Prescriptions for Abusive Supervision: Shifting the Research Focus from Symptoms to Solutions
By Dana L. Haggard and Kanu Priya
We suspect abusive bosses have existed since shortly after humans first organized themselves into working groups, and we imagine those early disputes might have involved violence. While violence is no longer a socially acceptable way to express dissatisfaction with either an employee or a boss, abusive bosses still exist. Employees continue to endure verbal lashings, social undermining, political sabotage, and emotional abuse resulting in mental and physical health struggles, some as extreme as PTSD and suicidal ideation.
Although the bad behavior of bosses dates back to the origins of work, business academics’ interest in abusive supervision really began in earnest about 20 years ago. As a result, we now know a lot about the causes and consequences of abusive supervision. Unfortunately, this zeal for testing bad behavior and its consequences seems to have eclipsed completely the urgency to find and test solutions. What use is diagnosing a disease if we cannot then find ways to effectively treat it? We conclude that the field needs a paradigm shift to give hope to victims, organizations, and researchers.
Our search of the literature led us to four suggestions to improve the level of knowledge regarding the discovery and confirmation of solutions for abusive supervision. We reason that researchers should:
Revisit their work (or the work of others) to find the logically deduced but not actually tested practical recommendations made in academic publications and subject those recommendations to verification for efficacy and feasibility.
Think about the practical implications of the theory while building models instead of leaving them as an afterthought.
Consider alternative problem-solving perspectives.
Increase the variety of research methods/methodologies used to investigate abusive supervision.
The first suggestion is fairly straightforward. Most abusive supervision-related publications contain recommendations; however, they are vague or only implied. We should go back to what we already know and see if we can take that knowledge further by testing those recommendations in experiments or field studies.
Our second recommendation is simply a reminder to researchers that they should consider the practical implications of their models as they are constructing them. Sometimes we get a bit carried away in weaving a great theoretical story and fall short in connecting that theory to hard reality.
Thirdly, we encourage management researchers to reach out to our colleagues in clinical and family psychology as well as sociology. Each of these fields has different perspectives on solving interpersonal problems and dealing with problematic social systems. These alternative perspectives could provide insights into the development of innovative, testable, and effective solutions.
Our fourth recommendation, to expand methods and methodologies, goes beyond merely recommending more experimental research. Yes, experimental research is vital in evaluating the effectiveness of some “treatments.” However, we think that the time has come to encourage and support qualitative research. The richness of data that qualitative research provides has been sorely lacking in abusive supervision. The overwhelming majority of research involves Likert-based survey questions which limit the nature and depth of information that can be collected. Open-ended interviews, detailed case studies, and embedded ethnographic studies offer incredible opportunities to let the victims, abusers, witnesses, and organizational representatives speak for themselves without being influenced by the expectations of the researcher. An added bonus of qualitative research is that it does not require hundreds of participants to yield valuable information.
All too frequently, researchers in the field of abusive supervision have been staying in the safety of descriptive, survey-based research. We call the field to boldly venture forth and devise innovative and practical research that doesn’t shy away from using labs and field experiments or clinical settings. We need to find and test solutions that can help victims of abusive supervision as well as help organizations that want to inoculate their corporate culture against the blight of bad bosses.
Article Details
Does Our Employee Assistance Program Cover Voodoo Dolls? A Cry for Help on Behalf of Those Affected by Abusive Supervision
Dana L. Haggard and Kanu Priya
First Published Online September 28, 2022
DOI: 10.1177/10596011221130570
Group & Organization Management
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