Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:54:23.696Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making Sense of “Good” and “Bad”: A Deonance and Fairness Approach to Abusive Supervision and Prosocial Impact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2020

Michael A. Johnson Open the ORCID record for Michael A. Johnson [Opens in a new window] ,
Manuela Priesemuth  and
Bailey Bigelow
Michael A. Johnson
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Manuela Priesemuth
Affiliation:
Villanova University
Bailey Bigelow
Affiliation:
University of Central Florida
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article challenges the unidimensional view of abusive supervisors and examines how employees respond to abuse when the transgressing boss also has a positive impact on others. Drawing on deonance and fairness theory, we propose competing hypotheses about the influence of prosocial impact. Specifically, we use deonance theory to suggest that prosocial impact might buffer the effects of abusive supervision. Alternatively, we incorporate fairness theory to predict that prosocial impact strengthens injustice perceptions and thereby worsens consequences of abuse. Two field studies show support for fairness theory, demonstrating that employees perceive greater injustice, and show stronger retaliatory behaviors, when the abusive supervisor makes a positive difference in the workplace. A final field study replicates these results, while also testing the underlying cognitive process employees use to assess the interplay between “good” and “bad” supervisory characteristics. This article contributes insights to abusive supervision, prosocial impact, organizational justice, and behavioral ethics literatures.

Keywords

abusive supervisionprosocial impactdeonance theoryfairness theoryorganizational justiceemployee deviance
Type
Article
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 386 - 420
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aguinis, H., Edwards, J. R., & Bradley, K. J. 2016. Improving our understanding of moderation and mediation in strategic management research. Organizational Research Methods, 20: 1–21.Google Scholar
Ambrose, M. L., & Schminke, M. 2009. The role of overall justice judgments in organizational justice research: A test of mediation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94: 491–500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bamberger, P. A., & Bacharach, S. B. 2006. Abusive supervision and subordinate problem drinking: Taking resistance, stress and subordinate personality into account. Human Relations, 59: 723–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, T. E. 2005. Potential problems in the statistical control of variables in organizational research: A qualitative analysis with recommendations. Organizational Research Methods, 8: 274–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellé, N. 2014. Leading to make a difference: A field experiment on the performance effects of transformational leadership, perceived social impact, and public service motivation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24: 109–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berinsky, A. J., Huber, G. A., & Lenz, G. S. 2012. Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon. com’s Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis, 20: 351–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobocel, D. R. 2013. Coping with unfair events constructively or destructively: The effects of overall justice and self–other orientation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98: 720–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, M. E., & Mitchell, M. S. 2010. Ethical and unethical leadership: Exploring new avenues for future research. Business Ethics Quarterly, 20: 583–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. 2011. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6: 3–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, M. E., Gironda, R. J., & Young, R. W. 2003. Detection of back random responding: Effectiveness of MMPI–2 and personality assessment inventory validity indices. Psychological Assessment, 15: 223–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, W. 1860. The woman in white. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Colquitt, J. A. 2001. On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86: 386–400.10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.386CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colquitt, J. A., & Rodell, J. B. 2015. Measuring justice and fairness. In Cropanzano, R. & Ambrose, M. A. (Eds.), Oxford handbook of justice in the workplace: 187–202. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Colquitt, J., Scott, B., Rodell, J., Long, D., Zapata, C., Conlon, D., & Wesson, M. 2013. Justice at the millennium, a decade later: A meta-analytic test of social exchange and affect-based perspectives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98: 199–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalal, D. K., & Hakel, M. D. 2016. Experimental comparisons of methods for reducing deliberate distortions to self-report measures of sensitive constructs. Organizational Research Methods, 19: 475–505.10.1177/1094428116639131CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dang, C. T., Umphress, E. E., & Mitchell, M. S. 2017. Leader social accounts of subordinates’ unethical behavior: Examining observer reactions to leader social accounts with moral disengagement language. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102: 1448–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawson, J. F. 2014. Moderation in management research: What, why, when, and how. Journal of Business and Psychology, 29: 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Cremer, D., & Schouten, B. C. (2008). When apologies for injustice matter: The role of respect. European Psychologist, 13: 239–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dineen, B. R., Lewicki, R. J., & Tomlinson, E. C. 2006. Supervisory guidance and behavioral integrity: Relationships with employee citizenship and deviant behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91: 622–35.10.1037/0021-9010.91.3.622CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duffy, M. K., Ganster, D. C., Shaw, J. D., Johnson, J. L., & Pagon, M. 2006. The social context of undermining behavior at work. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 101: 105–26.10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.04.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Effron, D. A., O’Connor, K., Leroy, H., & Lucas, B. J. 2018. From inconsistency to hypocrisy: When does “saying one thing but doing another” invite condemnation? Research in Organizational Behavior, 38: 61–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferris, G., Hochwarter, W., & Buckley, M. 2012. Theory in the organizational sciences: How will we know it when we see it? Organizational Psychology Review, 2: 94–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folger, R. 2001. Fairness as deonance. In Gilliland, S., Steiner, D., & Skarlicki, D. (Eds.), Theoretical and cultural perspectives on organizational justice: 3–33. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.Google Scholar
Folger, R. 2014. Fairness theory. In Kessler, E. H. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of management theory: 281–83. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.Google Scholar
Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. 2001. Fairness theory: Justice as accountability. In Greenberg, J. (Ed.), Advances in organizational justice: 1–55. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Folger, R., Ganegoda, D. B., Rice, D. B., Taylor, R., & Wo, D. X. 2013. Bounded autonomy and behavioral ethics: Deonance and reactance as competing motives. Human Relations, 66: 905–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folger, R., & Glerum, D. R. 2015. Justice and deonance: “You ought to be fair.” In Cropanzano, R. & Ambrose, M. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organizational justice: 331–50. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Folger, R., & Skarlicki, D. P. 1998. A popcorn metaphor for workplace violence. Dysfunctional Behavior in Organizations, 1: 43–81.Google Scholar
Folger, R., & Stein, C. 2017. Deonance: Expanding the concept. In Cropanzano, R. & Moliner, C. (Eds.), Organizational justice: Conceptual advances: 29–50. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. 1981. Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18: 39–50.10.1177/002224378101800104CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodstein, J., & Butterfield, K. D. (2010). Extending the horizon of business ethics: Restorative justice and the aftermath of unethical behavior. Business Ethics Quarterly, 20: 453–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, A. M. 2007. Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial difference. Academy of Management Review, 32: 393–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, A. M. 2008. The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93: 108–24.10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.108CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenbaum, R., Mawritz, M., Mayer, D., & Priesemuth, M. 2013. To act out, to withdraw, or to constructively resist? Employee reactions to supervisor abuse of customers and the moderating role of employee moral identity. Human Relations, 66: 925–50.10.1177/0018726713482992CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenbaum, R. L., Mawritz, M. B., & Piccolo, R. F. 2015. When leaders fail to “walk the talk”: Supervisor undermining and perceptions of leader hypocrisy. Journal of Management, 41: 929–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, J. 1990. Organizational justice: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Journal of Management, 16: 399–432.10.1177/014920639001600208CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, J. 1993. The intellectual adolescence of organizational justice: You’ve come a long way, maybe. Social Justice Research, 6: 135–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, K. J., Kacmar, K. M., & Zivnuska, S. 2007. An investigation of abusive supervision as a predictor of performance and the meaning of work as a moderator of the relationship. The Leadership Quarterly, 18: 252–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, A. F. 2013. Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Hayes, A. F. 2015. An index and test of linear moderated mediation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 50: 1–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hershcovis, M. S. 2011. “Incivility, social undermining, bullying . . . oh my!”: A call to reconcile constructs within workplace aggression research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32: 499–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogan, R., & Hogan, J. 2001. Assessing leadership: A view from the dark side. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9: 40–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, J. L., & O’Leary-Kelly, A. M. 2003. The effects of psychological contract breach and organizational cynicism: Not all social exchange violations are created equal. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24: 627–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, R. L., Wolfe, D. M., Quinn, R. P., Snoek, J. D., & Rosenthal, R. A. 1964. Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity. Oxford: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Klein, A., & Moosbrugger, H. 2000. Maximum likelihood estimation of latent interaction effects with the LMS method. Psychometrika, 65: 457–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köhler, T., & Cortina, J. M. 2019. Play it again, Sam! An analysis of constructive replication in the organizational sciences. Journal of Management. DOI:10.1177/0149206319843985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, X., McAllister, D. J., Ilies, R., & Gloor, J. L. 2019. Schadenfreude: A counternormative observer response to workplace mistreatment. Academy of Management Review, 44: 360–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, S., Ma, J., & Johnson, R. E. 2016. When ethical leader behavior breaks bad: How ethical leader behavior can turn abusive via ego depletion and moral licensing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101: 815–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. 1988. The social psychology of procedural justice. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., & Fetter, R. 1993. The impact of organizational citizenship behavior on evaluations of salesperson performance. Journal of Marketing, 57: 70–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackey, J. D., Frieder, R. E., Brees, J. R., & Martinko, M. J. 2017. Abusive supervision: A meta-analysis and empirical review. Journal of Management, 42: 1940–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, K. D., & Cullen, J. B. 2006. Continuities and extensions of ethical climate theory: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Business Ethics, 69: 175–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mawritz, M., Dust, S., & Resick, C. 2014. Hostile climate, abusive supervision, and employee coping: Does conscientiousness matter? Journal of Applied Psychology, 99: 737–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mawritz, M. B., Greenbaum, R. L., Butts, M. M., & Graham, K. A. 2017. I just can’t control myself: A self-regulation perspective on the abuse of deviant employees. Academy of Management Journal, 60: 1482–1503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClelland, G. H., & Judd, C. M. 1993. Statistical difficulties of detecting interactions and moderator effects. Psychological Bulletin, 114: 376–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meade, A. W., & Craig, S. B. 2012. Identifying careless responses in survey data. Psychological Methods, 17: 437–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miner-Rubino, K., & Cortina, L. M. 2007. Beyond targets: Consequences of vicarious exposure to misogyny at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92: 1254–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mitchell, M. S., & Ambrose, M. L. 2007. Abusive supervision and workplace deviance and the moderating effects of negative reciprocity beliefs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92: 1159–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mitchell, M. S., & Ambrose, M. L. 2012. Employees’ behavioral reactions to supervisor aggression: An examination of individual and situational factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97: 1148–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mitchell, M. S., Vogel, R. M., & Folger, R. 2015. Third parties’ reactions to the abusive supervision of coworkers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100: 1040–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muthen, L. K., & Muthen, B. O. 2012. Mplus version 7 user’s guide. Los Angeles, CA: Muthen and Muthen.Google Scholar
Ng, T. W., & Feldman, D. C. 2009. How broadly does education contribute to job performance? Personnel Psychology, 62: 89–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oh, J. K., & Farh, C. I. 2017. An emotional process theory of how subordinates appraise, experience, and respond to abusive supervision over time. Academy of Management Review, 42: 207–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organ, D. W. 1988. Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/DC Heath and Com.Google Scholar
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. 2003. Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88: 879–903.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. 1990. Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers’ trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 1: 107–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. P. 2012. Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it. Annual Review of Psychology, 63: 539–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Porath, C. L., & Erez, A. 2009. Overlooked but not untouched: How rudeness reduces onlookers’ performance on routine and creative tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109: 29–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. 2008. Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40: 879–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Priesemuth, M., & Schminke, M. 2019. Helping thy neighbor? Prosocial reactions to observed abusive supervision in the workplace. Journal of Management, 45: 1225–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rotundo, M., & Sackett, P. R. 2002. The relative importance of task, citizenship, and counterproductive performance to global ratings of job performance: A policy-capturing approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87: 66–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schaumberg, R. L., & Flynn, F. J. 2017. Self-reliance: A gender perspective on its relationship to communality and leadership evaluations. Academy of Management Journal, 60: 1859–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siemsen, E., Roth, A., & Oliveira, P. 2010. Common method bias in regression models with linear, quadratic, and interaction effects. Organizational Research Methods, 13: 456–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simons, T. 2002. Behavioral integrity: The perceived alignment between managers’ words and deeds as a research focus. Organization Science, 13: 18–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skarlicki, D. P., & Folger, R. 1997. Retaliation in the workplace: The roles of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82: 434–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Specht, J., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. 2011. Stability and change of personality across the life course: The impact of age and major life events on mean-level and rank-order stability of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101: 862–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tepper, B. J. 2000. Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43: 178–90.Google Scholar
Tepper, B. J. 2007. Abusive supervision in work organizations: Review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Management, 33: 261–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tepper, B. J., Carr, J. C., Breaux, D. M., Geider, S., Hu, C., & Hua, W. 2009. Abusive supervision, intentions to quit, and employees’ workplace deviance: A power/dependence analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109: 156–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tepper, B. J., Henle, C. A., Lambert, L. S., Giacalone, R. A., & Duffy, M. K. 2008. Abusive supervision and subordinates’ organization deviance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93: 721–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tepper, B. J., Simon, L., & Park, H. M. 2017. Abusive supervision. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4: 123–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, D. L., & Diener, E. 1990. Memory accuracy in the recall of emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59: 291–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treviño, L. K., Weaver, G. R., & Reynolds, S. J. 2006. Behavioral ethics in organizations: A review. Journal of Management, 32: 951–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turillo, C. J., Folger, R., Lavelle, J. J., Umphress, E. E., & Gee, J. O. 2002. Is virtue its own reward? Self-sacrificial decisions for the sake of fairness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 89: 839–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Dyne, L., & LePine, J. A. 1998. Helping and voice extra-role behaviors: Evidence of construct and predictive validity. Academy of Management Journal, 41: 108–19.Google Scholar
Wang, L., Restubog, S., Shao, B., Lu, V., & Van Kleef, G. A. 2018. Does anger expression help or harm leader effectiveness? The role of competence-based versus integrity-based violations and abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 61: 1050–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wee, E. X., Liao, H., Liu, D., & Liu, J. 2017. Moving from abuse to reconciliation: A power-dependence perspective on when and how a follower can break the spiral of abuse. Academy of Management Journal, 60: 2352–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, A. R., Shanine, K. K., Leon, M. R., & Whitman, M. V. 2014. Student‐recruited samples in organizational research: A review, analysis, and guidelines for future research. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 87: 1–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, L. J., & Anderson, S. E. 1991. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment as predictors of organizational citizenship and in-role behaviors. Journal of Management, 17: 601–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zellars, K. L., Tepper, B. J., & Duffy, M. K. 2002. Abusive supervision and subordinates’ organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87: 1068–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed