Abusive Leadership Research Articles

How to Cope with an Abusive Leader? Examinations of Subordinates’ Affective Reactions, CWB-O and Turnover Intentions

When subordinates experience abusive supervision, they often respond with “fight” (e.g., organizationally-directed counterproductive work behavior: CWB-O) or “flight” reactions (e.g., turnover intentions). Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory, we propose that negative (NA) and positive affect (PA) explain these distinct responses and that coworker emotional support differentially moderates the relationships of affective states with CWB-O and turnover intention. That is, we expect that emotional support exacerbates the mediating effect of NA, whereas it weakens the mediating effect of PA. We tested the hypothesized model in two time-lagged studies, one among subordinates ( N = 162), and the other among supervisor-subordinate dyads ( N = 255 dyads). Results confirmed that the relation between abusive supervision and CWB-O was mediated by NA, and that the relation between abusive supervision and turnover intentions was mediated by PA. Coworker emotional support strengthened the mediating effect of NA, but it did not attenuate the mediating effect of PA. These results only hold for CWB-O, not for supervisor-rated CWB-O. Explanations, implications as well as limitations and ideas for future research are discussed.

Leader’s Toxicity at Workplace: How Leader’s Decadence Affect Employees? A Pakistani Perspective

Several studies have found adverse effects of abusive leadership on employees and organizations in the recent past. However, the cultural norms in Pakistan demand an abusive leadership approach. Pakistani culture is high in power distance, abuse of power is a norm, and people are accustomed to autocracy. Since most of the studies addressing the negative effects of abusive leadership were conducted in the west, it is necessary to examine whether abusive leadership is an effective leadership approach in the cultures that experience high power distance. There is a paucity of literature addressing the issue in question. In addition, existing literature does not explain how abusive leaders affect employees’ attitudes and behaviors with clarity. This research makes an ontological contribution and discusses the philosophical origins of abusive leadership theory. Furthermore, this research draws the inference using the groundings of conservation of resource theory, leader-member exchange theory, and aggression displaced theory to propose that abusive leaders deteriorate employees’ quality of working life experience. Employees with poor working-life experience are more likely to be involved in counterproductive work behavior, planning to leave the organization, and are less likely to show organizational citizenship behavior. Dyadic data were collected from 474 respondents based on purposive sampling technique from private sector organizations in Pakistan. Results of structural equation modeling using AMOS v23 supported all the proposed hypotheses. Results imply that the moral content of leadership requires special attention, and abusive leadership is not an appropriate leadership approach because of its adverse effects on employees’ attitudes and behaviors.

Abusive Supervision: A Systematic Review and New Research Approaches

Abusive leaders affect employees’ emotions and health and produce counterproductive behaviors that cause economic damage to organizations. The literature has focused predominantly on the antecedents of abusive supervision and its negative impact, providing knowledge on mechanisms that link abusive supervision to consequences for subordinates. There has been limited research on the supervisor perspective, on the group level, and on recovery. This review makes three contributions: first, we examine the theoretical approaches used by previous research studies to understand abusive supervision. Second, we analyze the types of mechanisms that explain how and when an abusive supervision process occurs. Third, we identify and discuss applied methodologies and limitations. Based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines, and transactional well-being process perspective, we analyzed 171 empirical manuscripts and 239 samples between 2010 and July 2020. We identified a growth in abusive supervision research between 2018 and 2020 and found 101 different theories. Most of these theories view abusive supervision from a social, relational, or affective perspective, but seldom from an emotional perspective. We classified four types of mechanisms: simple relations between abusive supervision and antecedent-consequences (12), moderators (47), mediators (26), and a combination of mediators and moderators (86). We found that research has mostly been performed at the employee level or on dyads; studies that analyze the team level are rarely found. We identified two methodological problems: cross-sectional designs, which do not allow the analysis of its causality, and the increased risk of common method variance that may influence the results obtained via single-source data. In conclusion, the theories used have focused on employee perceptions, which have not enabled the broadening of the abusive supervision concept to include the supervisor’s perspective and a recovery-related perspective. Research on how and when abusive supervision occurs analyzed with complex mechanisms using emotional variables and appropriate daily methodologies has been scarce. We propose a theoretical expansion including emotional theories to uncover emotional consequences of abusive supervision and the recovery concept to provide a deeper insight into abusive supervision process. We contend that longitudinal and diary designs that include teams and supervisor levels are necessary.

HOW DOES ABUSIVE LEADERSHIP CONTAMINATE PERFORMANCE AND CULTURE? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

The study focuses on the critical aspect which is evaluation of how much of an impact does the abusive leadership have on the employees’ performance when the hospital culture promotes it, overlooks it, or embraces it. The target sample of 350 was performing multi functions including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and medical staff. For the antecedent of Abusive Leadership, data was collected from 35 hospital supervisors. The study observed nonphysical abuse such as verbal mistreatment, mockery, insulting behavior, emails, and messages. The results show a significant impact of leadership on employee performance and stress that was caused by leadership’s negative behavior; organizational culture also was causing stress toward the employees’ performance. Keywords: Abusive leadership, commitment, productivity, performance, culture

Hubungan antara Pemimpin Abusif dan Organizational Citizenship Behavior : Apakah Agreeableness sebagai Pemoderasi?

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to examine the relationship between employee's perception of abusive leader and their organizational citizenship behavior. Second, to investigate the moderating role of agreeableness on this relationship. Data were collected from 200 employee's working at Rural Bank (BPR) in Surakarta, Indonesia through online questionnaires. The finding of the study confirms that abusive leader is negatively related to subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior. The study also reveals that agreeableness moderated the relationship between abusive leader and subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior

Abusive leadership, psychological well-being, and intention to quit during the COVID-19 pandemic: a moderated mediation analysis among Quebec's healthcare system workers.

PurposeTo examine the effects from work-organization conditions, abusive leadership, and their interaction on Quebec healthcare system workers’ psychological well-being and intention to quit during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsMediation and moderated mediation analyses were performed using MPlus software on a sample of 921 Quebec healthcare system workers.ResultsSkill utilization, decision authority, social support from co-workers and supervisors, and recognition were associated directly and positively with psychological well-being, while psychological and physical demands were associated directly and negatively with psychological well-being. Skill utilization, irregular work schedule, and recognition were associated directly and negatively with intention to quit, while psychological demands were associated directly and positively with intention to quit. Moreover, the results demonstrated that abusive leadership attenuated the effects from recognition and decision authority on psychological well-being (moderation effects), contributing to greater intention to quit among workers (moderated mediation effects).ConclusionsThe obtained results underline the importance of work-organization conditions and leadership style on healthcare system workers’ psychological health and their intention to quit their jobs during a pandemic. In particular, and given their key role, leaders/managers must be sensitized concerning leadership style and its possible effects on their employees’ psychological well-being and intention to quit. Therefore, training programs should be offered to leaders/managers to prevent adoption of abusive leadership styles.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00420-021-01790-z.

Perceived Abusive Leadership, Narcissistic Personality, and Employee's Political Behaviors: A Moderated-Mediation Model

Limited research has explored the potential explanatory mechanisms for the link between abusive leadership and non-negative employee-based behaviors in the effectiveness of organizational management. Based on affective response theory to construct a theoretical model, this study enhances the mapping of how employee-perceived abusive leadership triggers employee affective responses and influences their political behaviors to facilitate task-related goals. It also investigates how the moderating effects of employee-perceived leader's narcissistic personality interact with the variables of the main effects. This study was implemented in Taiwan's financial and insurance institutions. Using a sampling framework via a market survey agency, participants completed three online surveys within a 3-week period. 350 employed participants registered for the study. Based on the findings, we suggest that managers in a hierarchical organization may be able to intentionally vary their leadership style to arouse employees' negative emotions without hindering, and perhaps even improving, employees' motivation to achieve their task aims. When leaders demonstrate their self-confidence in the workplace, employees perceive less anxiety at work and less need to adopt workplace political behaviors to solve work troubles. This research suggests managers should recognize employee-perceived abusive leadership as an influential factor that contributes to illuminating the processes underlying workplace perception-to-behavior and leader–member interactive links, as well as the boundary conditions of mediating and moderating these processes.

The effect of abusive supervision on safety behaviour of Chinese underground miners: a multi-level moderated mediation analysis

PurposePrior research has suggested that abusive supervision has negative impacts on various work outcomes. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ safety behaviour. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to address these limitations by developing and testing a theoretically based conceptual model that explicitly considers the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of the relationship between abusive supervision and safety behaviour of underground coal miners in China.Design/methodology/approachAt Time 1, the authors conducted a survey of 630 employees to assess their supervisors’ abusive leadership behaviours, their own power distance beliefs and their self-reflection. At Time 2, the authros sent questionnaires to the leaders and invited them to evaluate employees’ safety behaviour in the workplace. After cleaning the survey data, the authors tested our model using a multi-level analysis on a sample (n = 458) of underground miners across 96 coal mining sites in China.FindingsThe authors propose that abusive supervision decreases employees’ safety compliance/participation by reducing reflection but strengthening rumination. The authors further find that the linkage from abusive supervision to reflection/rumination to safety compliance/participation is affected by power distance.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, This is one of the first empirical studies to investigate the mediating effects of a deep cognitive processing variable – namely, self-reflection – and the moderating effects of power distance on the relationship between abusive supervision and safety behaviour.

On the destructiveness of laissez-faire versus abusive supervision: a comparative, multilevel investigation of destructive forms of leadership

ABSTRACT Different forms of destructive leadership are prevalent in organizations, but rarely studied together. Additionally, most studies take an individual-level view on the consequences of destructive leadership. However, while most supervisors lead teams, it remains unclear how destructive leadership behaviours affect team processes and outcomes from a multilevel perspective. Building on this premise, we analysed the relationship of abusive supervision and laissez-faire leadership with OCB on the individual and team-level. As an important team process, we considered team trust as a mediating mechanism. Further, we investigated whether laissez-faire leadership is more harmful to OCB compared to abusive supervision. We tested our proposed model in a three-wave study with data from 658 team members out of 149 teams. Bayesian multilevel analysis generally supported our assumptions: Abusive supervision lowered team trust and subsequently OCB at the individual and team-level, whereas laissez-faire was not related to team trust on the team-level. Additionally, our results indicated that laissez-faire was more harmful to OCB than abusive supervision on both levels. Finally, implications for theory and practical use in organizations are discussed.

The Order in Disorder: The Effects of Leader Sequence in Job Rotation

In job rotation programs, higher level managers or human resource specialists often assign multiple leaders to an employee following a random sequence, because they have no method or no prior knowledge about this decision. In this paper, we focus on a destructive leader experience— working with an abusive leader. Random leader sequence in job rotation implies that some employees are assigned with an abusive supervisor early on while others are assigned with one late in the process. It thus creates an interesting theoretical tension: is it better off to have primacy-based leader sequence (i.e., abusive supervisors should appear early in the sequence) or recency-based leader sequence (i.e., abusive supervisors should appear late in the sequence)? Based on a 4-month job rotation program that involves 291 nurses and 513 nurse supervisors, we found that a primacy-based abusive supervision sequence consistently has a positive effect on both proximal rotation outcome (i.e., qualified exam performance and job performance) and distal rotation outcomes (i.e., job performance and bonus). The model not only adds a new inquiry of the leader sequence problem to leadership and job rotation research, but also offers much needed action implications to managers about how to assign leaders in job rotation.

Interpreting the Hunger Games: Introducing Forced Competition Theory

The effects of abusive leadership have been studied in many ways, most heavily exploring effects on employee attitudes, performance, and behavior. Uniquely, this research focuses on individual or workgroup performance rather than the potential impact on interpersonal relationships and treatment or the types of climates resulting from different types of abusive supervision. This paper introduces the construct of Forced Competition, in which a supervisor pits unwilling employees against each other in a competition within their workgroup. This concept therefore integrates literature on abusive supervision, competition, and organizational climate to propose a theory of employee behavior and climate development. This paper introduces a model illustrating two potential paths of behavior and workgroup climates that may emerge because of this type of abusive supervisor behavior: a climate of distrust or a climate of healthy competition. Further, I propose an important moderator that influences which of these climates are likely to emerge: the severity of the competition outcome.

Abusive Supervision and its influence on Employee Silence and Organizational Productivity: Evidence from Pakistan

It is the need of every organization to maximize its profits by working with efficient and effective organizational tools and to make the best use of organizational resources. For a business to gain profit it is essential for managers and decision-makers to keep the pace of generating profits always at a certain mark. This study aims to identify potential managerial problems for businesses operating in Pakistan, specifically related to employee-supervisor relationships. The study is a novel attempt in this field as it intends to uncover the employee silence aspects in the event of abusive supervision and finds its impact on overall organizational performance. The research was carried out with a sample of 110 responses collected from public and private organizations in Pakistan. This research has identified that with the increase in abusive leadership, there will be a decrease in organizational productivity and employees’ silence will also significantly increase. Meanwhile, employee silence has a comparatively larger effect i.e., 12% on the productivity of an organization, than the direct effect of abusive supervision on productivity. The study findings accentuate that the organizational leadership team should work on maintaining fair treatment of every employee and decrease the extent of abusive supervising behaviour at work in order to maximize profits and let employees use their potential creativity to give the best output that organizations really expect them to provide.

Abusive leadership versus objectifying job features: Factors that influence organizational dehumanization and workers’ self‐objectification

AbstractRecent research has revealed that work often can undermine people's humanness by promoting a view of them as mere objects. In particular, the workers’ meta‐perceptions of being treated as company resources (i.e., organizational dehumanization) and their self‐perceptions of being instrument‐like (i.e., self‐objectification) could be triggered by several factors. Previous research has identified that abusive supervisors and engaging in objectifying (repetitive, fragmented and other oriented) tasks are two of the main key factors that affect worker's dehumanization. The present project aims to disentangle the extent both factors (perceptions of abusive leadership and performing objectifying tasks) contribute to created perceptions of organizational dehumanization and self‐objectification among workers that, ultimately, affects workers job satisfaction. In Study 1 (N = 208 workers), we measured the extent perceived abusive supervisors and objectifying job features predicted organizational dehumanization, self‐objectification, and job satisfaction. The results indicate that abusive supervisors predicted perceptions of organizational dehumanization and workers self‐objectification in a higher extent than objectifying job features, while workers job satisfaction was predicted in a higher extent by objectifying job features. In Study 2 (N = 141), we experimentally manipulated the abusive (versus nonabusive) supervisors and the objectifying (versus nonobjectifying) tasks in a laboratory setting. Results also indicated that the abusive supervisor exerts a greater influence than performing objectifying tasks on organizational dehumanization, self‐objectification, and job satisfaction. The detrimental effect of an abusive supervisor in comparison with other working conditions on workers’ humanness is discussed, and practical implications are highlighted.

Auxiliaries to Abusive Supervisors: The Spillover Effects of Peer Mistreatment on Employee Performance

An accumulating amount of research has documented the harmful effects of abusive supervision on either its victims or third parties (peer abusive supervision). The abusive supervision literature, however, neglects to investigate the spillover effects of abusive supervision through third-party employees’ (i.e., peers’) mistreatment actions toward victims. Drawing on social learning theory, we argue that third parties learn mistreatment behaviors from abusive leaders and then themselves impose peer harassment and peer ostracism on victims, thereby negatively affecting victims’ performance. Further, we posit that, if a victim has a proactive personality, this will weaken these indirect, negative effects. We conducted two studies, both with three-wave longitudinal data, to verify the hypotheses. The results of Study 1 evidence the significant indirect effects of abusive supervision on employee creative performance via both peer harassment and peer ostracism. Contrary to our moderation hypothesis, the analysis shows that victims’ proactive personality strengthens rather than weakens the negative indirect effects of peer harassment. Study 2 generally replicated the results of Study 1 with employee’s objective job performance as outcome. Our research contributes to the abusive supervision literature by highlighting a social learning process of third-party peer mistreatment, suggesting a spillover channel of abusive supervision on the victim’s performance.

Getting nowhere, going elsewhere: the impact of perceived career compromises on turnover intentions

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to investigate the unexplored relationship between employees' perceptions that they have made compromises in their careers (i.e. perceived career compromise) and their turnover intentions, as well as how it might be moderated by two personal factors (materialism and idealism) and two contextual factors (abusive supervision and decision autonomy).Design/methodology/approachSurvey data were collected among employees who work in the education sector in Canada.FindingsEmployees' frustrations about unwanted career adjustments lead to an enhanced desire to leave their organization. This process is more likely among employees who are materialistic and suffer from verbally abusive leaders, but it is less likely among those who are idealistic and have more decision autonomy.Practical implicationsFor human resource managers, these results provide novel insights into the individual and contextual circumstances in which frustrations about having to compromise career goals may escalate into the risk that valuable employees quit.Originality/valueThis study contributes to human resource management research by detailing the conditional effects of a hitherto overlooked determinant of employees' turnover intentions, namely, their beliefs about a discrepancy between their current career situation and their personal aspirations.

Why Does Abusive Leadership Lead to Employee Silence ---The Mediating Role of Perceived Insider Status and Psychological Safety

The study's primary objective is to examine the influence of abusive leadership on employee silence and the mediating effect of perceived insider status and psychological safety. It divulges the me...

Why does abusive leadership lead to employee silence The mediating role of perceived insider status and psychological safety

Why does abusive leadership lead to employee silence The mediating role of perceived insider status and psychological safety

임파워링 및 비인격적 리더십이 직무열의와 팀워크 행동에 미치는 영향 - 심리적 임파워먼트의 매개역할 -

임파워링 및 비인격적 리더십이 직무열의와 팀워크 행동에 미치는 영향 - 심리적 임파워먼트의 매개역할 -

Toxic directions and their impacts on health organizations

This article intends to open space for future research on the development of more effective leaders in Health Organizations, in the sense that when the health professional realizes that the actions of their leader are abusive, they can signal and even protect themselves from the effects that such actions can affect your performance and organizational well-being. Private health organizations (HO), like all profitable organizations, need to survive in the business world, not only offering quality services, but guaranteeing profits for the functioning of their activities. And in this scenario of great competition, modern questions arise about the possible styles or types of leadership that would be more appropriate to make health organizations achieve their goals, that is, it would be necessary to make organizations achieve their goals that the directions of the Health Organizations apply abusive supervision, because what has been observed, today, is that in the eagerness to earn profits, or to reach their goals, some HO leaders are very inclined to exercise abusive leadership. Therefore, the key point of the research will be to analyze the impacts of an abusive coordination on the performance of health professionals at work with a focus on “service provision”; such a study is of great relevance to the organizational world and, mainly, to health organizations (HO), as these are the main responsible for “excellence in the provision of health services to society”.

Stifling My Fire: The Impact of Abusive Supervision on Employees’ Motivation and Ensuing Outcomes at Work

Although the effect of abusive leadership on individual performance is well-documented, the mechanisms that explains this effect are not fully understood. Drawing on self-determination theory, we suggest that the negative effect of abusive leadership on employees’ workplace outcomes results from followers’ thwarted autonomous motivation. Results of time lagged data collected from 306 full-time employees indicate that abusive supervision leads to lower autonomous motivation, higher controlled motivation, and more lack of motivation (amotivation). These motivational states in turn are found to positively affect counterproductive work behaviors and intentions to quit the job and negatively affect employees’ job-satisfaction and innovative behaviors. Our findings support the role of motivation as an explanatory mechanism by which abusive supervision negatively affects important employee work outcomes. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.