The crossover of psychological distress from leaders to subordinates in teams: The role of abusive supervision, psychological capital, and team performance.

Abstract

This study examines the underlying mechanism of the crossover process in work teams. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we hypothesize that a leader's psychological distress positively influences subordinates' psychological distress through abusive supervision. We further hypothesize that team performance attenuates the association between a leader's psychological distress and abusive supervision. In addition, we expect that psychological capital attenuates the positive relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates' psychological distress. Participants were drawn from 86 business teams, and multisource data were collected. The hypotheses were tested with multilevel analysis. Results supported the crossover of psychological distress from leader to subordinates, and abusive supervision serves as a mediating mechanism. The positive relationship between a leader's distress and abusive supervision is stronger when team performance is lower. In addition, the positive relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates' psychological distress is stronger when subordinates' psychological capital is lower.

A multilevel review of stressor research in teams

“…Although still underrepresented, these findings serve as the initial evidence of the potential contagion effects of stressors. This evidence resonates with research showing that team burnout tends to cross over to individual team members (Bakker, van Emmerik, & Euwema, ) and that team leaders' distress is at risk of crossing over into team members' lives because distressed leaders tend to demonstrate more abusive behaviors (Li, Wang, Yang, & Liu, ).…”

“…Because it occurs through interpersonal transactions, creating feelings of being threatened by aggressive others, this stressor‐like phenomenon has predominantly emotional components (van den Tooren & de Jonge, ). In accordance with what has been discovered for other detrimental stressors, as reviewed above, it is little surprising that abusive supervision increases emotional exhaustion and decreases job performance at the individual level, although individuals' cognitive reappraisal (Chi & Liang, ), conscientiousness (Nandkeolyar et al, ), and psychological capital (Li et al, ) ameliorate such detrimental effects. At the team level, team member support (Hobman, Restubog, Bordia, & Tang, ) and organizational support (Kim, Kim, & Yun, ) have been shown to attenuate the undesirable effects of abusive supervision.…”

“…Such a dysfunctional adaptive process may metaphorically transform bad apples into bad barrels, thus endangering the proper functioning and performance of the entire team. Consequently, further research that connects to the scant knowledge on the cross‐over effects of stressors within teams (e.g., Bakker et al, ; Li et al, ; Westman et al, ) is not only needed but also promising. This is particularly true because membership in multiple teams is becoming increasingly relevant in organizational practice (Mortensen & Gardner, ), which may lead to a contagion effect of stressors even between different teams that share the same “bad apple” (i.e., a team member who feels an exaggerated amount of pressure).…”

Work-Family Conflict Impact on Psychological Safety and Psychological Well-Being: A Job Performance Model

“…The aim is to restrain the consequences of mobbing and other abusive, defamatory and malignant behaviors. Conversely to the fostering and exchange of positive capital building upon the resiliency, its depletion was revealed to just add to team members' distress and vulnerability (Li et al, 2016). The effects of the negative working climate on the individual are already well established, and what warrants investigation is how such negative factors impact working climate.…”

Back to Basics with Mixed-Effects Models: Nine Take-Away Points

“…As a final practical observation related to points 1 and 2, we note that authors often write text implying that the use of mixed-effects models must be Bjustified^by large ICC(1) values (Li et al 2016;Liu et al 2012;Miron-Spektor et al 2011;Wang and Howell 2010). In contrast, we suggest that authors should have to justify their decision not to use mixedeffects models (or other approaches that can control for nonindependence) by showing that ICC(1) values are so trivial as to be considered zero.…”