Abused but not bruised : newcomer reactions to abusive supervision

Abstract

Despite the substantial research on abusive supervision, the extant literature lacks an in-depth understanding of how newcomers react to abusive supervision. To fill the research gap, the thesis examines the effects of abusive supervision on newcomers whose organizational tenure is less than one year. By integrating abusive supervision research and self-determination theory (SDT), I develop a need-based model to outline how abusive supervision affects newcomer experiences during organizational entry. In particular, building on past research findings that abusive supervision makes employees feel lonely, incompetent, and controlled, I posit that supervisory abuse thwarts newcomers' need for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Furthermore, drawing on SDT's needs-as-motives perspective, I hypothesize that the thwarted relatedness, competence, and autonomy motivate newcomers to engage in activities that would specifically ameliorate the deficient need(s). To test the hypotheses, I collected six waves of data from a sample of 62 newcomers and conducted within-person analysis. The within-person analysis results revealed that abusive supervision thwarted newcomers' need for relatedness and competence, but did not thwart newcomers' need for autonomy. In addition, I found that relatedness deficiency did not influence newcomers, competence deficiency motivated newcomers to restore competence, and autonomy deficiency demotivated newcomers to regain the sense of autonomy. The theoretical and practical implications for abusive supervision and SDT are discussed.