The relationship between abusive supervision and unethical pro-organizational behavior: linear or curvilinear?

Based on social exchange theory and research on proactive personality, this study aims to explore the relationship between abusive supervision and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), taking proactive personality as a boundary condition.

This study conducted a two-wave questionnaire survey and used data from 353 Chinese employees of a diversified company to test the research hypotheses.

The relationship between abusive supervision and UPB varied with proactive personality. Specifically, abusive supervision had an inverted U-shaped effect on UPB when proactive personality was high, while abusive supervision was negatively related to UPB when proactive personality was low.

More research are encouraged to replicate our study in different cultural contexts. Besides, future research can gather data from dyads (e.g. supervisor–subordinate dyad and coworker–subordinate dyad) so as to increase the objectivity and validity of the data.

Managers should reduce abusive supervision and elevate proactive employees' moral awareness.

This study hopes that the authors’ findings will help practitioners to devote greater attention to managing proactive personality, abusive supervision and UPB in the organization.

First, this study enriches the abusive supervision literature by identifying UPB as a consequence of abusive supervision. Second, this study provides a better understanding of the coping tactics used to combat abusive supervision. Third, this study uncovers a dark side of proactive personality by verifying the moderating effect of proactive personality.