IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v153y2018i3d10.1007_s10551-016-3384-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Abusive Supervision, Psychological Distress, and Silence: The Effects of Gender Dissimilarity Between Supervisors and Subordinates

Author

Listed:
  • Joon Hyung Park

    (Nottingham University Business School China)

  • Min Z. Carter

    (Southern Illinois University)

  • Richard S. DeFrank

    (University of Houston)

  • Qianwen Deng

    (Bank of China Ningbo Branch)

Abstract

Previous research has shed light on the detrimental effects of abusive supervision. To extend this area of research, we draw upon conservation of resources theory to propose (a) a causal relationship between abusive supervision and psychological distress, (b) a mediating role of psychological distress on the relationship between abusive supervision and employee silence, and (c) a moderating effect of the supervisor–subordinate relational context (i.e., gender dissimilarity) on the mediating effect of abusive supervision on silence. Through an experimental study (Study 1), we found the causal path linking abusive supervision and psychological distress. Results of both the experimental study and a field study (Study 2) provided evidence that psychological distress mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and silence. Lastly, we found support that this mediation effect was contingent upon the relational context in Study 2 but not in Study 1. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Joon Hyung Park & Min Z. Carter & Richard S. DeFrank & Qianwen Deng, 2018. "Abusive Supervision, Psychological Distress, and Silence: The Effects of Gender Dissimilarity Between Supervisors and Subordinates," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 775-792, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:153:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-016-3384-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3384-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-016-3384-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-016-3384-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frances J. Milliken & Elizabeth W. Morrison & Patricia F. Hewlin, 2003. "An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don’t Communicate Upward and Why," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1453-1476, September.
    2. Thau, Stefan & Bennett, Rebecca J. & Mitchell, Marie S. & Marrs, Mary Beth, 2009. "How management style moderates the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace deviance: An uncertainty management theory perspective," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 79-92, January.
    3. Afridi, Farzana & Li, Sherry Xin & Ren, Yufei, 2015. "Social identity and inequality: The impact of China's hukou system," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 17-29.
    4. Michael Palanski & James Avey & Napatsorn Jiraporn, 2014. "The Effects of Ethical Leadership and Abusive Supervision on Job Search Behaviors in the Turnover Process," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 135-146, April.
    5. Reich, Tara C. & Hershcovis, M. Sandy, 2015. "Observing workplace incivility," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 57943, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ruiz‐Palomino, Pablo & Martínez‐Cañas, Ricardo & Bañón‐Gomis, Alexis, 2021. "Is unethical leadership a negative for Employees' personal growth and intention to stay? The buffering role of responsibility climate," MPRA Paper 119579, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Peikai Li & Kui Yin & Jian Shi & Tom G. E. Damen & Toon W. Taris, 2024. "Are Bad Leaders Indeed Bad for Employees? A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies Between Destructive Leadership and Employee Outcomes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 191(2), pages 399-413, May.
    3. Dirk De Clercq & Tasneem Fatima & Sadia Jahanzeb, 2021. "Ingratiating with Despotic Leaders to Gain Status: The Role of Power Distance Orientation and Self-enhancement Motive," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 157-174, June.
    4. Nasib Dar & Muhammad Usman & Jin Cheng & Usman Ghani, 2023. "Social Undermining at the Workplace: How Religious Faith Encourages Employees Who are Aware of Their Social Undermining Behaviors to Express More Guilt and Perform Better," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(2), pages 371-383, October.
    5. Ying-Ni Cheng & Changya Hu & Sheng Wang & Jui-Chieh Huang, 2024. "Political context matters: a joint effect of coercive power and perceived organizational politics on abusive supervision and silence," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 81-106, March.
    6. Jun Huang & Gengxuan Guo & Dingping Tang & Tianyuan Liu & Liang Tan, 2019. "An Eye for an Eye? Third Parties’ Silence Reactions to Peer Abusive Supervision: The Mediating Role of Workplace Anxiety, and the Moderating Role of Core Self-Evaluation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(24), pages 1-18, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yucheng Zhang & Timothy C. Bednall, 2016. "Antecedents of Abusive Supervision: a Meta-analytic Review," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 455-471, December.
    2. Orlando C. Richard & O. Dorian Boncoeur & Hao Chen & David L. Ford, 2020. "Supervisor Abuse Effects on Subordinate Turnover Intentions and Subsequent Interpersonal Aggression: The Role of Power-Distance Orientation and Perceived Human Resource Support Climate," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 549-563, July.
    3. James R. Detert & Linda K. Treviño, 2010. "Speaking Up to Higher-Ups: How Supervisors and Skip-Level Leaders Influence Employee Voice," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 249-270, February.
    4. Takuma Kimura & Mizuki Nishikawa, 2018. "Ethical Leadership and Its Cultural and Institutional Context: An Empirical Study in Japan," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 707-724, September.
    5. Florian M. Artinger & Sabrina Artinger & Gerd Gigerenzer, 2019. "C. Y. A.: frequency and causes of defensive decisions in public administration," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(1), pages 9-25, April.
    6. Christopher S. Tuggle & David G. Sirmon & Cameron J. Borgholthaus & Leonard Bierman & A. Erin Bass, 2022. "From Seats at the Table to Voices in the Discussion: Antecedents of Underrepresented Director Participation in Board Meetings," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1253-1283, July.
    7. Xin Qin & Xin Liu & Jacob A. Brown & Xiaoming Zheng & Bradley P. Owens, 2021. "Humility Harmonized? Exploring Whether and How Leader and Employee Humility (In)Congruence Influences Employee Citizenship and Deviance Behaviors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 147-165, April.
    8. Xue Tong Dong & Yang Woon Chung & Jeong Kwon Yun, 2023. "The Mediating Effects of Anxiety and Happiness and the Moderating Effect of Social Network Services for Employee Silence and Psychological Withdrawal Behavior," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, November.
    9. Emilie Hennequin, 2023. "Whistleblowing as a Career Crisis: Recovering from Retaliatory Job Loss through a Process of Bifurcation," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(2), pages 545-562, April.
    10. Guangliang Yang & Lixing Li & Shihe Fu, 2020. "Do rural migrants benefit from labor market agglomeration economies? Evidence from Chinese cities," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 910-931, September.
    11. Ryan W. Quinn & Monica C. Worline, 2008. "Enabling Courageous Collective Action: Conversations from United Airlines Flight 93," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 497-516, August.
    12. Isabel Carmona-Cobo & Eva Garrosa & Esther Lopez-Zafra, 2021. "Workers’ Observation of Uncivil Leadership: Is Tolerance for Workplace Incivility a Gendered Issue?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-14, May.
    13. Gang Wang & Peter Harms & Jeremy Mackey, 2015. "Does it take two to Tangle? Subordinates’ Perceptions of and Reactions to Abusive Supervision," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(2), pages 487-503, October.
    14. Ki-Seoung Lee & Yoon-Seo Kim & Hyoung-Chul Shin, 2023. "Effect of Hotel Employees’ Organizational Politics Perception on Organizational Silence, Organizational Cynicism, and Innovation Resistance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-12, March.
    15. Fuhai Hong & Yohanes E. Riyanto & Ruike Zhang, 2022. "Multidimensional social identity and redistributive preferences: an experimental study," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(1), pages 151-184, July.
    16. Shen, Huayu & Xiong, Hao & Zheng, Shaofeng & Hou, Fei, 2021. "Chief executive officer (CEO)’s rural origin and internal control quality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 441-452.
    17. Chin-Yi Shu & Nguyen Thi Nhu Quynh, 2015. "Guan-Xi, Loyalty, Contribution And ‘Speak-Up Behavior: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) as Mediator and Political Skill as Moderator," Eurasian Journal of Business and Management, Eurasian Publications, vol. 3(2), pages 54-73.
    18. Kaizhi Yu & Yun Zhang & Hong Zou & Chenchen Wang, 2019. "Absolute Income, Income Inequality and the Subjective Well-Being of Migrant Workers in China: Toward an Understanding of the Relationship and Its Psychological Mechanisms," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-27, July.
    19. Alia Aghajanian & Patricia Justino & Jean-Pierre Tranchant, 2020. "Riots and social capital in urban India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-42, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Dong, Xiao-Ying & Hao, Yu, 2018. "Would income inequality affect electricity consumption? Evidence from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 215-227.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:153:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-016-3384-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.