| This study examines the interactive effect of abusive supervision directed toward oneself (own abusive supervision) and toward work unit peers (coworker abusive supervision) on employee deviant behaviors at work. I propose that distinct combinations of own and coworker abusive supervision are related to particular forms of employees' deviant behaviors, as mediated by distinct justice-related motive states. Specifically, I hypothesize that own and coworker abusive supervision interact in distinct ways to influence each form of employee deviant behavior, including production deviance (i.e., behaviors to purposely reduce one's productivity), supervisor-directed deviance (i.e., behaviors intended to harm the supervisor), and coworker-directed deviance (behaviors intended to harm the coworkers). These predicted interactions are separately mediated by reward expectancy (i.e., the perceived contingency between performance and rewards), moral disapproval of leader (i.e., perceiving one's leader violates moral principles), and social exclusion by unit peers. In sum, this study examines mediational pathways through which abusive supervision influences employee deviant behaviors by 1) accounting for the influence of the vicarious experience of abusive supervision in addition to directly experienced abusive supervision, 2) examining distinct joint influences of own and coworker abusive supervision on different forms of employee deviance, and 3) drawing from the justice literature to identify three complementary mechanisms through which a leader's abusive behavior may promote retributive behaviors. I tested this model using a sample of 275 workers from 55 work units in two organizations located in China. The study used a three-wave time-lagged design and obtained responses from individual employees and their unit peers. The results overall did not support to the proposed mediation processes that I had hypothesized to explain the joint influences of own and coworker abusive supervision on employee deviant behaviors. Weak associations between the justice-related motive states and their corresponding deviant behaviors contributed to this lack of empirical support for my theoretical model. Nevertheless, with the exception of reward expectancy, I found distinct interactive effects of own × coworker abusive supervision on the justice motive states. Whereas own abusive supervision was more strongly associated with reports of social exclusion by peers when coworker abusive supervision was low (vs. high), personal abuse by the leader had a stronger positive association with moral disapproval of leader when coworker abusive supervision was high. Taken together, the findings demonstrate the importance of taking coworkers' mistreatment by the leader into account when examining the consequences of one's own abusive supervision. Although the patterns of these interactions deviate from the hypotheses, this study indicates that there are distinct justice motive states associated with different combinations of levels of direct and vicarious experience of abusive supervision. I discuss the study's implications for theory development concerning abusive supervision and for future research opportunities which may build on the current findings, as well as practical implications. |
