Abusive Supervision of Employees and Work Performance

Subject: Employee Management
Pages: 2
Words: 658
Reading time:
3 min
Study level: PhD

Al-Hawari, M. A., Bani-Melhem, S., & Quratulain, S. (2019). Do frontline employees cope effectively with abusive supervision and customer incivility? Testing the effect of employee resilience. Journal of Business and Psychology. Web.

This article is concerned with the impact of abusive supervision and customer incivility on frontline employees’ behavior. The study involved 192 employees working in diverse spheres and businesses. Al-Hawari, Bani-Melhem, and Quratulain (2019) found that abusive supervision and customer incivility led to a considerable degree of employees’ emotional exhaustion. Although customer incivility was mitigated by employees’ resilience, abusive supervision had a negative effect on people.

The researchers emphasized that managers had to choose the most appropriate approaches to supervision, especially when it came to frontline employees, who were exposed to different stressors. The level of employees’ resilience decreases if abusive supervision is utilized. The researchers also added that a combination of customer incivility and abusive supervision led to employees’ limited capacity to satisfy customers’ needs.

This article is a valuable source for the present project due to its focus on the emotional state of employees. The researchers explored the exact areas of concern and found that the emotional state of individuals influenced their performance at work. The source also sheds light on the effects other stressors have on people exposed to abusive supervision.

Fiset, J., Robinson, M. A., & Saffie-Robertson, M. (2019). Masking wrongs through brilliance: The moderating effect of vision on the relationship between abusive supervision and employee outcomes. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28(6), 756-768. Web.

The present article deals with the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ performance with a focus on the impact of leader vision. The researchers stressed that the current research has some gaps related to the effects of leader vision on employees’ conduct. The researchers noted that leader vision had a mitigating impact on employees’ performance exposed to abusive supervision. Fiset, Robinson, and Saffie-Robertson (2019) explored the influence of abusive supervision on employees’ creativity, and leadership vision proved to be a buffer for people’s creative capacity. The researchers added that managers had to consider the use of the proper supervision behavior in order to ensure employees’ high performance and creativity. Although abusive supervision is mainly undesirable, it can take place if the leader is visionary.

This source is valuable for the present study due to its focus on the link between abusive supervision and employees’ performance and creativity. The researchers examine the peculiarities of the effects of leader vision on employees’ behaviors under abusive supervision. It is apparent that visionary leaders can display certain abusive supervision patterns with a limited negative impact on employees’ performance.

Tu, M.-H., Bono, J. E., Shum, C., & LaMontagne, L. (2018). Breaking the cycle: The effects of role model performance and ideal leadership self-concepts on abusive supervision spillover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(7), 689–702. Web.

This article deals with the way abusive supervision affects new leaders’ behaviors and supervisory patterns. Tu, Bono, Shum, & LaMontagne (2018) utilized social learning and identity theory concepts to check their hypothesis. The researchers expected that new leaders would adopt abusive supervisory behaviors only if they perceived their supervisors as knowledgeable, and focusing on teams’ performance.

The researchers also hypothesized that new leaders’ abusive supervision could depend on their self-concepts. The overall number of participants was 93, and the experiment involved a professional actor performing as a leader, and the participants’ changing roles were conducted. It was found that new leaders developed abusive supervisory behaviors if the team led by an abusive supervisor performed well and if the new leader displayed low concern for other people.

This article is a valuable source for the present project because it illustrates the influence of abusive supervision on employees who take up leading positions. It is clear that employees may adopt abusive supervisory behaviors under certain conditions. It is also apparent that abusive supervision is tolerated or even regarded as appropriate if teams (subordinates or the entire organization) perform well.