Abstract
With the increasing attention on the dark side of leadership, abusive supervision has become a prevalent topic of investigation, as it has been linked to a variety of negative outcomes including follower injustice. Recent literature has suggested that power distance moderates the link between abusive supervision and follower perceived justice such that the relationship is stronger c for followers lower in power distance. However, these research has focused mostly on follower interactional justice, leaving phenomenon of how abusive supervision affects other types of justice uncharted, neither did they explore the underlying process through which power distance moderates the correlation of abusive supervision with follower justice.
To remedy this problem, the current study contributes to the literature in two important ways. Using social exchange theory as an overarching framework, we first introduce follower supervisor-directed overall justice to examine the moderating role of power distance between abusive supervision and follower justice, extending research that solely investigated interactional justice as outcome. Second, we provide leader-member exchange and test its mediated role between abusive supervision-follower power distance interaction and follower supervisor-directed overall justice, disentangling the underlying mechanism that power distance moderates abusive supervision-follower justice association. In other words, we explore abusive supervision-follower justice relationship from the perspective of a unifying conceptual framework that combines mediating and moderating effects.
We examined research questions using a sample of 296 interior designers from a large home furnishing company in China. Measures with adequate reliability and validity were used to capture key variables. Results of confirmatory factor analysis showed the satisfactory discriminant validity of the variables and precluded the common method bias. Consistent with hypothesis, the results suggested the significant moderating effect of follower power distance on abusive supervision and follower overall justice relationship (b=.14, p<.01). Specifically, abusive supervision was found to be more detrimental to follower supervisor-directed overall justice for those lower in power distance (b=-.47, p<.01), compared with their counterparts (b=-.25, p<.01). Additionally, follower power distance was shown to marginally disseminate the negative effect of abusive supervision on leader-member exchange (b=.08, p=.058). It was also found that leader-member exchange mediated the link between abusive supervision-power distance interaction and follower overall justice, supporting the proposed mediated moderation model.
The current study is one of the first investigations that explore the relationship between abusive supervision and follower supervisor-directed overall justice, its underlining mechanism and boundary condition. We broaden research line of abusive supervision and justice by introducing follower overall justice targeted at their supervisors. More importantly, as an urgent response to extant calling, this study illustrates the specific underling mechanism that follower power distance moderates the abusive supervision-follower justice linkage. The finding that followers lower in power distance respond to abusive supervision more strongly than do those higher, with less perceived their social exchange relationship with supervisors, as well as supervisor-directed overall justice perception has salient implications for leaders, followers and their interactions in organizational context.
Key words
abusive supervision /
power distance /
leader-member exchange /
overall justice
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ZHEN WANG Meng SONG.
Rethinking Abusive Supervision and followers’ Justice: Test of A Mediated Moderation Model[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(3): 723-728
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