Demonstrating the Psychological Aspects of Stressors and Abusive Supervision Behavior: Attainment of Sustainability Under the Rubric of Resources Theory.

Zeying Li,Yun Zhang,Xu Sun,Bin He

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00293

Zeying Li, Yun Zhang + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00293

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Abstract

This article builds on the conservation of resources (COR) theory and the challenge–hindrance stressors framework to propose a model for understanding and investigating why and when these two distinct categorized stressors similarly promote the display of abusive supervision behavior. The data from 228 supervisors and subordinates are selected by using the time-lagged method. Prior to hypothesis testing, we first conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of the proposed models in Lisrel software. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed why and when two distinct categorized stressors positively relate to ego depletion and thus, in turn, promote the display of abusive supervision behavior. The bootstrap methods confirmed the mediating effect of ego depletion and the moderated-mediation role of emotional intelligence (EI). The findings show that both challenge and hindrance stressors are positively related to ego depletion and that ego depletion is positively associated with abusive supervision behavior. Results suggest that challenge and hindrance stressors have similar positive effects on abusive supervision behavior via the mediating effect of ego depletion. In addition, we find that supervisors’ EI weakens the positive relationship between challenge stressors and ego depletion, and it also weakens the positive relationship between hindrance stressors and ego depletion. This study extends the current literature by directly testing resource depletion as a mediating mechanism and resource replenishment as a boundary condition of the effect of work stressors.

Highlights

Abusive supervision behavior has drawn much attention from several researchers in the last few decades (Mitchell et al, 2015; Camps et al, 2018; Qin et al, 2018)
The results indicated that challenge stressors (r = 0.27, p < 0.01) and hindrance stressors (r = 0.40, p < 0.01) are positively correlated with abusive supervision behavior
We developed and tested a model based on conservation of resources (COR) theory that attempted to probe why and when challenge and hindrance stressors have similar effects on abusive supervision behavior

Summary

Introduction

Abusive supervision behavior has drawn much attention from several researchers in the last few decades (Mitchell et al, 2015; Camps et al, 2018; Qin et al, 2018). Prior empirical evidence has identified that some work stressors (e.g., exceedingly difficult job goals, task difficulty, role overload) are the antecedents of abusive supervision behavior (Burton et al, 2012; Mawritz et al, 2014; Eissa and Lester, 2017). These studies agree that work stressors often positively relate to negative behavior. Among the work on this stream of studies, scholars focus more on the effect of single-dimensional work stressors, that is how single-dimensional work stressors influence emotional response, further influencing abusive supervision behavior These studies reveal that work stressors can predict abusive supervision behavior, they do not distinguish the different categories of work stressors.

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