Goal Commitment Buffers the Negative Effects of Perceived Abusive Supervision

Area of Science:

• Organizational Behavior
• Psychology
• Management

Background:

• Abusive supervision can have complex effects on employee outcomes.
• Individual responses to perceived supervisor abuse vary significantly.
• Understanding these variations is crucial for organizational well-being.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and test a model explaining differential responses to abusive supervision.
• To investigate the mediating roles of motivation control and self-defeating cognition.
• To examine how goal commitment influences the relationship between abusive supervision and employee performance/deviance.

Main Methods:

• Utilized goal-setting theory as the theoretical framework.
• Employed a model incorporating perceived abusive supervision, goal commitment, motivation control, self-defeating cognition, job performance, and organizational deviance.
• Collected data from multiple sources across multiple time points (multisource, multiwave).

Main Results:

• The proposed model was empirically supported by the collected data.
• Motivation control and self-defeating cognition were found to mediate the effects of abusive supervision.
• High goal commitment was associated with weaker indirect negative effects of abusive supervision.

Conclusions:

• Goal commitment plays a significant role in buffering employees against the detrimental effects of abusive supervision.
• Interventions aimed at enhancing goal commitment may help mitigate negative outcomes associated with abusive supervision.
• Findings offer insights for human resource professionals to develop protective strategies against supervisor abuse.