Abusive Supervision and Subordinate Characteristics: A Relative Importance Analysis

1 online resource (195 pages) : PDF

2021

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abusive supervision is defined as the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact by a supervisor or leader. Abusive supervision is pervasive in the workplace and has many pernicious consequences, ranging from job dissatisfaction to supervisor-related aggression, to home-life disturbances. These problems are costly to organizations, particularly in the form of lost time, lack of productivity, and turnover. Research to date suggests that perceptions of abusive supervision may be driven as much by, if not more than, subordinate characteristics rather than supervisor behavior. The fundamental issue is that although abusive supervision is defined in terms of supervisor behavior, it is assessed via subordinate perceptions of supervisor behavior. While many studies have concentrated on the impact of specific subordinate characteristics on perceptions of abusive supervision, researchers have tended to focus on specific characteristics in isolation. Thus, the literature would benefit from a more comprehensive treatment that examines the collective effect of multiple subordinate characteristics as well as their relative importance with respect to ratings of abusive supervision. This survey-based study focused on demographics, personality, core self-evaluation, and the WUSI scale developed by Harvey, Butler, and Brees (2016). The results were analyzed using regression analysis and supplemented by dominance weights analysis. I found that, collectively, subordinate characteristics accounted for 47% of the variance in subordinate perceptions of abusive supervision and that the WUSI scale clearly dominated, representing 59% of this effect size.

doctoral dissertations

Organizational behavior
Management
Organizational sociology

D.B.A.

Abusive Supervision
Relative Importance
Subordinate Characteristics
Wusi

Business Administration

Woehr, David

Banks, George
Gooty, Janaki
Ames-Stuart, Jennifer

Thesis (D.B.A.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2021.

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