What Do Abusive Supervisors Deserve?

In recent years,abusive supervision,as a typical destructive leadership behavior,has received much attention.A large number of scholars have explored the mechanisms of abusive supervision for employees.But few scholars have studied the subject of "what do abusive supervisors deserve”.Social impact theory suggests that employees' response to abusive supervision will in turn influence leaders.However,how does abusive supervision influence leaders? In the face of increasingly complex and changeful external environment,leaders need to be more creative and better adapt to the change of the environment,so this paper will explore how abusive supervision impact leaders' creativity and adaptive performance as well as the boundary condition that abusive supervision affect leaders.According to social impact theory,this paper argued that abusive supervision could influence leaders' creativity and adaptive performance through group facades of conformity.Social impact theory suggests people will influence each other by various means,the behavior of high-position leaders has great influence on the behavior of low-position employees.Based on this,this paper established the relationship between abusive supervision and group facades of conformity.At the same time,social impact theory also suggests that because employees are physically close to their leaders and have a large number,they will have great influence on their leaders.Specifically,when group employees obeys facades of conformity,leader as the recipient of information,on the one hand,they will get less heterogeneous information,and heterogeneous information is a important factor influencing the creative activities,on the other hand,leaders will obtain less information related to the change,which will lead to leaders failing to understand and respond to changes in time,eventually falling to achieve adaptive performance.Therefore,based on this,this paper established the relationship between facades of conformity and leaders' creativity and adaptive performance.Because social impact theory emphasizes that people interact with each other,employees' response to abusive supervision will in turn influence leaders.this paper established the mediating role of group facades of conformity between abusive supervision and leaders' creativity and adaptive performance.Finally,to more comprehensively understand the boundary mechanism of abusive supervision,this paper will also explore the moderating role of group power distance.Based on the analysis of the data of two-wave data from subordinates of 55 groups.The results showed that(1)there was a significant positive relationship between abusive supervision and group facades of conformity.(2)there was a significant negative relationship between group facades of conformity and leader's creativity.(3)there was a significant negative relationship between group facades of conformity and leader's adaptive performance.(4)group facades of conformity played a mediating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and leader's creativity and(5)the relationship between abusive supervision and leader's adaptive performance.(6)group power distance moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and group facades of conformity.(7)group power distance moderated the indirect effect of abusive supervision on leader's creativity via group facades of conformity.(8)group power distance moderated the indirect effect of abusive supervision on leader's adaptive performance via group facades of conformity.Overall,the current research strived to advance the present literature in three important ways.(1)The contribution to the research of abusive supervision.Firstly,our study extended the leader-oriented dependent variable of abusive supervision by exploring the mediation mechanism mechanism of abusive supervision.Secondly,our paper extended the coping-oriented dependent variable of abusive supervision by exploring the relationship between abusive supervision and group facades of conformity.Thirdly,our paper showed that power distance could strengthen the negative impact of abusive supervison.this conclusion deepened the understanding of the moderating role of group power distance in abusive supervision field.(2)The contribution to the research of facades of conformity.This paper confirmed that facades of conformity could have a negative effect on leaders.this conclusion extended the dependent variables of facades of conformity and deepened the understanding of facades of conformity.Moreove,the theory database of facades of conformity was enriched and new perspective wais provided by introducing social impact theory into the field of facades of conformity for the first time to examine its dependent variable.(3)The contribution to the research of leader's creativity and adaptive performance.This paper extended the independent variables of leader's creativity and leader's adaptive performance by exploring the relationship between group facades of conformity and leader's creativity,adaptive performance.In addition,this study provided the management practice with guidance.It informed abusive supervision had a negative impact on leader's creativity and adaptive performance via group facades of conformity.Which suggested that organization managers(1)could give the abusive supervisors some related trainings to let them know abusive supervision's negative impact on themselves,(2)could reduce the negative impact of abusive supervision on leaders by reducing the facades of conformity,such as letting employees perceive organizational support,(3)could integrate the occurrence of abusive supervision into leader's assessment and promotion system in order to reduce the negative impact of abusive management.