Abusive supervision’s impact on work attitudes, considering leaving/quitting, self-efficacy, and performance? A preliminary study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Abusive supervision involves several types of distinct and interrelated behaviors that have long been known to have damaging effects on employees. This relationship has been mainly found in quantitative studies. Therefore, few qualitative studies concerning abusive supervision exist, especially those asking targets of abusive supervision to write freely about their experience. In order to fill this lacuna in abusive supervision research, targets of such leadership practices were recruited from CloudResearch. Several important themes emerged when targets were asked to fully write about the impact that this deviant leadership style had on their work. First, targets of abusive supervision were most likely to note that the harassment had a negative impact on work attitudes. Second, abusive supervision increased targets’ perceptions regarding whether they considering leaving, in some cases, led them to quit altogether. Third, abusive supervision adversely impacted the self-efficacy of targets. Fourth, abusive supervision was found to have a negative impact on performance. Finally, the research extends previous studies by learning why abusive supervision had a negative impact on the aforementioned work-related outcomes. These results are thoroughly discussed in the article.