Abstract

Understanding the behavior of employees in working life and the search for building a more peaceful workplace has been the subject of many research and practices for many years. Although the importance of building an environment of peace in working life is known, many undesirable behaviors occur in organizations. Some of these behaviors that negatively affect the organizational climate are caused by the supervisor’s behaviors towards the employees. One of them is abusive supervision. It is necessary to carefully analyze the causes and consequences of abusive supervision, which refers to the set of behaviors such as the systematic abuse of the supervisors, the contempt of the employees, and their belittlement. Although many studies have been carried out to understand the causes and consequences of abusive supervision, it has not been sufficiently examined whether the consequences of the perception of abusive supervision differ according to the individual differences of the employees. Since abusive supervision is closely related to subordinates’ perceptions, it is assumed that the individual differences of subordinates would play a role in perceiving abusive supervision and its consequences on subordinates’ work-related attitudes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of general self-efficacy on the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates’ perceived individual performance. The quantitative research involved the employees working in Istanbul. Scales with previously tested psychometric properties were used to measure abusive supervision, individual performance, and general self-efficacy structures. A total of 304 employees participated in the study. The obtained data were analyzed by referring to the relevant quantitative analyzes (descriptive statistics, reliability, factor, correlation, and moderating analyses). According to the research findings, abusive supervision was negatively correlated with subordinates’ perceived individual performance. Subordinates’ levels of general self-efficacy did not have a significant moderating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ perceived individual performance. The findings obtained within the scope of the research are discussed in the discussion section, and possible research suggestions that could be carried out in future studies are included in this direction.

Keywords: abusive supervision, general-self efficacy, perceived employee performance, undesirable behaviours in organizations.

JEL Classification: M12, F50, J10.

Cite as: Ozsoy, T. (2021). Innovative approach on abusive supervision and subordinate’ performance. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 4, 210-217. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2021.4-16

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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