Examination of daily abusive supervision effects on next-day employee wellbeing: a spillover perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objective Most previous studies on abusive supervision (AS) and employee wellbeing have used cross-sectional designs and explored long-term effects. However, AS has been reported to vary on a daily basis and this variance exceeds inter-person variance. Therefore, the current study examined the short-term (within 1 day) effects of leaders’ daily AS on employee sleep and wellbeing. Based on the spillover effect theory, we posited that daily AS is a negative experience that can lead to insomnia, thereby affecting next-day wellbeing. In addition, we hypothesized that these effects could be moderated by individuals’ tendencies to engage in rumination (low or high). Method A daily diary design was used to examine the relationship between daily AS and next-day wellbeing. Our analysis of data from 128 full-time employees across 10 consecutive working days using multi-level model. Results Our results showed that insomnia mediated the relationship between daily AS and next-day employee wellbeing, and further showed that this relationship was moderated by rumination. Conclusions These data demonstrate a spillover effect from AS at work to quality of sleep at home, and that use of rumination as a coping strategy can exacerbate the effects of AS on insomnia and next-day employee wellbeing.