Relationship of Abusive Supervision and Employees’ Behaviors－the Moderating Effects of Traditionality and Conscientiousness

• Main Authors: Hung-Chieh Yen, 顏鴻傑
• Other Authors: Chin-Tien Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/19122976451577992225

碩士 === 國防大學管理學院 === 資源管理及決策研究所 === 97 === Recent contributions to the leadership literature suggest that some supervisors perform behaviors that can be characterized as tyrannical, bullying, undermining, or abusive. As expected, employees who perceived that their supervisors were more abusive were more likely to react (directly or indirectly) against the perceived causes of frustration to restore the situation to what was expected. In this article, we examine the moderating effect of personality traits (conscientiousness) and traditionality on the relationship between abusive supervision and employee behaviors (includes OCBI, OCBO, and deviant behavior). The association was explored among a participant group of 1,103 army members, As predicted, we found that the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ behaviors (not include OCBO) was weakness among employees who were lower in conscientiousness or traditionality than among employees who were higher in conscientiousness or traditionality. The result of this research suggests that (a) employees who feel abused perform fewer OCB than their nonabused counterparts, (b) conscientiousness moderates the abusive supervision and OCBI such that the effect is more pronounced among employees who define OCBI as a requirement of the job, and (c) abusive supervision produces a number of deviant behaviors, with employees’ personality traits explaining many of their reactions to abuse. The most significant implication of our study is that abusive supervision does not affect all employees in the same way. Personality traits influence employees’ behavior across a variety of organizations and occupational groups. Among the limitations of this research is the reliance on a single source for all measurement; that is, method variance cannot be ruled out as a possible explanation for the relationship. Implications for future research and management are discussed.