Abusive supervision and subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior.

Abstract

The relationship between subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision and supervisors' evaluations of subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was explored among a sample of 373 Air National Guard members and their military supervisors. As predicted, the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates' OCB was stronger among subordinates who defined OCB as extra-role behavior (compared with those defining OCB as in-role behavior), and this effect was fully mediated by the interactive effect of procedural justice and OCB role definitions. The study's implications for theory and research are discussed, its limitations are identified, and directions for future research are suggested.

"All in a Day's Work": How Follower Individual Differences and Justice Perceptions Predict OCB Role Definitions and Behavior.

“…We speculate, given our results and the corroborating evidence reported in prior empirical work (Tepper et al, 2001;Tepper & Taylor, 2003;Zellars et al, 2002), that the impetus for making citizenship contributions is different from the impetus for withholding them. Until now, OCB researchers have focused attention primarily on the motivational bases for citizenship behavior, and the implicit assumption has been that withholding citizenship contributions is effortless.…”

“…This dynamic is similar but not identical to the role discretion dynamic proposed by Tepper and colleagues (Tepper et al, 2001;Tepper & Taylor, 2003;Zellars et al, 2002). Whereas both frameworks theorize an interaction between justice perceptions and role definition on OCB, so that the relationship between procedural justice perceptions and OCB is stronger when role definitions are discretionary, the form of the interaction being predicted is different.…”

“…We hypothesized and found that the main (Morrison, 1994) and moderating (Tepper et al, 2001;Tepper & Taylor, 2003;Zellars et al, 2002) effects of OCB role definitions are complementary. That is, although employees perceiving OCB as a role obligation engage in the behavior irrespective of how fairly they believe they are treated, employees who view OCB as discretionary are not only less likely to contribute on that count but also more inclined to respond to evidence of procedural unfairness by withholding contributions.…”

“…For example, although we focused solely on procedural justice, in order to extend the foundational work of Tepper and colleagues (Tepper et al, 2001;Tepper & Taylor, 2003;Zellars et al, 2002), future research might examine perceptions of distributive and interactional justice, as evidence indicates they are correlated with citizenship behaviors (Colquitt, Conlong, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Relatedly, future research might examine the role of procedural justice while controlling for these other types of justice perceptions.…”

“…Accumulating evidence suggests that employees are more inclined to perform citizenship behavior when they view it as a role obligation, rather than as discretionary (Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2002;Coyle-Shapiro, Kessler, & Purcell, 2004;Kidder, 2002;Morrison, 1994;Morrison & Phelps, 1999;Tepper & Taylor, 2003;Zellars, Tepper, & Duffy, 2002). Such results, although not surprising, suggest the importance of understanding the factors that influence employee OCB role definitions.…”