We used data collected from a field survey of 334 supervisor–subordinate dyads to test a model of the antecedents of abusive supervision. Path analytic tests of moderated mediation provided support for our prediction that supervisors' depression mediates the relationship between supervisors' procedural justice and subordinates' perceptions of their supervisors' abusiveness and that the mediation framework is stronger when subordinates are higher in negative affectivity. We discuss the study's implications for theory, research, and practice.
The authors developed an integrated model of the relationships among abusive supervision, affective organizational commitment, norms toward organization deviance, and organization deviance and tested the framework in 2 studies: a 2-wave investigation of 243 supervised employees and a cross-sectional study of 247 employees organized into 68 work groups. Path analytic tests of mediated moderation provide support for the prediction that the mediated effect of abusive supervision on organization deviance (through affective commitment) is stronger when employees perceive that their coworkers are more approving of organization deviance (Study 1) and when coworkers perform more acts of organization deviance (Study 2).
Ethical ideology is predicted to play a role in the occurrence of workplace deviance. Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire measures two dimensions of ethical ideology: idealism and relativism. It is hypothesized that idealism will be negatively correlated with employee deviance while relativism will be positively related. Further, it is predicted that idealism and relativism will interact in such a way that there will only be a relationship between idealism and deviance when relativism is higher. Results supported the hypothesized correlations and idealism and relativism interacted to predict organizational deviance. Idealism was a significant predictor of interpersonal deviance, but no interaction was found.
SummaryLeading organizational behavior scholars have argued that construct proliferation threatens the interpretability of interpersonal mistreatment research and have argued that researchers should employ the same terminology to refer to constructs that have been studied under distinct labels (e.g., bullying, deviance, retaliation, abuse, undermining). We argue that most of the construct labels researchers regularly employ capture meaningful theoretical differences, although the corresponding measures often fail to capture the distinctive features of mistreatment constructs. We further argue that a more immediate threat to the interpretability of research in this area is that scholars have overlooked the distinctions among the individual forms of mistreatment that comprise extant operational definitions. We offer recommendations for addressing what we perceive to be the major limitations of current interpersonal mistreatment research.
An extensive body of research on organizational identification has developed over the last 25 years. This work has typically taken the view that organizational identification is good for individuals and organizations. However, the underlying social identity processes of organizational identification do not suggest that only positive outcomes should be expected. We review the work addressing organizational identification's dark side. Our review suggests that organizational identification can lead to unethical behaviors, resistance to organizational change, lower performance, interpersonal conflict, negative emotions, and reduced well-being. Conditions facilitating these undesirable outcomes include situation factors (e.g., identity threats, work characteristics) and person factors (e.g., morality, other identifications). By providing a counterpoint to the generally positive approach to organizational identification, we attempt to move the literature toward a more balanced view.
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