Mediating role of employees’ intrinsic motivation and psychological safety in the relationship between abusive supervision and innovative behavior: An empirical test in IT sector of Pakistan

The employees’ innovative behavior is a novel domain that has remained a topic of interest for many decades. Many researchers have found that a particular leadership style boosts the innovative behavior of employees in various contexts. However, prior research on the association between the dark side of leadership known as abusive supervision and innovative behavior revealed conflicting results. IT sector requires highly innovative employees, but the major problem faced by this sector is escalating competition and high workload, which may lead supervisors towards abusive supervision. Many theoretical models have been developed and tested, but the association of abusive supervision with employees’ innovative behavior with intrinsic motivation and psychological safety as mediators has not been fully grasped in the IT sector of Pakistan. This study filled this gap and developed an explanatory model and tested the model by taking sample data from 98 respondents from IT organizations in Pakistan and applying PLS-based SEM for data analysis. The results revealed that abusive supervision is negatively associated with innovative behavior in this context. Moreover, abusive supervision is negatively associated with intrinsic motivation and psychological safety. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation and psychological safety are positively associated with innovative behavior. The results also demonstrated that the negative association of abusive supervision with innovative behavior is partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. However, psychological safety showed no mediating effect in this relationship. The results provide many theoretical and managerial implications.