In the past 18 years, abusive supervision, which is reflected in the hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors of leaders (excluding physical contact) toward subordinates (Tepper, 2000), has attracted extensive attention from practitioners and scholars. Scholars’ strong interest in abusive supervision is indicated by the increasing number of publications including several qualitative (Martinko, Harvey, Brees, & Mackey, 2013; Tepper, 2007; Tepper, Simon, Park, 2017) and quantitative (Mackey, Frieder, Brees, & Martinko, 2017; Schyns & Schilling, 2013; Zhang & Liao, 2015) review papers on this topic. Existing research generally concludes that exposure to leaders’ abusive behaviors is linked with a wide range of negative outcomes such as subordinate deviance, low job satisfaction, and low jo...[ Read more ]

In the past 18 years, abusive supervision, which is reflected in the hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors of leaders (excluding physical contact) toward subordinates (Tepper, 2000), has attracted extensive attention from practitioners and scholars. Scholars’ strong interest in abusive supervision is indicated by the increasing number of publications including several qualitative (Martinko, Harvey, Brees, & Mackey, 2013; Tepper, 2007; Tepper, Simon, Park, 2017) and quantitative (Mackey, Frieder, Brees, & Martinko, 2017; Schyns & Schilling, 2013; Zhang & Liao, 2015) review papers on this topic. Existing research generally concludes that exposure to leaders’ abusive behaviors is linked with a wide range of negative outcomes such as subordinate deviance, low job satisfaction, and low job performance. This general recognition of the dysfunctional effects of abusive supervision has prompted recent studies to investigate the antecedents of leaders’ abusive behaviors. The objective is to obtain an improved understanding of the causes of leaders’ abusive supervision, which can suggest ways to reduce such behavior in the workplace.

Various factors have been identified as antecedents of leaders’ abusive behaviors, including leader-level factors, such as high stress from difficult goals (Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014), histories of family undermining (Garcia, Restubog, Kiewitz, Scott, & Tang, 2014), and abusive behaviors from their own leaders (Liu, Liao, & Loi, 2012); and subordinate-level factors, such as low performance (Liang, Lian, Brown, Ferris, Hanig, & Keeping, 2016) and high deviance (Lian, Ferris, Morrison, & Brown, 2014). However, leaders’ abusive behaviors have fundamentally been depicted as impulsive or “hot” responses toward external provocations. That is, leaders are observed as individuals who “could not control themselves” in displaying abusive behaviors (e.g., Mawritz, Greenbaum, Butts, & Graham, 2017). Nevertheless, abusive behaviors are not necessarily mere impulsive but could be strategic in nature (Khan, 2014; Tepper, Duffy, & Breaux-Soignet, 2012). In the psychology literature, social interactionist theory has long recognized that aggressive behaviors, such as leaders’ abusive behaviors, could be driven by cold motives (Tedeschi & Felson, 1994). Dual-system theory of human behavior (i.e., impulsive–reflective; Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999; Smith & DeCoster, 2000; Strack & Deutsch, 2005) also suggests that leaders’ abusive behaviors could be both impulsive and strategic responses.

The current dissertation conceptually differentiates impulsive abuse from strategic abuse and empirically develops a valid scale to measure these two concepts. Furthermore, two theoretical models are developed to analyze the outcomes of impulsive and strategic abuse from the perspectives of leaders and subordinates, respectively. The first model is an actor/leader-based theoretical model that focuses on the outcomes of leaders’ impulsive and strategic abuse. I draw upon the self-regulation theoretical framework (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 2001, 2004; Hofmann, Schmeichel, & Baddeley, 2012; Vohs & Baumeister 2004) to develop this theoretical model. In particular, leaders’ impulsive and strategic abuse were hypothesized to relate negatively and positively, respectively, to their goal realization of influencing subordinates. Furthermore, goal realization was hypothesized to serve as the regulation mechanism for leaders to adjust their later behaviors toward subordinates. Particularly, after high goal realization, leaders with high political skills (Ferris et al., 2005) were hypothesized to be able to focus on repairing relationships with subordinates through the reduction of abusive behaviors and increase in supportive behaviors to subordinates. An experience sampling design with a leader sample was used to collect data and test this model. The empirical results generally support this theoretical model.

The second model is a target/subordinate-based theoretical model that focuses on the outcomes of subordinates’ perceived impulsive and strategic abuse. I draw upon the alarm-system model of justice judgment (e.g., Van den Bos, Ham, Lind, Simonis, Essen & Rijpkema, 2008) to develop this theoretical model. In particular, I hypothesized that impulsive abuse is negatively related to subordinates’ perceptions of interpersonal and procedural justice. By contrast, strategic abuse is negatively related to subordinates’ perception of interpersonal justice but could be beneficial for their perception of procedural justice. In addition, I considered abusive behavior frequency as a situational boundary condition and subordinates’ core self-evaluation (CSE) as a personality boundary condition to shape the preceding hypothesized relationships. I predicted that high threatening conditions such as high abusive behavior frequency and low CSE would motivate subordinates to make more defensive justice judgments, thus strengthen the negative effects of impulsive and strategic abuse but weaken the potential positive effects of strategic abuse on subordinate justice judgment.

A two-wave field design was used to collect data and test these hypotheses. The theoretical model was partially supported with a few unexpected findings. In particular, I found that (1) impulsive abuse was negatively related to subordinates’ perception of interpersonal justice under the condition of high abusive behavior frequency, (2) impulsive abuse was negatively related to subordinates’ perception of procedural justice for subordinates with high CSE, (3) strategic abuse was negatively related to subordinates’ perception of interpersonal justice for subordinates with low CSE but positively related to subordinates’ perception of interpersonal justice for subordinates with high CSE, and (4) strategic abuse was positively related to subordinates’ perception of procedural justice under the condition of low abusive behavior frequency or for subordinates with high CSE.

The following section is organized into two chapters. The first chapter focuses on the actor-focused model of leaders’ impulsive and strategic abuse. The second chapter focuses on the target-focused model of impulsive and strategic abuse perceived by subordinates.