Adverse Effects of Abusive Supervision on Employees

Adverse Effects of Abusive Supervision on Employees

Use one of the two new academic articles you used in your Module 7 assignment for this assignment, selecting the one that is most relevant to your interests and future work. You are to rewrite the paper in your own voice focusing on the single most relevant aspect of the paper to your interests and supporting that aspect using the provided statistics. Your work should be roughly 3000 words in length. Make sure to cite and reference 5 scholarly sources using the APA writing style. Include a cover page and a reference page, which do not count towards the minimum word limit. Be sure to address each of the following:

• Write a totally new introduction using your interests and motivation and not those of the original author.
• Establish a new question/hypothesis based on your interest, which should be a subset of the original author’s or different from it. In either case, the statistical study and the provided data must be able to support and answer the question or address the hypothesis (you may also augment the data with additional sources, if you would like).
• Summarize in your own words, augmenting if needed, the prior literature and its relevance.
• Summarize in your own words, the research method used, the statistical methods employed, the result obtained, and their significance. Be sure this section is focused on your question/hypothesis and not that of the original author.
• Write a totally new conclusion and reflection based on your question/hypothesis and experience and not that of the original author.

Assignment Expectations

Length: 3000 words

Structure: Include a title page and reference page in APA style. These do not count towards the minimum word amount for this assignment.

References: Use the appropriate APA style in-text citations and references for all resources utilized to answer the questions. Include at least three (3) scholarly sources to support your claims.

Format: Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx).

Filename: Name your saved file according to your first initial, last name, and the module number (for example, “RHall Module 1.docx”)

M8 Assignment UMBO – 2, 3, 4

M8 Assignment PLG – 3, DSC-3, DSC-6

M8 Assignment CLO – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Solution

Adverse Effects of Abusive Supervision on Employees

Despite the changing structures of contemporary organizations, most workplaces can be characterized by harsh criticism, privacy invasion, silent treatment, promise breach, and ridicule. Such behaviors, often known as abusive supervision, have a significant impact on employees, their productivity, job morale, perceptions, and other negative effects that do not align with the organization’s goal. These negative employee behaviors that undermine the organization’s goals and interests are defined collectively as Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB). Counterproductive work behaviors are in various forms, including workplace aggression, bullying, absenteeism, sexual harassment, theft, fraud, tardiness, bullying, and sabotage. CWBs negatively affect employees’ productivity and contribute to undesirable risks for the organization.

Organizations are increasingly investigating the driving forces behind counterproductive work behaviors. The findings include broad factors, such as environmental reasons, personality, life changes, lack of training, and many other external factors. Robinson and Bennet’s typologies classify CWB into four groups: production deviance, property deviance, political deviance, personal aggression. Perceptions of fairness have a strong association with counterproductive work behaviors. Unfairness can include supervisory behaviors, and this study will focus on abusive supervision and its relation to counterproductive work behaviors. Abusive supervision includes nonphysical acts such as hostility perpetrated in their reporting, explosive outbursts, undermining, and public derogation. Ongoing manifestation of abusive displays by the supervisors and other leaders will be central to this study instead of isolated and discrete episodes of abuse. Many employees report a dislike for yelling to elicit higher productivity and consider such behavior abusive. Subjective assessment can also constitute abusive supervision. Abusive acts are subjective because some subordinates consider a certain display abusive, and some consider it not abusive. Such acts include bullying, petty tyranny, and downward mobbing.

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Abusive supervision is currently considered an epidemic because one in seven employees perceive their supervisor as abusive. Around 50% of employees expect their supervisor to be abusive at some time in their working experience (Duffy & Yu, 2016). Sex plays a crucial role in how male and female supervisors abuse their employees. Half of the abusive supervisors are women acting as bullies through social manipulation like rumors and insulting comments. Male bullies engage in covert aggression and appraise targets unfairly. Consequences to abusive supervision are multiple, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, trust, workplace conflict, and psychological distress or emotional exhaustion. This study also focuses on the impact of abusive supervision on employees’ psychological distress, categorized as burnout, depression, and anxiety. Additionally, it investigates the impact of abusive supervision on job satisfaction, organization commitment, and counterproductive work behaviors.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

The study seeks to answer the following research questions:

1. In what ways does abusive supervision contribute to CWB?
2. Does abusive supervision lead to employee psychological distress?
3. How does abusive supervision affect job satisfaction?
4. How and when does employees’ organizational commitment derail due to abusive supervision?

The study seeks to confirm the following hypotheses:

H1: A positive relationship between abusive supervision and CWBs

H2: A significant association between abusive supervision and employee psychological distress

H3: The positive relationship between abusive supervision and declining job satisfaction

H4: The positive association between abusive supervision and declining organizational commitment

Literature Review

Abusive supervision can be defined as employees’ perceptions of the extent to which leaders or supervisors engage in a continued display of abusive behavior, both verbal and nonverbal. Abusive supervision is common and generates harmful effects on both employees and the organization. Many studies have investigated counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), and they report harmful activities that slow down the organization’s normal working. Researchers have found the economic effects of counterproductive work behaviors on business. A research study found that global businesses lose US$2.9 trillion due to fraud, one of the CWBs (Duffy & Yu, 2016). Leaders and employees develop interpersonal relationships in the workplace. The relationship between an employee and a supervisor is strong because employees report directly to their managers. Therefore, abusive supervision significantly reveals employees’ deviance (Akram et al., 2019). Researchers have investigated the circumstances of when and why employees display workplace deviance. The boundary effect is one of the circumstances which involves leaders invading an employee’s privacy. Studies have shown that supervisors displaying abusive acts and behaviors experience subordinates’ task performance decline. Although employee self-efficacy plays a crucial role in employee performance, abusive supervision has significant effects in both cases (Park et al., 2020). Velez and Neves (2017) found that abusive supervision has significant consequences for job satisfaction.

Supervisory leadership is essential in management, and supervisory behaviors are associated with positive or negative behaviors. Leaders do not always behave ineffectually, but negative leadership behavior significantly impacts employees and harms the organization (Park et al., 2020). Psychological distress includes any non-specific findings of stress, anxiety, and depression. Impaired mental health leads to a high level of psychological distress. Psychological distress is pervasive across all employees and has causal paths to various factors like workload, low motivation, and leadership quality. Studies have shown an association between abusive supervision and employee psychological distress. Park et al. (2018) found a causal path linking abusive supervision and psychological distress, including anxiety, depression, and burnout. Park et al. (2018) also found that psychological distress has a mediating role in the association between abusive supervision and silence. Organizational commitment can be defined as the connection or bond between employees and the organization. Organizational commitment predicts employee job satisfaction, engagement, performance, and leadership quality. Zang et al. (2021) found that abusive supervision negatively affects employees’ affective commitment. This study extends research on how abusive supervision affects employees and the organization by investigating its effects on CWBs, job satisfaction, psychological distress, and organizational commitment.

Research Methods

Data collection

The research data was gathered from a Chinese manufacturing firm in China’s eastern province. With the help of the senior management, the researchers distributed 500 questionnaires to both employees and supervisors. Three waves survey was used to collect the data to reduce the common bias methods. The first wave involved employees rating their leaders’ abusive supervision. The second wave involved employees rating their psychological distress and job satisfaction. The third wave entailed supervisors rating their subordinates’ organizational commitment and counterproductive work behaviors in the past month. The first wave provided 425 questionnaires, and the second wave 400 questionnaires from employees. The response rate for both questionnaires was 85%. The response rate in the third wave was 70%. Overall, 350 employees and 40 supervisors completed the self-reported questionnaires. Employees provided additional data about their education, age, tenure, organizational level, and gender.

Measures and Statistical Methods

All measuring scales were originally designed in English, but the target participants were Chinese employees, necessitating a back-translation. An eight-item scale adapted from Dalal and Welch measured counterproductive work behavior. One of the items asked employees was whether the supervisor behaved in an unfriendly manner. A five-item scale developed by Tepper was used to assess abusive supervision. For instance, employees were asked whether their supervisor tells them their thoughts or felling are stupid, and they would rate them from 1 = never to 5 = very often. A five-item scale developed by Maslack burnout inventory scale evaluated emotional exhaustion. An eight-item scale developed by Van Veldhoven was used to measure organizational commitment. The study employed a five-item scale developed by Tepper to assess employees’ job satisfaction.

Results

The study includes data collected from employees in different time waves. Goodman and Blum’s method was used to test the first and the second wave surveys. Multiple logistic regression was utilized to assess the time survey as an endogenous variable, including education, age, tenure, organizational level, gender, and abusive supervision, defined as independent variables in the study. Researchers observed the non-significant regression coefficient through the results from these tests. A t-test revealed a significant difference in the variables’ mean value (education, age, tenure, organizational level, and gender) between time one and two. The results display significant mean differences between these variables. The results also suggest that employees drop out randomly.

The study also includes a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to measure all crucial variables (abusive supervision, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and counterproductive work behavior). The CFA results include items with the lowest and highest loadings, and every item was assigned to one indicator. The study includes the computation of the mean scores of items and their indicators. A four-factor model was used to display the CFA results. The researchers hypothesized that the model aligns with the data, with X2(80) = 129.16, p < 0.05; Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.94; confirmatory fit index (CFI) = 0.96; and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.046. The four keys constructed a discriminative validity by comparing the four-factor model against other models. The results show that the four-factor model fits the data collected, successfully achieving discriminatory validity.

The descriptive statistics results include mean, standard deviation, Pearson zero-order correlation, and reliabilities of all the study variables. The reliabilities of all evaluated variables met the 0.70 threshold value. The results of descriptive statistics indicate abusive supervision is positively associated with counterproductive work behaviors (r = 0.22, p < 0.01). The results also reveal a positive association between abusive supervision and declining employees’ job satisfaction (r = 0.13, p < 0.01). Additionally a positive correlation was identified between abusive supervision and employees’ psychological distress (r = 0.18, p < 0.01). Furthermore, the results of the descriptive statistics reveal a positive association between abusive supervision and employees’ declining organizational commitment (r = 0.19, p < 0.01). The results are consistent with anticipated results from the study’s hypotheses.

The study utilized hierarchical multiple regression analyses to ascertain the research hypotheses. Hypotheses one anticipated a positive relationship between abusive supervision and CWBs. The H1 test indicated that abusive supervision is positively related to counterproductive work behavior (β = 0.11, p < 0.01; model 3), supporting H1. Hypothesis two predicted a significant association between abusive supervision and employee psychological distress. The test indicates that abusive supervision is positively associated with employees’ psychological distress (β = 0.22, p < 0.01). Hypothesis three anticipated a positive relationship between abusive supervision and declining job satisfaction. Hypothesis three test indicated that abusive supervision and declining job satisfaction are positively correlated (β = 0.18, p < 0.01). Hypothesis four predicted a positive association between abusive supervision and declining organizational commitment. Hypothesis four test revealed a positive association between abusive supervision and declining organizational commitment (β = 0.27, p < 0.01). All the initial hypotheses were supported.

Conclusion

Multiple studies have confirmed that abusive supervision is strongly associated with employees’ negative and dysfunctional behavior. The study tested hypotheses positively associating abusive supervision with counterproductive work behaviors, psychological distress, declining job satisfaction, and declining organizational commitment. The findings support the initial hypotheses, indicating a positive association between abusive supervision and counterproductive work behaviors, a positive relationship between abusive supervision and psychological distress, a significant association between abusive supervision and declining job satisfaction, and a positive association between abusive supervision and employees’ declining organizational commitment. The questionnaire responses reveal that most employees engage in counterproductive work behaviors when their supervisor displays abusive behavior such as lack of resource support and lack of complete guidelines about work. Counterproductive work behavior that involves the employees’ negative behavior is harmful and hinders the organization’s success and development. Psychological distress, declining job satisfaction, and declining organizational commitment are also harmful to the organization’s success and development. These findings offer concrete proof of abusive supervision’s adverse consequences. The results offer insights into the need to understand abusive supervision and create a common understanding of its features and how it affects the employees’ emotions, job satisfaction, loyalty, and perception of their leaders and the organizations. The study shows that employees’ or subordinates’ emotions and feelings contribute to the CWBs, low job satisfaction, low organizational commitment, and psychological distress. The study implies that organizations should reduce the adverse effects of abusive supervisors by employing interventions like strict internal disciplinary and legal systems. Organizations are also advised to carefully and often observe managers’ activities to promptly identify aggressive actions towards employees and apply corrective and mitigating measures. All supervisors should also undergo a training session to change or learn positive attitudes and behaviors that reduce the chances of CWBs, psychological distress and increase employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

References

Akram, Z., Li, Y., & Akram, U. (2019). When Employees are Emotionally Exhausted Due to Abusive Supervision. A Conservation-of-Resources Perspective. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(18), 3300. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16183300

Duffy, M. & Yu, L. (2016). Abusive Supervision. Oxford Bibliographies. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846740/obo-9780199846740-0103.xml

Park, H., Choi, W., & Kang, S. W. (2020). When Is the Negative Effect of Abusive Supervision on Task Performance Mitigated? An Empirical Study of Public Service Officers in Korea. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(12), 4244. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17124244

Park, J. H., Carter, M. Z., DeFrank, R. S., & Deng, Q. (2018). Abusive supervision, psychological distress, and silence: The effects of gender dissimilarity between supervisors and subordinates. Journal of Business Ethics, 153(3), 775-792.

Velez, M. J., & Neves, P. (2017). The relationship between abusive supervision, distributive justice, and job satisfaction: A substitutes for leadership approach. European review of applied psychology, 67(4), 187-198.

Zang, D., Liu, C., & Jiao, Y. (2021). Abusive supervision, affective commitment, customer orientation, and proactive customer service performance: evidence from hotel employees in China. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648090