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Who Suffers When Supervisors are Unhappy? The Roles of Leader–Member Exchange and Abusive Supervision

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Abstract

Driven by the cognitive-neoassociationistic model of aggression (Berkowitz in Psychol Bull 106:59–73, 1989; Am Psychol 45: 494–503, 1990), this study examines how supervisors’ negative affect at work influences their interaction with subordinates (i.e., abusive supervision), which further affects subordinate outcomes (i.e., negative affect at work, job satisfaction, and personal initiative). Drawing upon research on power/resource interdependence and victim precipitation theory, we also test whether the positive relationship between supervisors’ negative affect and abusive supervision is moderated by leader–member exchange (LMX). Using one hundred and eighty supervisor–subordinate dyads from five hotels, we found that, (a) supervisors’ negative affect at work was positively related to abusive supervision, (b) LMX buffered the positive association between supervisors’ negative affect and abusive supervision, and (c) the indirect effects of supervisors’ negative affect on subordinate outcomes (higher negative affect at work, lower job satisfaction, and fewer personal initiatives) via abusive supervision was buffered by LMX, such that the indirect effects were only found in dyads with lower LMX, but not in dyads with higher LMX. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for managers and organizations were also discussed.

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Notes

  1. As one anonymous reviewer suggested, LMX could moderate the relationships between abusive supervision and subordinate outcomes, such that abusive supervision leads to more negative reactions among high-LMX subordinates (Lian et al. 2014; Xu et al. 2015), we conducted additional analyses to test the moderating effect of LMX on the relationships between abusive supervision and the three outcomes. However, LMX did not moderate these relationships (for subordinates’ negative affect, b = .15, SE = .11, ns; for subordinates’ job satisfaction, b = −.16, SE = .12, ns; for subordinates’ initiative behavior, b = −.22, SE = .13, ns).

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  1. Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau

    Su-Ying Pan

  2. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Katrina Jia Lin

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Pan, SY., Lin, K.J. Who Suffers When Supervisors are Unhappy? The Roles of Leader–Member Exchange and Abusive Supervision. J Bus Ethics 151, 799–811 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3247-y

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