From boredom to banditry: how abusive supervision amplifies the negative affect-time banditry relationship

This study examines the mediating role of negative affect in the relationship between workplace boredom and time banditry, and tests whether abusive supervision moderates this mediation through a second-stage moderated mediation model.

We employed a three-wave time-lagged design with 611 full-time employees from health sector organizations in Ghana. We measured workplace boredom and abusive supervision at Time 1, negative affect at Time 2 (three weeks later) and time banditry at Time 3 (four weeks after Time 2). We tested the model using Hayes's PROCESS macro Model 14 with 5,000 bootstrap samples.

Results fully supported the hypothesized model. Workplace boredom predicted negative affect (b = 0.36, p < 0.001), which predicted time banditry (b = 0.21, p < 0.001). Abusive supervision significantly, though modestly, moderated the negative affect-time banditry relationship (b = 0.16, p = 0.038). Conditional indirect effects increased from 0.06 under low abusive supervision to 0.09 under high abusive supervision. The index of moderated mediation was significant (0.06, 95% CI [0.01, 0.13]), indicating that abusive supervision amplifies the translation of negative emotions into counterproductive behaviors. Because the interaction was small in magnitude and statistically borderline, this amplification effect should be interpreted with appropriate caution.

Organizations should implement integrated interventions addressing both job enrichment to reduce boredom and supervisor training to prevent abusive supervision. Dual interventions targeting both mechanisms simultaneously prove most effective.

This study identifies negative affect as the mechanism linking boredom to time banditry and demonstrates that abusive supervision creates synergistic toxicity through behavioral permission rather than affective amplification.