The Speaker Has No Hostile Intention,Determined By The Receiver:How And When Negative Feedback Is Regarded As Abusive

Abusive supervision has been studied extensively these years,with a great amount of studies showing that abusive supervision have brought many damage to individuals and organizations.However,when subordinates perceive abusive supervision,did their supervisor really abuse them?The current research considered supervisors' negative feedback as an antecedent to explore whether some of supervisors' legitimate behaviors could be misinterpreted as abusive supervision by subordinates.Especially,this study introduced affective events theory to abusive supervisor perception literature to suggest that supervisors' negative feedback,a legitimate supervisory behavior,could lead to subordinates anger,and impair their serenity.High anger,as well as low serenity,in turn,caused subordinates to perceive higher abusive supervision.Subordinates' personality traits—mindfulness--were also posited to moderate these hypothesized relationships.Ultimately,we proposed and examined a moderated mediation model.This research tested the hypothesis through three experiments.Study1 and study2 tested the relationship between negative feedback and abusive supervision perception by laboratory experiments.Study3 test the mediation role of subordinates' anger and serenity,as well as the moderate role of mindfulness in the direct and indirect relationship between negative feedback and abusive supervision perception through laboratory experiment.All of the hypothesis were supported by data.Overall,by exploring whether,why and when supervisors' negative feedback was perceived as abusive supervision by subordinates,the current research strived to advance the literature in organizational behavior in four important ways.First,by exploring the relationship between supervisors' negative feedback and subordinates' abusive supervision perception,we had deeper understanding of the subjective nature of abusive supervision.Second,by examining the psychology factor which influenced abusive supervision perception,the role affect played in individuals' social judgment was disclosed.Third,by introducing affective events theory(Weiss & Cropanzano,1996)into the field of paranoid abusive supervision for the first time to examine its antecedents,the theory database of paranoid abusive supervision was enriched and new perspective wais provided..Forth,by recognizing the need to examine the moderator of antecedents of paranoid abusive supervision through the exploration of the role of subordinates' mindfulness,the unexplained variance of the determinants of paranoid abusive supervision was decreased.In addition,this study provided the management practice with some guidance.First,it informed leaders of the drawback of negative feedback,that was,negative feedback could trigger subordinates' negative affect and impair their positive affect,as a result,subordinates who had high negative affect and low positive affect could perceive more abusive supervision.This reminded leaders to use negative feedback cautiously,and if it was unavoidably,they need to use proper tactics to decrease the possibility of trigger subordinates' negative feedback.Second,this study brought some useful tactics to organization to decrease the potential harmful effect of negative feedback.That was,training the subordinates to be mindful to increase their acceptance of negative feedback and decrease their defensive reaction,thus,decreased the potential harm caused by abusive supervision.