Supervisor role overload and frustration as antecedents of abusive supervision: The moderating role of supervisor personality

• Author: Scott W. Lester,Gabi Eissa
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2123

Supervisor role overload and frustration as

antecedents of abusive supervision: The

moderating role of supervisor personality

GABI EISSA*AND SCOTT W. LESTER

Department of Management & Marketing, College of Business, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI,

54702, U.S.A.

Summary The current research explores supervisor-level antecedents of abusive supervision in the workplace. Specifi-

cally, this study introduces affective events theory to the abusive supervision literature to suggest that super-

visor role overload, a work-related event, leads to supervisor frustration. As an intense negative emotional

reaction, frustration, in turn, triggers supervisors to exhibit abusive behaviors in the workplace. Supervisor

personality traits—namely, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness—are also posited to moderate

these hypothesized relationships. Specifically, neuroticism is expected to moderate the relationship between

role overload and frustration while conscientiousness and agreeableness are expected to moderate the rela-

tionship between frustration and abusive supervision. Ultimately, we propose and examine a moderated-

mediation model. Multisource field data demonstrate general support for the hypothesized relationships.

We conclude with theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues. Copyright ©

2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: abusive supervision; frustration; role overload; personality; Big Five

A large number of organizational scholars have recently been intrigued by the question of what happens to em-

ployees who work for abusive leaders. Indeed, the vast majority of research on abusive supervision has been devoted

to identifying employees’reactions to such abuse (Tepper, 2007). Abusive supervision is defined as “subordinates’

perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behav-

iors, excluding physical content”(Tepper, 2000, p. 178). Such abusive behaviors may include, but are not limited to,

ridiculing employees, lying to them, making negative comments about them to others, and expressing anger at them

(Tepper, 2000, 2007). Overall, research shows that abusive supervision is associated with numerous unfavorable

work outcomes such as workplace deviance (Thau, Bennett, Mitchell, & Marrs, 2009), employee psychological

withdrawal (Mawritz, Dust, & Resick, 2014), reduced job satisfaction (Tepper, Duffy, Hoobler, & Ensley, 2004),

and reduced job performance (Harris, Kacmar, & Zivnuska, 2007).

At this point, however, research has largely ignored what makes organizational leaders exhibit abusive behaviors in

the first place. That is, only a limited number of studies have examined antecedents of abusive supervision (Martinko,

Harvey, Brees, & Mackey, 2013; Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014; Tepper, 2007). This limited research has gener-

ally focused on contextual factors such as supervisors’exceedingly difficult goals (Mawritz, Folger and Latham,

2014), organizational aggressive norms (Restubog, Scott, & Zagenczyk, 2011), organizational injustice (Aryee,

Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007), and psychological contract violation (Hoobler & Brass, 2006) as well as subordinate

characteristics and behaviors (e.g., core self-evaluations, hostile attribution style, and performance) (Martinko,

Harvey, Sikora, & Douglas, 2011; Tepper, Moss, & Duffy, 2011; Walter, Lam, van der Vegt, Huang, & Miao,

2015; Wu & Hu, 2009). Despite some progress, research examining supervisor-level antecedents is vital to a thorough

understanding of what initially provokes organizational leaders to become abusive. Specifically, while employees

*Correspondence to: Gabi Eissa, Department of Management & Marketing, College of Business, University of Wisconsin–EauClaire, Schneider

Building 400D, Eau Claire, WI 54702, U.S.A. E-mail: eissagm@uwec.edu

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 19 February 2015

Revised 07 June 2016, Accepted 20 June 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 307–326 (2017)

Published online 15 July 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2123

Research Article

frequently recognize their supervisors as the main source of abusive behaviors (Mitchell & Ambrose, 2012), research

remains unclear as to the process by which supervisors’abusive behaviors are initially triggered (Martinko et al.,

2013). Furthermore, a theoretical framework that explains how and under what conditions supervisors may be per-

ceived as abusive by their employees is missing (Mackey, Frieder, Brees, & Martinko, 2015 ; Martinko et al.,

2013; Tepper, 2007). Relatedly, Tepper (2007) asserts that abusive supervision costs US corporations billions of dol-

lars annually in lost productivity and healthcare costs. Thus, understanding what predicts abusive supervision in the

workplace may help organizations minimize the costs associated with such destructive behaviors.

This study’s purpose is to develop and test a model of antecedents of abusive supervision in the workplace.

1

Spe-

cifically, this study extends the emerging research on the antecedents of abusive supervision by arguing that certain

work events (viz., supervisor role overload) and emotions (viz., supervisor frustration) can be crucial determinants of

supervisor abusive behaviors. By focusing on supervisor work events and emotions, the current study draws upon

affective events theory (AET; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) as its theoretical basis to argue that certain work events

and emotions are likely to lead to supervisor behaviors that are perceived as abusive. AET is particularly insightful

in explaining the process by which this occurs. AET posits that certain work events elicit certain emotions and that

these emotions subsequently provoke certain behaviors. Hence, this study argues that supervisor role overload elicits

feelings of frustration, which in turn provokes abusive behaviors. This assertion is supported by prior theory

explaining similar patterns including the frustration–aggression model (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears,

1939), the transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), and the stressor–emotion model of counterproduc-

tive work behavior (Spector & Fox, 2002, 2005). While some existing research links frustration to aggression, this

study is the first to explicitly test the direct link between frustration and abusive supervision and suggests that frus-

tration is the mechanism by which supervisor role overload impacts perceptions of abusive supervision.

One should not assume, however, that all supervisors will respond to similar affective events in the same way.

AET research suggests that personality characteristics help explain why individuals’reactions could vary as they ex-

perience these events and emotions at work. Indeed, research has suggested that supervisor personality traits can im-

pact employees’perceptions of supervisors’abusive behaviors (Martinko et al., 2013). That is, certain aspects of the

supervisor’s personality (e.g., hostility and cooperativeness) may increase or decrease the probability that a subor-

dinate will perceive him or her as abusive. Therefore, a thorough investigation should also explore moderators of

these relationships (Martinko et al., 2013; Tepper, 2007). As the next section explains, this study explores three spe-

cific personality traits as supervisor-level moderators of antecedents of abusive supervision.

In sum, the current study strives to advance the organizational behavior literature in three important ways. First,

given that most research on abusive supervision has examined outcomes of such abuse, this study contributes to the

field by expanding our understanding of the small but growing stream of research investigating antecedents of abu-

sive supervision by examining supervisor-level factors including supervisor role overload and frustration. Our exam-

ination is essential given that research still lacks a theoretical framework that explains the process of how the

supervisor’s work environment triggers perceptions of abusive supervision. Second, our study is the first to intro-

duce AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) across the field of research on abusive supervision in an effort to examine

such antecedents. Hence, our examination is theoretically driven by AET, which allows us to also extend the re-

search on this emotion-focused framework by explicating how distinct events and emotions may predict distinct be-

havioral reactions, namely abusive supervision in the workplace.

Third, we recognize the need to examine supervisor-level moderators of antecedents of abusive supervision by ex-

ploring the role of supervisor personality, which has received little research attention to date (Martinko et al., 2013;

Tepper, 2007). In recent years, Weiss and his colleagues have reflected on the process proposed by the AET framework

and recognized that a better understanding of the role of personality can only be found by taking a “thorough look at the

complex chain of processes that link events to emotional reactions and emotional reactions to behavioral, cognitive and

attitudinal outcomes. This examination will find that personality constructs of many different types have various roles to

1

In this paper, we measure abusive supervision based on subordinates’perceptions of supervisor abuse. Therefore, we use the term “abusive su-

pervision”to refer to subordinate ratings of these perceptions.

308 G. EISSA AND S. W. LESTER

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 307–326 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job