Consequences of Abusive Supervision

Drawing on justice theory, the author examined the consequences of abusive supervisor behavior. As expected, subordinates who perceived their supervisors were more abusive were more likely to quit their jobs. For subordinates who remained with their jobs, abusive supervision was associated with lower job and life satisfaction, lower normative and affective commitment, and higher continuance commitment, conflict between work and family, and psychological distress. Organizational justice mediated most of these effects, and job mobility moderated some of the deleterious effects of abusive supervision.