Abusive Supervision

Abusive supervision refers to sustained displays of nonphysical forms of hostility perpetrated by supervisors against their direct reports. Examples of behavior that fall within the abusive supervision content domain include public derogation, undermining, and explosive outbursts. Key features of the construct are that abusive supervision refers to ongoing manifestations of hostility rather than discrete episodes and that abusers may or may not intend to cause harm. Hence, for example, yelling at subordinates for the purpose of eliciting greater task performance could be considered abusive. Also, abusive supervision constitutes a subjective assessment, in the sense that behavior perceived to be abusive in one context may not be so perceived in another context, and two subordinates could render different interpretations of the same supervisor behavior. Similar concepts ...