Can’t Stop Eating My Feelings: The Maladaptive Responses of abused employees

Abstract

Although organizational research on abusive supervision and its detrimental effects on individuals and organizations has become increasingly popular, little attention has been paid to subordinate’s maladaptive responses to abusive supervision. We, synthesize on self-regulatory theory, to investigate one common but ignored subordinate’s maladaptive response to abusive supervision: subordinate overeating behavior. We conducted a multi-wave experience sampling study on ten consecutive working days (N = 115 employees and 1150 daily surveys) to investigate the relationship of abusive supervision, subordinate negative mood, and overeating behavior. We, from the perspective of self-regulatory impairment, found that subordinate’s perceptions of abusive supervision instills a sense of negative mood, which in turn loses control over his/her behavioral intentions towards overeating behavior. Moreover, our findings found that subordinate’s recovery experiences at the workplace mitigates the depleting effects of abusive supervision, such that employees are less susceptible to the effects of abusive supervision on overeating behavior when they are high in recovery experiences at the workplace. Implication for theory and practice are discussed.