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Abusive Supervision and Subordinate Proactive Behavior: Joint Moderating Roles of Organizational Identification and Positive Affectivity

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An Erratum to this article was published on 25 September 2017

This article has been updated

Abstract

Drawing on the transactional model of stress, we propose that organizational identification and positive affectivity moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and proactive behavior. In Study 1, we collected data from a sample of 165 dentists and 41 supervisors in two Chinese hospitals. In Study 2, we used a sample of 226 employee-supervisor dyads from a large Chinese transportation company. The results of two studies showed that the interaction between abusive supervision and organizational identification on proactive behavior (personal initiative in Study 1 and organizational proactive behavior in Study 2) occurred only when positive affectivity was high. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications and indicate future research directions.

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  • 25 September 2017

    The original version of this article was corrected: Figures 5 and 6 were updated.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Syed Akhtar, Catherine K. Lam, Ho Ying Fu and Ziguang Chen from College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, to give constructive comments. This project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Award Nos.: 71332002, 71502167) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Award No.: 3214007406).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, People’s Republic of China

    Qin Xu

  2. College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, People’s Republic of China

    Guangxi Zhang

  3. College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Andrew Chan

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  1. Qin Xu
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  2. Guangxi Zhang
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Correspondence to Qin Xu.

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The original version of this article has been revised: Figures 5 and 6 have been updated.

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Xu, Q., Zhang, G. & Chan, A. Abusive Supervision and Subordinate Proactive Behavior: Joint Moderating Roles of Organizational Identification and Positive Affectivity. J Bus Ethics 157, 829–843 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3691-3

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