Abusive Supervision And Group Level Perceptions

Abusive supervision refers to an employee's perceptions of negative interactions with one's supervisor that are threatening in a non-physical way. Abusive supervision has been shown to have a negative impact on the individual as well as the organization. However, there is little known about how the social context in which abuse might occur can influence the relationship between abusive supervision and outcome variables. This study proposed to look at how group-level perceptions of supervisor behaviors moderate the relationship between individual level perceptions of abuse and individual level experiences of strain such as physical and psychological health, emotion exhaustion and job satisfaction. Group-level perceptions were predicted to act as a buffer and reduce the negative impact of abusive supervision on individual level outcomes. Groups where there may be a lack of/ low group-level perceptions of abusive supervision, the relationship between abusive supervision and individual level outcomes was expected to be stronger. Data were collected from 43 groups of employees with a final N of 172. Hierarchical Linear Modeling and regression analyses were conducted and the results revealed that there was not enough variability between groups for the moderation effects to be significant. Individual level abusive supervision significantly predicted the individual level outcomes, except in the case of job satisfaction. Since the cross-level analyses using HLM were not significant, moderation analyses were conducted using OLS regression. The moderation analyses were significant only in the case of physical health symptoms and the results were not in the expected direction. Potential explanations for the results and future directions are discussed.

Workplace aggression is a serious problem for workers and their employers. As such, an improved scientific understanding of workplace aggression has important implications. This volume, which includes chapters written by leading workplace aggression scholars, addresses three primary topics: the measurement, predictors and consequences of workplace aggression; the social context of workplace aggression; and the prevention of workplace aggression. Of note, the book encompasses the various labels used by researchers to refer to workplace aggression, such as 'abusive supervision', 'bullying', 'incivility' and 'interpersonal conflict'. This approach differs from those of previous books on the topic in that it does not focus on a particular type of workplace aggression, but covers an intentionally broad conceptualization of workplace aggression - specifically, it considers aggression from both the aggressors' and the targets' perspectives and includes behaviors enacted by several types of perpetrators, including supervisors, coworkers and customers.

Understanding and preventing destructive leadership and the far-reaching consequences it can have on individuals and organizations.

Most previous research on workplace mistreatment has proceeded under the assumption that the various forms of mistreatment are uniformly perceived as negative by recipients. Abusive supervision is one form of mistreatment that has rarely ever been examined through a lens of ambiguity. The question many researchers have failed to ask is whether it is reality that every questionable act labeled as abusive is truly abuse, or such perceptions vary across individuals. And for the individuals perceiving the act (the target), what individual differences are influencing their judgement? The purpose of the study was to explore the influence of individual differences on the perception of abusive supervision in the workplace. The study required 134 participants to fill out a series of questionnaires based on their personality traits. They also read a series of 15 vignettes/scenarios based on Tepper’s abusive supervision scale to decide whether they found the behavior highlighted to be abusive or not abusive. The results indicated that although no significant correlations were present for overall abuse, the traits of Machiavellianism and Narcissism did show to be predictors of overt abuse, and conscientiousness was a predictor of covert abuse. Variability in perceptions of the individual vignettes were also found among each trait. In addition, the means of overall, overt, and covert abuse all partially supported the notion that abusive acts can be ambiguous.

With Special Contributions from Bernard Weiner Ph.D. (UCLA) and Robert Lord Ph.D. (Univ. of Akron) Attribution theory is concerned with peoples causal explanation for outcomes: successes and failures. The basic premise is that beliefs about outcomes are a primary determinant of expectations and, consequently, future behavior. Attribution theory articulates how this process occurs and provides a basis for understanding that translates into practical action. Attribution Theory: An Organizational Perspective serves as a primary sourcebook of attribution theory as it relates to management and organizational behavior. The text provides an integrated explanation of the role and function of attribution theory in the organization. This important new book contains original empirical research relating attributions to leader evaluations, reactions to information technologies, management of diverse work groups, achievement, and executive succession and power. The contributors are from a variety of disciplines including management, psychology, education, educational psychology, and sociology.

In this 19th volume of Research on Emotion in Organizations, editors Neal M. Ashkanasy, Ronald H. Humphrey and Ashlea C. Troth orchestrate a retrospective view of the field in order to address a wide range of emotion-related topics and point to the future of research in organizational behavior and organization theory.

Presenting a general theory of social motivation, this compelling work integrates research on achievement evaluation, stigmatization, helping behavior, aggression, and impression management. Bernard Weiner examines how responsibility inferences are reached, the manner in which such judgments affect emotions, and the role that "cold" judgments of responsibility versus "hot" feelings, such as anger, play in producing both pro- and antisocial behaviors. Ideal for students as well as researchers and mental health practitioners, the book includes experiments for the reader to complete that illustrate the main points of the text.

This book asks the crucial question: When does high performance supervision become abusive supervision? As more organizations push to adopt high performance work practices (HPWP), the onus increasingly falls on supervisors to do whatever it takes to maximize the productivity of their work teams. In this rigorous, research-based volume, international contributors offer insight into how and when seemingly-beneficial workplace practices cross the line from motivation to abuse. By reviewing critical issues in both high performance work practices and abusive supervision, it illuminates the crossover between these two modes of work, and forges a path for future scholarship.

For a long time I have had the gnawing desire to convey the broad motivational sig nificance of the attributional conception that I have espoused and to present fully the argument that this framework has earned a rightful place alongside other leading theories of motivation. Furthermore, recent investigations have yielded insights into the attributional determinants of affect, thus providing the impetus to embark upon a detailed discussion of emotion and to elucidate the relation between emotion and motivation from an attributional perspective. The presentation of a unified theory of motivation and emotion is the goal of this book. My more specific aims in the chapters to follow are to: 1) Outline the basic princi ples that I believe characterize an adequate theory of motivation; 2) Convey what I perceive to be the conceptual contributions of the perspective advocated by my col leagues and me; 3) Summarize the empirical relations, reach some definitive con clusions, and point out the more equivocal empirical associations based on hypotheses derived from our particular attribution theory; and 4) Clarify questions that have been raised about this conception and provide new material for still further scrutiny. In so doing, the building blocks (if any) laid down by the attributional con ception will be readily identified and unknown juries of present and future peers can then better determine the value of this scientific product.