The impact of abusive supervision on the postgraduate students’ team creativity in higher education institutions

Abstract

ABSTRACT In higher education institutions, postgraduate students’ team creativity often depends on postgraduate students’ willingness to share knowledge, which they surprisingly are not always willing to do and some are even hiding knowledge. Drawing on social exchange theory, we explain how abusive supervision leads postgraduate students to hide knowledge, which in turn reduces postgraduate students’ team creativity. To explore boundary conditions of the relationship between abusive supervision and knowledge hiding, we proposed performance climate as the moderator. Two studies were tested: A cross-sectional study of 298 postgraduate students (Study 1) and a two-wave investigation of 83 supervisors and 301 postgraduate students (Study 2). Results showed that: (1) abusive supervision has a significant positive impact on evasive hiding and playing dumb but not rationalized hiding; (2) evasive hiding and playing dumb play a fully mediating role between abusive supervision and postgraduate students’ team creativity; (3) the performance climate plays a moderating role between abusive supervision and evasive hiding. Combining two studies, our findings offer a new, instrumental perspective on postgraduate students’ responses to abusive supervision with valuable theoretical and practical implications discussed.