Why Abusive Supervision Impacts Employee OCB and CWB: A Meta-Analytic Review of Competing Mediating Mechanisms

Authors

Yucheng Zhang, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics
Xin Liu, Southwestern University of Finance and EconomicsFollow
Shan Xu, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics
Liu-Qin Yang, Portland State UniversityFollow
Timothy C. Bednall, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics

Sponsor

This work was supported by the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 71602163 and 71872152), the Young Scientists Fund from the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Sciences Project in China (Grant 16YJC630171), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2018M640213).

Published In

Journal of Management

Document Type

Citation

Publication Date

7-1-2019

Abstract

Studies on abusive supervision have adopted justice and resource perspectives to explain its effects on employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). However, these studies have not provided a comprehensive account of why abusive supervision affects OCB and CWB and which of these two mediating mechanisms matters more. To address these questions, we conducted two studies using meta-analytic structural equation modeling. In the main study, we analyzed 427 primary studies that incorporated 973 independent correlations (N = 336,236). The results showed that both organizational justice (the justice lens) and work stress (the resource lens) mediated the influence of abusive supervision on OCB and CWB. Furthermore, organizational justice accounted for a greater proportion of abusive supervision’s effect on OCB than did work stress, whereas work stress accounted for a greater proportion of abusive supervision’s effect on CWB than did organizational justice. Finally, between-study moderation analyses showed that the effect of abusive supervision on CWB was stronger in masculine cultures than in feminine cultures. The supplementary study incorporated effect sizes from six existing meta-analyses (N = 151,381) and largely replicated the main study’s findings.

Description

Copyright © 2019 by Southern Management Association

Locate the Document

http://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318823935

DOI

10.1177/0149206318823935

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/29544

Citation Details

Zhang, Y., Liu, X., Xu, S., Yang, L.-Q., & Bednall, T. C. (2019). Why Abusive Supervision Impacts Employee OCB and CWB: A Meta-Analytic Review of Competing Mediating Mechanisms. Journal of Management, 45(6), 2474–2497.