personal factors that could mitigate the undesirable effects of abusive supervision.
Highlights
Moral courage is the fortitude to translate moral or ethical intentions into actions in spite of pressures to not to do so (May et al, 2003)
This study sought to address this issue by examining the role of both supervisory abuse and moral efficacy in the weakening or strengthening of moral courage
In line with the proposed hypotheses, the study findings revealed that abusive supervision is negatively related to moral courage whereas moral efficacy is positively related to courage
Summary
Moral courage is the fortitude to translate moral or ethical intentions into actions in spite of pressures to not to do so (May et al, 2003). Prior research has shown that employees are more likely to respond to abusive supervisors by engaging in avoidance behaviours so as to reduce the discomfort associated with their hostility (Aquino et al, 2006; Tepper et al, 2007) This is in line with power-dependence theory (Emerson, 1972) which postulates that, in relationships in which there is an imbalance of power, those with less power are constrained in terms of their ability to behave in ways that satisfy their desires, beliefs and self-interests (Tepper et al, 2009). Structural model and hypotheses Little et al.โs (2006) residual centring approach was used to test the moderating role of moral efficacy on the relationship between abusive supervision and moral courage because it has more power in detecting interactions than standard multiple regression.
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