Black and abused: understanding who Black employees hold accountable for their mistreatment

Abstract

In an effort to extend workplace accountability research, our studies identify an actor that is accountable for the mistreatment of an understudied group of employees: Black employees. We accomplish this by leveraging insights from the attributions of accountability and anti-Black racism literatures. Subsequently, we adopt an overall socio-psychological perspective and integrate social cognitive and organizational resentment theories to explain why organizational leaders that are perceived to support anti-Black sentiments are more likely to mistreat Black employees. Across three studies, we find that supervisors perceived to be Trump-supporting, in comparison to those perceived to be Trump-opposing, are more likely to display abusive supervision toward Black employees. In turn, as Black employees experience abusive supervision, they develop organizational resentment as they attribute this mistreatment to their employer. We also find that the impact of abusive supervision on organizational resentment is weaker when Black employees’ organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) is relatively low compared to relatively high. This is because Black employees with relatively low OBSE are more likely to blame themselves for the abuse. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.