Whose deviance provokes abuse? Role of social skills and self-evaluations in abusive supervision

Models of social exchange suggest that employees’ deviant behaviors can provoke abusive supervision. In the present research, we investigate employees’ individual characteristics that potentially mitigate or amplify the positive relationship between employee deviance and abusive supervision. We focus on employees’ social skills and self-evaluations. Drawing from social information processing theory and the interpersonal perspective of self- evaluations, we argue that employees with weak social skills and highly favorable self-evaluations are the most likely to be the target of abusive supervision following their deviant behavior. Furthermore, we argue that employees with strong social skills, regardless of their self-evaluations, are able to manage their relationships in ways that will mitigate retaliatory abusive supervision. We test our hypotheses across two field studies that incorporate multi-source data from employees and their managers. Our research contributes to the literature on employee deviance by suggesting that deviant employees can come in two forms: the oafish deviant, who is blind to the social repercussions of his or her actions and who provokes abusive supervision as a result; and the manipulator deviant, who can rely upon his or her social acumen to ward off retaliatory abusive supervision.