Antecedents and Outcomes of Abusive Supervision: An Approach-Inhibition Theory of Power Perspective

With serious negative consequences of abusive supervision, the need to identify factors leading to abusive supervision is critical. Drawing upon the approach-inhibition theory of power, we propose that supervisors’ coercive power leads to abusive supervision and employees may passively react to abusive supervision with silence. Furthermore, we argue that organizational contexts, perceived organizational politics (POPs), will moderate the above relationships. Using time-lagged data collected from 187 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found that supervisors’ coercive power was positively related to abusive supervision and supervisors’ POPs enhanced this positive relationship. Furthermore, subordinates’ POPs moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and silence, such that abusive supervision was not related to silence in high POPs subordinates whereas a negative relationship was observed for subordinates with low POPs. The theoretical and practical implications of this study were discussed.