Bad bosses and self‐verification: The moderating role of core self‐evaluations with trust in workplace management

• Author: Amanda Shantz,Theresa M. Glomb,Jonathan E. Booth,Michelle K. Duffy,Elizabeth E. Stillwell
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21982
• Date: 01 March 2020

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Bad bosses and self-verification: The moderating role of core

self-evaluations with trust in workplace management

Jonathan E. Booth

1

| Amanda Shantz

2

| Theresa M. Glomb

3

| Michelle K. Duffy

3

|

Elizabeth E. Stillwell

3

1

Department of Management, London School

of Economics and Political Science,

London, UK

2

Trinity Business School, University of Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

3

Carlson School of Management, Department

of Work and Organizations, University of

Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Correspondence

Jonathan E. Booth, Department of

Management, London School of Economics

and Political Science, Houghton Street, NAB

4.20, London WC2A 2AE, UK.

Email: j.booth@lse.ac.uk

Abstract

Who responds most strongly to supervisor social undermining? Building on self-

verification theory (Swann, 1983, 1987), we theorize that employees with positive

views of the self (i.e., higher core self-evaluations [CSEs]) who also maintain higher

trust in workplace management are more likely to experience heightened stress and

turnover intentions when undermined. We argue that this subset of employees (high

CSE, high trust) are more likely to feel misunderstood when undermined by their

supervisor and that this lack of self-verification partially explains their stronger

responses to supervisor undermining. We find initial support for the first part of our

model in a study of 259 healthcare workers in the United States and replicate and

extend our findings in the second study of 330 employees in the United Kingdom.

Our results suggest that the employees Human Resources often wishes to attract

and retain—employees with high CSE and high trust in workplace management—react

most strongly to supervisor social undermining.

KEYWORDS

core self-evaluations, felt understanding, self-verification, stress appraisals, supervisor social

undermining, trust in workplace management, turnover intentions

1|INTRODUCTION

Research is quickly mounting on the deleterious effects of having a

bad boss—bosses who engage in behaviors such as abuse

(e.g., Tepper, 2000), bullying (e.g., Hoel, Glasø, Hetland, Cooper, &

Einarsen, 2010), or undermining (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002). We

focus on a relatively ubiquitous form of mistreatment, supervisor social

undermining, which occurs when a supervisor intentionally tries to hin-

der employees' successes at work, interferes with their ability to main-

tain positive interpersonal relationships, and/or attempts to tarnish

their reputation (Duffy et al., 2002). The damaging effect of supervisor

social undermining is indisputable, evident in the host of negative con-

sequences for targeted employees (e.g., reduced self-efficacy and job

satisfaction and increased health complaints; Duffy, Ganster, Shaw,

Johnson, & Pagon, 2006) and for organizations (e.g., increased

employee counterproductive behaviors, withdrawal, and turnover

intentions; Duffy et al., 2002, 2006). And yet, we are only beginning

to understand the conditions under which supervisor mistreatment

might have the greatest impact on employees and organizations. For

instance, research shows that employees who feel singled out in their

mistreatment (Duffy et al., 2006) and who perceive mistreatment to

be intentional and unfair report worse organizational outcomes

(e.g., Aquino, Tripp, & Bies, 2001; Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007, 2012;

Tripp, Bies, & Aquino, 2002).

Our aim in the current study is not to re-examine the harmful

effects of supervisor mistreatment, but instead to identify individual

and contextual conditions that amplify the effects of supervisor

undermining. We leverage self-verification theory (Swann, 1983,

1987) to guide our predictions regarding when employees most

strongly react to undermining. This theory suggests that individuals

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21982

Hum Resour Manage. 2020;59:135–152. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 135

seek out information that confirms their own self-beliefs in pursuit of

psychological coherence, or the feeling that one is understood by

others; ideas about the self are “verified”by others. A person's self-

belief, operationalized here as core self-evaluations (CSE), plays a part

in how a person responds to information and stimuli in the environ-

ment. Supervisor social undermining is one such stimulus, and, when

individuals receive information that challenges a prevailing conception

of the self, the self-concept is threatened. However, in such cases,

self-verification theory suggests that there is unlikely to be a “flat-out

denial of inconsistent information”but instead people engage in an

elaborate process of scanning their environment to diagnose and

make sense of the discrepant information and the extent to which the

self is confirmed (Markus & Wurf, 1987, p. 318).

One way to approach this discordant situation is to consider

whether their supervisor's social undermining is a personal attack or is

a symptom of the larger context in which the undermining occurred

(e.g., Duffy et al., 2006; Hershcovis & Barling, 2010). While there may

be a host of salient contextual factors in an employee's environment,

in this study, we focus on trust in workplace management (Dirks &

Ferrin, 2001). Knowledge of the trustworthiness of management is

crucial because it serves as a diagnostic tool to determine the nor-

malcy of undermining from superiors. When high undermining is atyp-

ical in the environment (i.e., under high management trust), high-CSE

employees are more likely to take undermining as a personal attack,

resulting in worse outcomes (e.g., Duffy et al., 2006). Hence, we pro-

pose the strongest consequences of supervisor social undermining

occur when an employee perceives supervisor undermining as

atypical—that is, among those whose beliefs about themselves and

the trustworthiness of management are most positive.

We focus on two well-documented outcomes of supervisor

undermining—employee stress and turnover intentions—for three rea-

sons. First, self-verification research suggests that when people are

unable to self-verify, they experience dissonance, stress, and lower

levels of well-being (Swann & Brooks, 2012; Swann & Schroeder,

1995; Swann, 1983, 2012) and actively try to exit their environment

(see Swann & Buhrmester, 2012 for a review). Second, from an

applied perspective, these consequences are key organizational con-

cerns and should be mitigated (Chartered Institute of Personnel

Development, 2016; Society of Human Resource Management,

2018). Third, because both stress and turnover are clearly linked to

undermining in prior research, we can compare and build on past

research.

Our paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we

identify conditions under which undermining is felt most strongly and

add to a growing body of research that shows that context—in the

form of moderating variables (i.e., trust in management)—renders self-

verification more or less likely (e.g., Chen, English, & Peng, 2006;

Swann & Schroeder, 1995). Our second contribution is in identifying

and testing the mediating mechanism (i.e., diminished felt understand-

ing) that explains why individuals with high levels of CSE and trust in

management have higher levels of stress and turnover intentions. We

turned to self-verification theory to suggest that self-verification is

alluring because receiving information that is consistent with previous

beliefs helps people to feel understood (e.g., Weger, 2005;

Wiesenfeld, Swann, Brockner, & Bartel, 2007). Third, our study pro-

vides a counterpoint to research that has established that a positive

self-view and trust in workplace management are wholly beneficial for

individuals and organizations (e.g., Dirks & Ferrin, 2001, 2002; Judge &

Hurst, 2007). Although others have suggested buffering effects of

such positive features of self and environments (e.g., Alfes, Shantz, &

Truss, 2012; Best, Stapleton, & Downey, 2005; Harris, Harvey, &

Kacmar, 2009), we propose that each can lead to higher stress and

turnover intentions when they are together juxtaposed against super-

visor social undermining. Finally, we contribute to the practice of

human resource management as it provides insight into who is likely

to experience exacerbated levels of stress and turnover intentions as

a consequence of supervisor social undermining. Such understanding

will go a long way toward providing direction and support to human

resource (HR) leaders who are charged with detoxifying work environ-

ments, managing manager-direct report relationships, and addressing

workplace mistreatment (Fox & Cowan, 2015; Frost, 2003; Kulik,

Cregan, Metz, & Brown, 2009).

2|THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

Self-verification theory (Swann, 1983, 1987) suggests that people pur-

sue psychological coherence because it provides a means to organize

current experiences, predict future events, guide social interactions,

and to feel understood by others. Stable self-views—regardless of

how positive or negative they are—create a coherent social context

and guide behavior to make people predictable to others, and this in

turn stabilizes the way others respond, which further crystalizes peo-

ple's self-views. A person's stable sense of self allows them to antici-

pate how others will act and react to them and given the circuitous

nature of the self-verification process, they feel understood by others.

In an effort to maintain a stable self-view, people seek out and

embrace feedback congruent with their self-view and reject or avoid

experiences that conflict with their self-view (see Swann, 2012 and

Swann & Buhrmester, 2012, for reviews). When others' treatment,

feedback, or experiences are not aligned with individuals' self-views,

self-verification theory predicts they feel uncertainty, a loss of control,

and personally threatened. As a result, individuals whose self-views

are challenged tend to behave defensively (Croyle, Sun, & Hart, 1997)

and aggressively (e.g., Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996), report

lower levels of well-being (e.g., Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1995) and

less-positive attitudes toward their job and organization (e.g., Shantz &

Booth, 2014; Wiesenfeld et al., 2007).

Prior research has examined felt understanding as a key mecha-

nism that explains why non-self-verifying information leads to detri-

mental outcomes. For instance, Wiesenfeld et al. (2007) found that

participants with a positive self-view felt most understood when they

were treated in a procedurally just manner, whereas those with a

lower positive self-view, on the other hand, felt less understood when

they were treated in a procedurally just manner. Hence, the self-

verification process is akin to felt understanding and pertains to

136 BOOTH ET AL.