When commuting becomes a pain: a daily diary study of the effect of commuting stressors on abusive supervision

Purpose Studies of the antecedents of daily abusive supervision have mainly focused on work stressors and family stressors, ignoring the potential importance of commuting stressors that are encountered enroute to work. Based in affective events theory, the authors propose a daily, within-person model to examine how the commuting stressors faced by supervisors affect their propensity to engage in abusive supervision behavior and the mechanisms underlying this effect. Design/methodology/approach Using experience-sampling methodology, the authors collected data from 49 supervisors in China who responded to two daily surveys for 10 working days. Findings The authors found that daily morning commuting anger mediates the link between daily morning commuting stressors and subsequent abusive supervision. The authors also found that trait-displaced aggression moderates this relationship, such that the mediating effect occurs only when supervisors' trait-displaced aggression is high rather than low. Originality/value This study enriches the antecedents of daily abusive supervision and extends the commuting literature to the leadership context.