Flipping the coin on abusive supervision

Since the emergence and identification of the phenomenon of abusive supervision, most research has extensively relied upon one side of the coin (i.e., the employees’ perception) and subsequently linked this phenomenon to the supervisor’s actual behaviour. We ‘flip the coin’ to address this research gap by investigating employee characteristics as a factor related to the “perception of abusive supervision”. Analyses of data collected from four hundred and forty-three employees from the telecommunications industry in Pakistan revealed that employees’ intimidation was positively related to their perception of abusive supervision as mediated by their emotional exhaustion. In addition, recognition (i.e., top-management’s recognition of employees’ work attitude and behaviours) was found to moderate the indirect effects of intimidation on the perception of abusive supervision via emotional exhaustion. However, contrary to our prediction, the indirect relationship, intimidation – emotional exhaustion – perception of abusive supervision, was positively significant at a high rather than low levels of recognition. Our findings contribute to the abusive supervision literature by challenging the claim that supervisors are to blame for exhibiting abusive behaviour and identifying a new underlying factor related to employees’ perception of abusive supervision in the workplace that is employees’ intimidation. Further theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.