Helpful or hurtful? A study on the behavior choice of bystanders in the context of abusive supervision
International Journal of Conflict Management
ISSN: 1044-4068
Article publication date: 28 March 2023
Issue publication date: 28 April 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander behavior based on the perspective of bystander from two different paths of bystander empathy and bystander hostility toward supervisor. At the same time, it discusses the moderation effect of bystander traditionality on the two paths.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey. The data were collected from 454 employees and their coworkers in several Chinese enterprises. The authors used Mplus 7.4 and adopted a bootstrapping technique in the data analysis.
Findings
Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to empathize with the abused colleague and thus exhibit more organizational citizenship behaviors, and peer abusive supervision also induces bystanders to develop hostility toward the abusive supervisor and thus produce more workplace negative gossip behaviors. In addition, it is found that bystander traditionality has a moderation effect in the process by which peer perceptions of abusive supervision influence bystander empathy and bystander hostility.
Originality/value
Based on Affective Events Theory, this study explores the mechanism of colleague perception of abusive supervision on bystander behavior from a bystander perspective. The results of this study not only provide a more comprehensive expansion of the weighting factors in the influence mechanism of abusive supervision but also provide new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behaviors.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Ethical statement: I certify that this manuscript is original and has not been published and will not be submitted elsewhere for publication while being considered by the IJCM. And the study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time. No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support conclusions. No data, text or theories by others are presented as if they were our own. The submission has been received explicitly from all co-authors.
Informed consent: All authors declare that we have no conflict of interest. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict of interest statement: We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled.
Citation
Wei, W., Chen, H., Feng, J. and Li, J. (2023), "Helpful or hurtful? A study on the behavior choice of bystanders in the context of abusive supervision", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 623-643. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-10-2022-0167
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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