Abusive supervision: subordinate personality or supervisor behavior?

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether employees’ personalities are associated with their perceptions of abusive supervision.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 756 working adults provided data. Subjects’ began by taking personality assessments and then received a performance evaluation via a video role-play. Subjects then provided their perceptions of how abusive the supervisor was. The data were analyzed with regression analysis.

Findings

The results illustrated that respondents’ hostile attribution styles, negative affectivity, trait anger, and entitlement were positively and significantly associated with perceptions of abusive supervision.

Research limitations/implications

The results imply that judgments of supervisory abuse and interventions to ameliorate the negative consequences associated with abusive supervision should consider subordinates’ characteristics.

Originality/value

This study controlled supervisor behavior via a video vignette to assess how multiple subordinates’ perceive the same supervisor behavior. This study contributes to a more complete understanding of how personality is associated with perceptions of abusive supervision.

Citation

Brees, J., Martinko, M. and Harvey, P. (2016), "Abusive supervision: subordinate personality or supervisor behavior?", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 405-419. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-04-2014-0129