The Uneven Impact of Non-contingent Punishment: Misery Prefers Company

Abstract

The negative adaptation hypothesis postulates that the relationship between abusive supervision and employee behavior will be stronger in certain cases than in others and that the determining factor is the treatment of the employee’s immediate coworkers, and that coworker treatment would completely negate the negative responses by employees – leading to a situation where the employee “does not retaliate”. The authors applied this prediction to the relationship between non-contingent punishment and employee overall performance, employee in-role performance, and employee OCB performance in a field study of 476 manufacturing employees in 80 workgroups. A further prediction suggested that employees would consistently experience negative attitudes as a result of mistreatment. Overall, the results of the study supported both the differential behavioral and attitudinal reactions. Further, across the three behavioral outcomes tested, the relationship between employee non-contingent punishment received and behavioral outcomes was not different than zero when peers received high levels of abusive behavior. Implications for theory and managerial practice are discussed.