The Effects of Abusive Supervision on Team Task Conflict and Relationship Conflict

Abstract

Examining the damaging influence of abusive supervision in workplaces, scholars have delved into opening the black box of how abusive supervision functions. We argue that one important yet neglected mechanism of the relationship between abusive supervision and performance is team conflict. We thereby introduce relationship conflict and task conflict as two potential mechanisms to unravel the negative effect of abusive supervision on individual performance. We then explore these mechanisms further by proposing negative affect and mindfulness as two important underlying processes that help explain the emergence of conflict in teams with abusive supervision. In a time-lagged multi-level field study of 92 teams, we found that abusive supervision aggravated relationship conflict via diminishing mindfulness levels in employees, and that abusive supervision exacerbated task conflict through elevating negative affect and decreasing team mindfulness levels. The augmented levels of relationship conflict in turn harmed individual performance. Our findings thereby advance our understanding of the mechanisms of abusive supervision and the emergence of team conflict.