A Research On The Effects Of Perceived Abusive Supervision On Employee’s Creativity

The new round of technological and industrial revolution has reshaped the global economic system and has brought new opportunities for the development of Chinese enterprises.It is helpful to grasp the opportunities and earn core competitiveness for enterprises taking innovation-driven as the core strategy.As personnel is the essence of innovation and employees are the key element to achieve independent innovation,activating employees’ creativity as well as promoting their creative performance are inevitable for enterprises to achieve development and innovation.Since leadership is the key factor of employee creativity,studying how leadership affects employees’ creativity is beneficial for enterprises to improve management efficiency and effectiveness,and thus to enhance employees’ creative performance and help enterprises gain competitiveness.Generally speaking,positive leadership improves employee’s creativity,while negative leadership inhibits it.In recent years,as people’s living standards and well-being improved,the issue of emotional abuse in the workplace has been more concerned in the society.As a common form of emotional abuse from the leader,which refers to that employees would perceive hostile leadership behavior,abusive supervision is one of the typical negative leaderships.Influenced by the traditional thought of superiority,abusive supervision is especially common in China.Although this kind of leadership behavior does not cause direct physical harm to employees as it does not contain physical violence,it can lead to a negative psychological influence,which damages employees’ physical health indirectly and thus leads to detrimental behaviors to the organization.Previous studies have viewed abusive supervision as impulsive,uncontrolled and harmful leadership,and have explored the negative effects of abusive supervision on employee creativity from the perspectives of employee psychology,poor employee-leader or colleague relationships,and employee behavior.First of all,however,since leadership behaviors may express spurring on employees,abusive supervision may also be viewed as a disguised behavior by leaders in order to promote employee performance.Therefore,according to employees’positive and negative perceptions of leadership behaviors,this study clarifies the classification of employee-perceived abusive supervision into two types,impulsive and strategic,based on the analysis of previous literature.In addition,this study also explores the negative and positive effects of employee-perceived abusive supervision on creativity by using the conservation of resources theory and feelings-as-information theory.Then,little attention has been paid to the role of employee personality traits in the relationship between leadership and creativity in previous studies.But in the workplace,employee perceptions of abusive supervision can stimulate employee,which in turn influence their performance.This study introduces employees’ organization-based self-esteem as an intermediary variable and explores the role of this variable in intervening the relationship between employees’ perceived abusive supervision and creativity based on the trait activation theory.Thirdly,previous studies have ignored the influence on employees’ creativity coming from employees’ social identity as well as the behavior of third-party colleagues.Positive identity is helpful for positive employee behavior,and colleague supports are also beneficial to the development of positive identity.Therefore,this study introduces perceived insider status and colleague support as moderating variables to explore the boundary conditions of the effect on creativity under employees’perceived abusive supervision based on the social identity theory.In summary,this study contains the following three research questions.Firstly,the positive and negative effects of two types of employees perceived abusive supervision on employee creativity are investigated.Secondly,the mediating mechanism between employee perceived abusive supervision and creativity are studied.And thirdly,the moderating mechanism of employee perceived abusive supervision on creativity is discussed.In this study,the following conclusions were reached through literature analysis,questionnaire survey and empirical analysis.(1)Employee perception of impulsive abusive supervision has a significant negative effect on creativity,and employee perception of strategic abusive supervision has a significant positive effect on creativity.(2)Employee organizational-based self-esteem plays as a mediator role in the above relationship.(3)Perceived insider status has no moderating role in the relationship between organizational-based self-esteem and employee perception of impulsive abusive supervision.But it plays a positive moderating role in the relationship with strategic abusive supervision,i.e.,the higher the level of employee perceived insider status,the stronger the positive impact of employee perceived strategic abusive supervision on employee organizational-based self-esteem;Perceived insider status also plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between organizational-based self-esteem and employee creativity,i.e.,the higher the level of employee perceived insider status,the stronger the positive impact of organizational-based self-esteem on employee.(4)The colleague support has a negative effect in the relationship between employee perceived impulsive abusive supervision and organizational-based self-esteem.In other words,the higher level of colleague support leads to the stronger negative impact on organizational-based self-esteem due to employee perceived impulsive abusive supervision.While colleague support has a positive effect in the relationship between employee perceived strategic abusive supervision and organizational-based self-esteem as well as the employee creativity,i.e.,the higher the level of colleague support,the stronger the positive impact of employee perceived strategic abusive supervision on organizational-based self-esteem and employee creativity.The main innovations of this study include the following aspects.First of all,the positive impact of abusive supervision on employees’creativity was studied by classifying the abusive supervision into two types,impulsive and strategic,based on employees’perceptions.Regarded as a destructive leadership style,previous research has only examined the negative effects of abusive supervision.However,it is not consistent with the integrated management phenomenon if only the negative effects of abusive supervision are explored.Therefore,this study investigates the positive effects of employees’ perceived strategic abusive supervision on creativity,which enriches the research from this perspective.Secondly,this study reveals the possibilities that employees’ perceived abusive supervision makes positive effects on creativity based on feelings-as-information theory.Previous studies cannot be used to explain the positive effects of abusive supervision.In this study the feelings-as-information theory is applied to explore the role of negative affect in promoting employees’ creativity,and applied the new theory to explain the positive effects of abusive supervision.Thirdly,a trait-activate perspective was used to figure out the mediating mechanisms of positive effects on creativity of employee perceived abusive supervision.Previous research has not focused much on the role of employee traits in the relationship between leadership and creativity.This study adopts a new research perspective and applies trait activation theory to identify the mediating role of organizational-based self-esteem in the positive impact of employees’perceived strategic abusive supervision on creativity.Fourth,it is revealed that colleague support has played a moderating role in the effect of employee perceived abusive supervision on creativity,and the role of third-party behaviors in abusive supervision research is supplemented.Previous studies have tended to focus only on the parties directly involved in abusive supervision,i.e.,leaders and employees,but ignored the role of third-party,colleagues.Based on social identity theory,this study explores that colleague support could facilitate the formation of positive identity and thus promotes employees’ creative performance,bridging the gap in existing research.The theoretical implications of this study are listed as follows.First,it expands the research framework of abusive supervision.Previous studies have only discussed the negative effects of abusive supervision,ignoring employees’positive perceptions of abusive leadership behavior.This study expands the positive effects of abusive supervision by classifying it into two categories:impulsive and strategic,based on employees’perceptions.In addition,this study discusses the moderating role of colleague support and incorporates the third party of abusive supervision,thus expanding the research framework of abusive supervision as a whole.Secondly,it deepens the research content of leadership and employee creativity.This study explores the positive effect of abusive supervision,a typical negative leadership,on employee creativity.By using the theoretical deduction and the empirical analysis,the study explains and verifies this management phenomenon,and thus deepens the research content of leadership and creativity.Thirdly,it enriches the application of trait activation theory in the field of leadership research.Trait activation theory has often been applied to explain the process of activating employees’Big Five and Machiavellian traits in the workplace,but rarely explores the function of leadership,as a trait-related clue,which activate employees’ organizational-based self-esteem and thus influences their behavior.From the perspective of trait activation,this study explores the process by which employee perceived strategic abusive supervision stimulates employees’organizational-based self-esteem and then promotes employees’ creativity,which enriches the application of this theory in the field of leadership research.Lastly,this study enriches the role of social support in organizational behavior research.Previous studies have focused more on the influence of organizational support and leader support on employee behavior.But in the interaction between leaders and employees,the important role of colleague support from a third party cannot be ignored.This study identifies the moderating role of colleague support in leadership influence on employee behavior,thus enriching the role of social support in organizational behavior research.The practical implications of this study are discussed below from three aspects.First,it reveals that the impact of managerial misconduct on employee creativity has both negative and positive aspects,which helps companies fully recognize the hindering role of managerial misconduct in the development of high-quality achievement,and helps companies prevent the occurrence of managerial misconduct as well as control the negative impact of misconduct on employees as much as possible when it has already occurred.It also helps companies to motivate managers to adopt positive leadership style,in which encourages employees in a positive and reasonable way.Additionally,it cultivates entrepreneurial spirit among managers and employees at different levels,and promote the autonomous work and improve creativity for employees.Secondly,it helps companies to recognize the importance of cultivating employees’ sense of identity and belonging,and helps companies to motivate employees’ spirit of ownership and provide more care for employees.Thirdly,it helps companies to recognize the importance of creating harmonious interpersonal relationships,helping employees,managers and colleagues to establish good relationships with each other,and promoting management efficiency and effectiveness.Finally,this study summarizes the shortcomings and provide future research perspective,suggesting that we should develop measurement scales for abusive supervision,organizational-based self-esteem and other related variables which are suitable in China.We can also develop measurement methods and research methods for abusive supervision,such as experimental methods.The research perspectives on abusive supervision should be expanded as well,such as the investigation of the non-linear relationship of abusive supervision,the research conduct on abusive supervision as contextualized leadership,and the enrichment of research on considering abusive supervision as situational leadership as well as on the study of abusive supervision-related derivatives.