Addressing the multilevel phenomenon of abusive supervision from the instrumental and reactive perspectives
Creators: name: Ng, Serene Boon Ching
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: HM1116.N4 2012
subject: Leadership Moral and ethical aspects.
subject: Supervision of employees
subject: Work environment.
subject: Harassment
subject: Employee morale

description: Abusive supervision is a dysfunctional workplace behavior that evokes images of tyrannical bosses publicly ridiculing and undermining their subordinates. Naturally, one can imagine the detrimental effects of such abusive behaviors on subordinates' health and productivity. These deleterious consequences on subordinates also translate into organizational costs such as high absenteeism, medical costs arising from employee's poor health and staff turnover. Given such outcomes in the workplace with ramifications for both the affected subordinate and organization, abusive supervision warrants systematic investigation. By using two different studies, this research explored the abusive supervision phenomenon, taking an integrated and multilevel approach to examining the antecedents and outcomes of abusive supervision. Drawing from the aggression literature that distinguishes between instrumental and reactive aggression, the first study adopted an instrumental perspective to explain supervisors' just-world motive as an antecedent to abusive supervision. Results from Study 1 supported the cross-level effects of abusive supervision as an instrumental influence stemming from supervisors' just-world motive to redistribute justice. Such hostile actions, in turn, backfire as the abused subordinates perceive the supervisor as unfair and fail to identify with him or her. Study 2 adopted a reactive perspective to explain supervisors' interactional justice as an antecedent to abusive supervision and examine the outcomes at the group and individual levels. At the group level, results from Study 2 showed that abusive supervision fostered two different climates - a climate of procedural injustice and a climate of silence. At the individual level, the abused subordinate failed to identify with the supervisor therefore reducing his or her in-role performance and choosing to remain silent for self-protection. In addition, the two studies examined the moderating role that one's cultural orientation plays in the abusive supervision phenomenon. Results from Study 1 showed that subordinates' high power distance orientation mitigated the deleterious effects of abusive supervision on subordinates' interactional injustice and personal identification with the supervisor. Conversely, Study 2 showed that a supervisor's high power distance orientation magnified the effects of his or her hostilities toward subordinates when the supervisor experienced unfair treatment from his or her immediate boss. Supervisors' acts of hostilities are common in organizations (Tepper, 2007) and understanding why supervisors engage in such behavior remains a challenge for scholars. This research is the first to adopt a multilevel and integrated perspective in examining the broader social implications of abusive supervision - from the antecedents to their associated outcomes. In this thesis, the theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed and the limitations of the research are also addressed. -- provided by Candidate.