Supervisors' emotional exhaustion and abusive supervision: The moderating roles of perceived subordinate performance and supervisor self-monitoring

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this study aims to create new knowledge on the antecedents of abusive supervision. Results across 2 independent field studies within a manufacturing context (Study 1) and a customer service context (Study 2) consistently demonstrated a 3-way interaction...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of organizational behavior 2017-10, Vol.38 (8), p.1151-1166
Main Authors: Lam, Catherine K., Walter, Frank, Huang, Xu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
abusive supervision
Conservation
Emotional abuse
emotional exhaustion
Fatigue
Manufacturing
Organizational behavior
Organizational change
Perceptions
Quality of service
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Selfmonitoring
self‐monitoring
Subordinates
Supervision
Supervisor-Subordinate interactions
Supervisors
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Summary:Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this study aims to create new knowledge on the antecedents of abusive supervision. Results across 2 independent field studies within a manufacturing context (Study 1) and a customer service context (Study 2) consistently demonstrated a 3-way interaction pattern, such that supervisors' experiences of emotional exhaustion, perceived subordinate performance, and self-monitoring were jointly associated with subordinates' abusive supervision perceptions. A supplementary scenario experiment further corroborated this pattern. Together, the present studies illustrate a contingency model of abusive supervision's origins, highlighting emotional exhaustion as an important risk factor that is particularly likely to trigger abusive behavior among supervisors with lower (rather than higher) self-monitoring who are faced with a relatively underperforming subordinate. As such, this research advances the abusive supervision literature by offering new insights into the complex resource conservation processes that may give rise to subordinates' abuse perceptions.
ISSN:0894-3796
1099-1379
DOI:10.1002/job.2193