In pursuit of power: The role of authoritarian leadership in the relationship between supervisors’ Machiavellianism and subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervisory behavior
Introduction
Over the last decade, a growing body of literature has shown that abusive supervision – referred to as the sustained display of non-physical hostility from supervisors against their subordinates (Tepper, 2000) – has a deleterious impact on both the attitudes (e.g., psychological distress, job dissatisfaction, work-family conflict) and behaviors (e.g., job performance, workplace deviance) of its victims (Tepper, 2000, Tepper, 2007). Despite evidence pertaining to its negative consequences, we know little about its antecedents (Tepper, 2007). Moreover, with few exceptions (e.g., Aryee et al., 2007, Hoobler and Brass, 2006), studies have predominantly adopted a displaced-aggression perspective, suggesting that abusive supervisory treatment reflects hostility directed against convenient targets when retaliation against the original source of frustration is not possible. Although these studies found support for this perspective, Tepper (2007) has cautioned against a sole focus on displaced aggression instead encouraging research that links personality traits with abusive supervisory behaviors, given the partly dispositional basis of leader attitudes and behaviors (Judge, Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009).
To address Tepper’s (2007) call for research on dispositional factors underlying abusive supervision dynamics, we draw on Motowidlo, Borman, and Schmit’s (1997) theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance and the General Aggression Model (GAM; Anderson & Bushman, 2002) to develop and test an integrative framework that models the impact of both supervisor (Machiavellianism; Mach) and subordinate (organization-based self-esteem; OBSE) dispositional characteristics on subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervision. Specifically, we posit that the relationship between supervisors’ Machiavellianism and abusive supervision is mediated by authoritarian leadership behavior and that the link between authoritarian leadership and abusive supervision is moderated by subordinates’ organization-based self-esteem. Notably, our work extends Tepper’s (2007) theoretical model that incorporates supervisor’s characteristics only as an antecedent to abusive supervision.
Section snippets
Theoretical framework
In order to model the processes through which Machiavellianism affects abusive supervision, we employ Motowildo and colleagues’ (1997) theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance. The theory posits that individual difference variables represent basic tendencies that are expressed through characteristic adaptations (in the form of attitudes, social skills, and schemas), which in turn influence task and contextual performance. In other words, characteristic adaptations
Sample and procedure
Five research assistants approached approximately 250 full-time employees from a wide-range of business sectors in and around the large metropolitan areas of Sydney and Brisbane in Australia. Participants who gave their consent to participate received a survey kit containing an employee survey, a supervisor survey, and reply-paid envelopes. Subordinate participants were requested to pass on the supervisor questionnaire to their immediate supervisor. Both subordinates and supervisors completed
Methods
Our second study extended Study 1 in several ways. First, we tested our propositions using data collected from employees in the Philippines, which is a collectivist society (Church, 1987), in order to ascertain whether our results generalize to a different context. Second, we used a longitudinal research design (3 month interval) in order to address some of the methodological limitations associated with cross-sectional research (cf. Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). Finally, we examined the role of
Theoretical implications
Our findings extend previous research regarding the antecedents of abusive supervision by drawing on a dispositional perspective to explain why certain supervisors are perceived as abusive. As such, our study represents a departure from the more common displaced-aggression perspective (e.g., Aryee et al., 2007). To this effect, our research fills an important gap in the abusive supervision literature that has largely overlooked the role of personality in the processes preceding the enactment of
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Chris Asuncion, Patrick Garcia, Franco Quodala, and Lemuel Toledano for their research assistance and Maria Kraimer and Scott Seibert for their valuable suggestions. This study was supported by an Australian Research Council Grant DP1094023 awarded to the second author.
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The first and second authors contributed equally in writing the manuscript.