Corporate psychopathy and abusive supervision: Their influence on employees' job satisfaction and turnover intentions

Abstract

Dark leaders have been characterized as abusive; they exhibit hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors and rudeness towards employees. Abusive leadership has also been shown to have negative impacts on employee and organizational performance. However, very few studies have examined the underlying factors of dark leadership. This study proposes to test the relationship between corporate psychopathy traits and abusive supervision, employees' job satisfaction and intention to quit their job. A total of 97 employees from a non-profit organization completed measures of their abusive supervision and corporate psychopathy traits as well as self-report measures of job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Corporate psychopathy was positively and significantly correlated with abusive supervision and turnover intentions and negatively correlated with employees' job satisfaction. SEM results indicate that, although the B-Scan 360 has a direct influence on turnover intentions, it influences job satisfaction through abusive supervision behavior. Our results indicate psychopathy may be an underlying factor explaining abusive supervision which is detrimental to employee attitudes.