Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective

A new line of research has recently adopted a third-party perspective on examining how witnessing the abusive supervision of coworkers (coworker abusive supervision) influences a third-party employee’s reactions toward coworkers. However, this work tends to see the third party as an objective and in...

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Main Author: Feng, Zhiyu
Other Authors: Fong Keng Highberger
Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
Language:English
Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/137228
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1372282024-01-12T10:27:43Z Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective Feng, Zhiyu Fong Keng Highberger Nanyang Business School Krishna Savani fongkeng@ntu.edu.sg Business::Management::Organizational behavior A new line of research has recently adopted a third-party perspective on examining how witnessing the abusive supervision of coworkers (coworker abusive supervision) influences a third-party employee’s reactions toward coworkers. However, this work tends to see the third party as an objective and independent observer who is not involved in the perpetrator-victim abuse interaction. Given a third-party employee’s regular interactions with both the supervisor and coworkers in the workplace, it is of theoretical and practical importance to investigate how third-party employees are involved in the coworker abusive supervision encounter. In my first essay, integrating moral exclusion theory, social comparison theory, justice theory, and attribution theory, I propose a three-phase third party’s involvement model unraveling how a third-party employee can become involved as a non-independent bystander in the activation, appraisal, and response phases of coworker abusive supervision. My second and third essays build on the first essay by quantitatively testing parts of my proposed model. Specifically, in my second essay, I present and test a moderated sequential mediation model delineating how high performers (i.e., third-party employees) may indirectly impact coworker abusive supervision and when they are more likely to experience shame and ostracism from their coworkers for doing so. Analyses of multistage, multisource, and multilevel data consisting of 195 subordinates nested within 39 supervisors supported my model. A high performer’s relative task performance exerts a positive indirect effect on his/her feelings of shame through coworker abusive supervision. Further, group competition climate alleviates this indirect effect by weakening the positive relationship between coworker abusive supervision and high performer shame. Finally, high performer shame is positively related to perceptions of being ostracized by their coworkers. In my third essay, I test two competing explanations for a focal employee’s (i.e., a third-party employee’s) motivations to help coworkers who are abused: an altruistically motivated helping view versus an egoistically motivated helping view. According to the altruistically motivated helping view, employees who receive abusive supervision themselves would be better able to empathize with and affiliate with coworkers who are abused and, in turn, would be more inclined to help these abused coworkers in order to reduce their distress. By contrast, according to the egoistically motivated helping view, as employees’ preferential treatment compared to their abused coworkers results in their guilt and shame, employees who receive less abusive supervision themselves would more likely help coworkers who are abused to relieve their negative mood states. Two experiment studies provided support for the altruistically motivated helping view. Doctor of Philosophy 2020-03-09T08:46:46Z 2020-03-09T08:46:46Z 2020 Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy Feng, Z. (2020). Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective. Doctoral thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/137228 10.32657/10356/137228 en This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). application/pdf Nanyang Technological University
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Business::Management::Organizational behavior
spellingShingle Business::Management::Organizational behavior
Feng, Zhiyu
Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
description A new line of research has recently adopted a third-party perspective on examining how witnessing the abusive supervision of coworkers (coworker abusive supervision) influences a third-party employee’s reactions toward coworkers. However, this work tends to see the third party as an objective and independent observer who is not involved in the perpetrator-victim abuse interaction. Given a third-party employee’s regular interactions with both the supervisor and coworkers in the workplace, it is of theoretical and practical importance to investigate how third-party employees are involved in the coworker abusive supervision encounter. In my first essay, integrating moral exclusion theory, social comparison theory, justice theory, and attribution theory, I propose a three-phase third party’s involvement model unraveling how a third-party employee can become involved as a non-independent bystander in the activation, appraisal, and response phases of coworker abusive supervision. My second and third essays build on the first essay by quantitatively testing parts of my proposed model. Specifically, in my second essay, I present and test a moderated sequential mediation model delineating how high performers (i.e., third-party employees) may indirectly impact coworker abusive supervision and when they are more likely to experience shame and ostracism from their coworkers for doing so. Analyses of multistage, multisource, and multilevel data consisting of 195 subordinates nested within 39 supervisors supported my model. A high performer’s relative task performance exerts a positive indirect effect on his/her feelings of shame through coworker abusive supervision. Further, group competition climate alleviates this indirect effect by weakening the positive relationship between coworker abusive supervision and high performer shame. Finally, high performer shame is positively related to perceptions of being ostracized by their coworkers. In my third essay, I test two competing explanations for a focal employee’s (i.e., a third-party employee’s) motivations to help coworkers who are abused: an altruistically motivated helping view versus an egoistically motivated helping view. According to the altruistically motivated helping view, employees who receive abusive supervision themselves would be better able to empathize with and affiliate with coworkers who are abused and, in turn, would be more inclined to help these abused coworkers in order to reduce their distress. By contrast, according to the egoistically motivated helping view, as employees’ preferential treatment compared to their abused coworkers results in their guilt and shame, employees who receive less abusive supervision themselves would more likely help coworkers who are abused to relieve their negative mood states. Two experiment studies provided support for the altruistically motivated helping view.
author2 Fong Keng Highberger
author_facet Fong Keng Highberger
Feng, Zhiyu
format Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
author Feng, Zhiyu
author_sort Feng, Zhiyu
title Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
title_short Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
title_full Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
title_fullStr Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
title_full_unstemmed Three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
title_sort three essays on examining abusive supervision from the third party perspective
publisher Nanyang Technological University
publishDate 2020
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/137228
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