When Employees are Emotionally Exhausted Due to Abusive Supervision. A Conservation-of-Resources Perspective.

Zubair Akram,Umair Akram,Yan Li

doi:10.3390/ijerph16183300

Abstract

This study represents an important step towards understanding why supervisors behave abusively towards their subordinates. Building on the conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the impact of abusive supervision on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) from a stress perspective. Furthermore, job demands play a significant moderating effect, and emotional exhaustion has a mediating effect on the relationship between abusive supervision and CWBs. A time-lagged design was utilized to collect the data and a total of 350 supervisors-subordinates’ dyads are collected from Chinese manufacturing firms. The findings indicate that subordinates’ emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and CWBs only when subordinates are involved in a high frequency of job demands. Additionally, emotional exhaustion and abusive supervision were significantly moderated by job demands. However, the extant literature has provided that abusive supervision has detrimental effects on employees work behavior. The findings of this study provide new empirical and theoretical insights into the stress perspectives. Finally, implications for managers and related theories are discussed, along with the boundaries and future opportunities of this study.

Highlights

Over the past decades, counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) have become an increasingly popular topic of the study among organizational researchers [1,2,3,4,5,6]
This study shows that an association between CWB and abusive supervision is reliant on emotional exhaustion
Results may provide insight to understand how abusive supervisor effects subordinates’ emotions and feelings. This is consistent with conservation of resources (COR) theory; our findings show that abusive supervision indirectly affects CWB through emotional exhaustion [22]

Summary

Introduction

Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) have become an increasingly popular topic of the study among organizational researchers [1,2,3,4,5,6]. CWBs involve activities that are unhealthy for the effectiveness of the organization. These activities slow down the normal working of the organization. It is of importance to realize that empirical research explores the boundary effects, with the information being somewhat limited. This entails a discussion of the impact of abusive supervision and counterproductive work behavior with a moderated mediation model that can aid in the correction of this adverse action

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion