|
Abstract
|
The parallel system of position and rank enlarges the separation of power and status within the organization. In particular, a large number of green hand were promoted to leadership positions, and the disadvantages brought by the separation of power and status became prominent. The high position (power) but lack of corresponding prestige (status), which largely limits the leader's voice and control in the work, also endangers the leader's sense of control and self-worth. Therefore, exploring the abusive supervision and its intervention mechanism has profound theoretical and practical value when matching the leaders' status with their power is difficult. To address this gap, the current study aims to explore the mediating effect of leaders' ego-depletion as well as the moderating effect of leaders' mindfulness and trust from senior managers.
This study aims to explore the reasons why low-status leaders adopt abusive supervision and how to prevent this negative leadership style. Based on the three attributes of low-status compensation theory, this paper constructs a two-stage moderated mediation model and designs two studies. In Study 1, a total of 373 valid participants were collected from 58 departments, and polynomial regression and response surface methodology were used to examine the effect of leaders' power and status mismatch (power is lower than status, power is higher than status) on abusive supervision. Study 2 aims to further explore the mechanism and interventions that lead to abusive supervision when leaders have more power than their status. In Study 2, 61 samples were collected by the department as a unit. Regression analysis, Bootstrap method, and Johnson-Neyman (J-N) technology were used to examine the moderated mediation effects of two-stage moderated mediation model.
The analyses of the two studies showed that (1) leaders with inconsistent hierarchies are more inclined to implement abusive supervision than those with consistent hierarchies, (2) ego-depletion is deemed a significant operation mechanism for supervisors to realize the transformation of abusive supervision in the context of the inferiority of their status to their power, and (3) the combination of supervisors' mindfulness and trust from senior managers can jointly effectively moderate the effect caused by status which is inferior to their power on abusive supervision through ego-depletion, indicating that they are crucial mechanisms for preventing hierarchical inconsistency leading to compensatory abusive supervision.
The research has the following theoretical contributions. First of all, this paper deepened the research on the pre-causes of abusive supervision, indicating that the latter is not only a manifestation of leaders' abuse of power but may also be caused by the lack of status. Second, this paper reveals the mechanism and intervention mechanism of abusive supervision by low-status leaders. Third, this paper extends the low-status compensation theory from social fields (e.g., school shooting, terrorism, murder, and other "hot" violent behaviors) to the workplace. This study also provides management implications for preventing the conflict caused by the separation of power and status.
Language: en |