I Have to Earn Bread and Butter So I Bear Abuse! Family Spillover Impact of Abusive Supervision

Abstract

The current study builds on the recent “Barriers to abusive supervision model” to highlight the role of employee-related (Core self-evaluations) and situational factors (perceived job dependency) that compel employees to trap in the sustained spiral of abusive supervision. Moreover building on the Work-family Spillover realm, the outcomes of abuse are extended to the family members of the abused employee. We have employed a three-wave longitudinal moderated mediation design and analyzed data from 265 employees working in the hospitality industry of Pakistan. The results showed that employees who have low core self-evaluations are prone to trap in sustained abusive supervision and spillover the reaction towards their family members. Moreover, this situation worsens when the employee dependency on the current job is high. Thus, we offered a complex interplay of personal and situational factors in being a target of supervisor abuse and why and when the retaliation is transcended to the family domain instead of the work domain.