Abusive Supervision and Employee Emotional Exhaustion: Dispositional Antecedents and Boundaries

Abstract

The authors examined the relationship between subordinates` core self-evaluations and supervisors` abusive supervision. Furthermore, they examined whether subordinates` perceived coworker support and subordinates` susceptibility to emotional contagion moderated the relationship between supervisors` abusive supervision and subordinates` emotional exhaustion. They analyzed data from 290 subordinates who had immediate supervisors using hierarchal multiple regression. Results show that core self-evaluations were negatively related to abusive supervision, whereas abusive supervision was positively related to emotional exhaustion. Both perceived coworker support and susceptibility to emotional contagion moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion. It is surprising that the moderating effect of perceived coworker support showed an unexpected pattern such that a stronger relationship between abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion existed when coworker social support was high. The authors conclude with a discussion of these findings.