The role of abusive supervision and openness to experience in the task conflict and social undermining relationship

Abstract

Building on the emerging research on antecedents of social undermining, we develop and test a threat-based tripartite model of social undermining that outlines why and when employees may engage in social undermining in the workplace. Specifically, we draw on the transactional theory of stress to suggest that task conflict, as a contextual factor, serves as a fundamental stressor that provokes social undermining. Within this transactional stress framework, we also argue that task conflict is more likely to provoke social undermining under conditions of higher levels of abusive supervision (context) and openness to experience (personality) simultaneously. In this regard, we propose a three-way interaction suggesting that task conflict, abusive supervision, and openness to experience jointly interact to predict higher levels of social undermining. Our findings from two separate field investigations using time-lagged, multisource data (i.e. employee–coworker dyads) provide general support for our hypothesized model. Research and practical implications for human resource management, as well as recommendations for future research, are discussed.