"“Don’t you make me look bad!” Employees’ Job Neglect, Supervisors’ Ego Threat, Narcissism and Abuse"

Abstract

The present paper examines whether a) a subordinate’s poor job performance (i.e., job neglect) constitutes a threat to the ego of the subordinate’s respective supervisor, b) ego threat in turn is related to abusive supervision, and c) a supervisor’s narcissistic tendencies enhance the job neglect-ego threat-abusive supervision relationship. Using data from 171 subordinate-supervisor dyads invovling a variety of occupations and industries to test our model, we found support for the hypothesized first-stage moderating effect: specifically, only supervisors high in narcissism exhibited ego threat due to their subordinates’ job neglect. Similarly, the conditional indirect effect for Time 1 employee-reported job neglect in predicting Time 2 abusive supervision via Time 1 ego threat was only significant for supervisors characterized by high levels of narcissism. By demonstrating the negative influence of supervisors’ trait narcissism in subordinate-supervisor relations, our paper contributes to the literature on the dark side of personality at work by extending beyond work limited to the dominant trait paradigm, the so-called Big Five personality traits. We conclude with deliberations on future research and practical implications.