Loyalty to Supervisor Mediated the Relationship Between

ORIENT ACADEMIC FORUM
Loyalty to Supervisor Mediated the Relationship Between
Abusive Supervision and Loyalty to Organization
GAO Riguang, WANG Biying
School of Business and Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics,
Nanchang, China
School of Business, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China
[email protected]
Abstract: This paper uses empirical research methods to explore the relationship among abusive
supervision, loyalty to supervisor, and loyalty to organization. The results showed that loyalty to
supervisor mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and loyalty to organization. The
results have very important implications for reducing the negative impact of abusive supervision, and
increasing employees’ loyalty.
Keywords: abusive supervision, loyalty to supervisor, loyalty to organization, mediation effect
1
Introduction
In recent years, destructive leadership behaviors have been paid more attentions by scholars and
practitioners. The researchers found that destructive leadership reduced the employees' affective
commitment to organization (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007; Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002; Tepper,
2000), increase staffs’ turnover intention (Burris, Detert, Chiaburu, 2008; Harvey, Stoner, Hochwarter,
Kacmar, 2007). Up to now, scholars explored the concept of destructive leadership mainly based on
subordinate perspective. For example, supervisors sustained attacks on subordinates by use of hostile
words and acts (Tepper, 2000); abusing subordinates arbitrarily (Ashforth, 1997); ignoring, spreading
rumors about, and attacking verbally at subordinates (Salin, 2003). In the literature, the highest frequency
reference of destructive behaviors is abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000; Tepper, 2007).
However, no scholars had explored the internal mechanism between abusive supervision and employees’
loyalty to organization and supervisor. In order to reveal the black box, this study used empirical research
methods to explore the unknown mechanism.
2
Connotation and Characteristic of Abusive Supervision
Tepper (2000) defined abusive supervision as “subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which
supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical
contact”. Based on this definition, abusive supervision mainly showed the following characteristics:
First, abusive supervision is subordinate subjective perception based on their observations to their
supervisors’ behaviors. Different subordinates could differ in their assessment of the same supervisor’s
behaviors, and the same subordinates could even have different perceptions in distinct context. Second,
abusive supervision behaviors must be shown continuously, not occasionally. As long as the
subordinate-supervisor relationship exists, abusive supervision behavior would always sustain until the
end of this relationship. Third, abusive supervision behaviors perceived by subordinates must be
unfriendly. Tepper pointed out that although the intention of abusive supervision is not necessary to
damage the subordinates deliberately, but the behaviors perceived by subordinates must be unfriendly, or
could not be called abusive supervision behaviors. Finally, abusive supervision behaviors are mainly
verbal or nonverbal behaviors, not including physical contact activities, such as cynicism and disdainful
eyes.
3
The Relationship Between Abusive Supervision and Employees’ Loyalty
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There was no systematic but scattered research to explore the relationship between abusive supervision
and employees’ loyalty. Employees’ loyalty is divided into two types: one is loyalty to supervisor, which
is also called private loyalty; the other is loyalty to organization, also called public loyalty. As the relation
between Western staff and supervisor is equal, employees’ loyalty is mainly reflected in the concepts of
commitments (organizational commitment, and supervisory commitment), intention to stay and job
dedication (organizational citizenship behavior), identification (organizational identification, and
supervisory identification), not the concept of loyalty.
(1)The relationship between abusive supervision and loyalty to supervisor
There was no study to directly explore the relationship between abusive supervision and staffs’ private
loyalty (loyalty to supervisor, supervisory commitment, supervisory identification). Correspondingly,
some studies explore the relationship between abusive supervision and supervisor-directed deviance.
Mitchell, & Ambrose (2007) found that abusive supervision was positively related to supervisor-directed
deviance (acting rudely toward supervisor, etc.), and the relationship between abusive supervision and
supervisor-directed deviance was stronger for individuals who hold higher negative reciprocity beliefs
(retaliation beliefs).The results of this study support the views of tit for tat and alternative assault, that is
"If you are heartless, I will be disloyal to you" and " If you are heartless, I will be disloyal to you in other
aspects." The results are very consistent with gratitude and revenge in Chinese culture. Therefore, we can
make the following inference: abusive supervision behavior would lead to supervisor-directed deviance,
which could reduce employees’ loyalty to their supervisors.
(2)The relationship between loyalty to supervisor and loyalty to organization
Loyalty is a unique concept in Chinese culture. In Western researches, loyalty mainly refers to affective
commitment, organizational identification, organizational citizenship behavior, intention to stay, and so
on. In which, affective commitment refers that employees have emotional attachment to their
organization and keep staying in the organizations (Buchanan, 1974). There are many factors which
influence intention to stay of employees in organizations. However, not all employees who stay in
organizations are for repaying their organizations. Therefore, this study did not consider intention to stay
as loyalty index, but selected affective commitment as one important variable of employees’ loyalty to
organization (Gao, & Sun, 2009).
Organizational citizenship behavior is defined as the initiative behavior which employees make for
helping their supervisor, colleagues, and organization without pay (Organ, 1988). However, this kind of
altruistic behaviors may include some elements of impression management, which are not real loyalty.
Therefore, it is difficult to differentiate organizational citizenship behavior from impression management.
Taking into account the current measurement tools which can not really measure the organizational
citizenship behaviors of employee produced due to real loyalty to organization, this study didn’t choose
organizational citizenship behavior as one of loyalty index.
Organizational identification is defined as individual self-perception that they are consistent with or
belong to their organization (Ashforth, & Mael, 1989). Empirical study found that the higher employee
organizational identification, the higher affective commitment, the lower turnover intention, and the
higher job satisfaction (Dukerich, etc., 2002; Dick, etc., 2004). In recent years, the concept of
organizational identification has been regarded as another key variable measuring the relationship
between employees and organizations. For this reason, organizational identification is as an important
variable of employees’ loyalty to organization in this research.
Cheng, & Jiang (2008) pointed out that West organizations emphasized the priority of organization itself,
and loyalty to subsidiary object is in a secondary position; while Chinese organizations emphasized the
priority of loyalty to the direct supervisors and the highest directors of their organization, and then loyalty
to organization. That is to say, Chinese organizational loyalty is not directly loyal to organizational goals,
but first loyal to supervisor and then accomplish overall organizational goals (Cheng, & Jiang, 2008).
As such, we suggest that abusive supervision can reduce employees’ loyalty to their supervisors, and
loyalty to supervisor can directly or indirectly affect their loyalty to organization. Therefore, we propose
the following hypotheses:
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：
H1 loyalty to supervisor acts as mediating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and
affective commitment, that is, abusive supervision indirectly affects affective commitment through
loyalty to supervisor.
H2 loyalty to supervisor acts as mediating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and
organizational identification, that is, abusive supervision indirectly affects organizational identification
through loyalty to supervisor.
：
4
Method
Sample and Procedure
In this study, 260 questionnaires were returned, the valid respondents was 219 after excluding invalid
questionnaires. With respect to the respondents, 64 were male (29.2%), 151were female (68.9%); 63 were
married (28.8%), 121 were unmarried (55.3%); 83 were less than 25 years old (37.9%), 101 were 26-30
years old (46.1%), 32 were over 31 years old (14.6%); 117 were graduated from junior college (53.4%),
95 were undergraduate (43.4%), 4 were graduate (1.8%); 42 were managers (19.2%), 172 were
non-managers (78.5%); 19 had 0-1 years’ Work Experiences (8.7%), 88 had 1-3 years’ Work
Experiences (40.2%), 56 had 3-5 years’ Work Experiences (25.6%), 33 had 5-10 years’ Work
Experiences (15.1%), 18 had more than 10 years’ Work Experiences (8.2%).
Measures
This study has three main measurement tools, including abusive supervision, loyalty to supervisor, and
loyalty to organization. Responses to all measures were scaled with five-point Likert scale from 1
(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Abusive supervision Tepper (2000) developed a 15-item abusive supervision questionnaire. Mitchell, &
Ambrose (2007) developed a shortened version based on Tepper’s (2000) abusive Supervision measure,
including five items. For example, “my supervisor tells me my thoughts and feelings are stupid”, and “my
supervisor ridicules me”. The Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of the questionnaire was .92 in this study,
which met the psychometric requirement. This study used the shorten questionnaire to assess abusive
supervision.
Loyalty to supervisor Loyalty to supervisor was measured using 17-item scale of Chen, Tsui, & Farh
(2002), which was developed in the context of Chinese culture. Example items included “when someone
praises my supervisor, I take it as a personal compliment”, and “I will try my best to accomplish the job
assigned by my supervisor”. The scale of Chen, Tsui, & Farh originally included five factors, which had
highly significant correlation with each other. In this study, 17 items were added together to represent the
degree of employees’ loyalty to supervisor in order to explore the internal relationship among variables.
The Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of this scale was .93 in this study, which exceeded the primary
requirements of psychometrics. As such, the scale contents had high homogeneity and the five factors
could be added together.
Loyalty to organization Loyalty to organization was assessed with two scales. One was 6-item scale of
affective commitment to organization which had been revised by Chen, & Francesco (2003) in Chinese
setting. Example items include “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this
organization”, “I really feel as if this organization’s problems are my own”. The other was organizational
identification scale, which items were mainly selected from the 12-item organizational identification
questionnaire revised by Miller, Allen, Casey, & Johnson (2000) and the 6-item organizational
identification questionnaire developed by Mael, & Ashforth (1992). The above questionnaires were both
single-factor scales. Based on the differences between Western and Chinese cultures, only 5 typical items
appropriate in Chinese setting were extracted from the above two questionnaire as the measures of this
research. Example items included “When somebody criticizes my organization, I feel like a personal
insult”. The Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of the above two loyalty to organization scales were
respectively .89 and .87 in this study, both meeting the requirements of psychometrics. Due to the more
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similarity between affective commitment and organizational identification, exploratory factor analysis
was used to explore the discriminate validity of the two scales first in this research, and the results are
showed in Table 1. The results indicate that the items of affective commitment and organizational
identification have high factor loadings between .72 and .90 without cross loading. According to the
results, although affective commitment and organizational identification have certain correlation, they are
really different in nature.
Table 1 Factor structure of affective commitment and organizational identification
Factor loading
items
F1
affective commitment 1
.84
affective commitment 6
.81
affective commitment 2
.81
affective commitment 3
.79
affective commitment 4
.76
affective commitment 5
.75
F2
organizational identification 2
.90
organizational identification 4
.81
organizational identification 1
.78
organizational identification 3
.76
organizational identification 5
.72
Eigenvalues
5.98
1.19
10.80
variance explained
54.37%
%
Note: The factor loadings below .30 are not showed.
5
Results
The test of same-source bias
The data in this study were collected at the same period, so testing same-source bias is necessary before
data analysis. The results from Table 2 demonstrate that the correlation values of abusive supervision
with loyalty to supervisor, organizational identification and affective commitment are low or moderate
(r=.22~.35). According to the suggestions of Tsui, Ashford, Clair, & Xin (1995), as long as the
correlation value between variables doesn’t exceed .75, there is on serious common method bias problem.
Therefore, the data in this study have no significant same-source bias, which are reliable and effective.
Table 2 Means, standard deviations and scale intercorrelations for study
scale
M
SD
1
.67
（.93）
2
1.LS
3.13
2.OI
3.04
.99
.59***
（.87）
3.AC
2.92
.82
.68***
.67***
（.89）
4.AS
1.78
.86
-.35***
-.25***
-.22**
507
3
4
（.92）
ORIENT ACADEMIC FORUM
Note: LS=Loyalty to supervisor, OI= Organizational identification, AC= Affective commitment , AS=Abusive
supervision, * p <.05, ** p <.01, *** p <.001 (two-tailed test). Diagonal figures are reliability coefficients for the
variables.
The test of hypothesis
According to the views of Baron, & Kenny (1986), mediating effect need conform to three requirements:
(1) Independent variable (IV) has significant predictive effect on mediating variable (MV); (2) IV has
significant predictive effect on dependent variable (DV); (3) When IV and MV are added to regression
model to predict DV at the same time, MV has significant predictive effect on DV, but IV has a
decreasing predictive effect on DV. If the effect of IV on DV is not significant yet, it is “full mediation
effect”, if the effect is still significant, it is “partial mediation effect”.
Hierarchical regression analysis was adopted referring to the above three requirements in this research.
The results showed that after controlling the effects of demographic variables: (1) abusive supervision
(IV) had significant effect on loyalty to supervisor (MV) (β=-.38, p<.001), which conformed to the first
requirement; (2) Abusive supervisor (IV) had significant effects on affective commitment and
organizational identification (DV) (β=-.26, p<.001; β=-.26, p<.01), which met the second requirement; (3)
When abusive supervision and loyalty to supervisor were added the regression model at the same time to
predict affective commitment and organizational identification, the predictive effects of loyalty to
supervisor was significant (β=.68, p<.001; β=.59, p<.001), but the ones of abusive supervision was not
significant (β=-.00, p>.05; β=-.03, p>.05) yet, which accorded with the last requirement, namely full
mediation effects. It can be seen from the above results that hypothesis 1 and 2 are both verified. Path
model is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Path model for loyalty to supervisor mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and
loyalty to organization
6 Discussion
Theoretical contributions
There is no empirical study yet about the relationship of abusive supervision with employees’ loyalty
behavior up to now. This research would fill the blanks in this research field, and lay solid foundations for
future studies.
(1) There were two kinds of views about the relationship of affective commitment and organizational
identification: One view argued that affective commitment and organizational identification belong to the
same conception system, and it was not necessary to draw a clear distinction between them (O’Reilly, &
Chatman, 1986); The other view insisted that affective commitment was a concept different from
organizational identification (Ashforth, & Mael, 1989). This study using empirical analysis found that the
correlation value of affective commitment and organizational identification was stronger, but they also
had good discriminate validity according to the results of factor analysis. Therefore, these empirical
results provide a good proof for the divergence of views, and these two concepts are really different.
(2) The internal mechanism of abusive supervision affecting employees’ loyalty behaviors is still a
black-box up to now. This research makes it clear that abusive supervision had an indirect effect on
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loyalty to organization through loyalty to supervisor, which is a pioneering research. In Chinese context,
are employees first loyal to organization or supervisor? Which kind of loyalty is more important? There
have been many arguments about these problems. Based on the results of this research, we can conclude
that employees are first loyal to supervisor, and then to organization in Chinese setting.
Practical implications
The conclusions from this research have important practical implications: (1) Abusive supervisor has an
effect on loyalty to organization mediated by loyalty to supervisor which play a buffer role in this path.
As a result, improving the degree of employees’ loyalty to supervisor can further decrease the effect of
abusive supervision on loyalty to organization. HR administrators and line managers need pay high-level
attention to enhancing the degree of loyalty to supervisor in management practice. (2) Abusive
supervision has serious effect on employees’ loyalty, and the decreasing loyalty could further reduce
employees’ job performance, contextual performance, job satisfaction and intention to stay. In light of
this, abusive supervision has positive effects both on employees and organizations. In administrative
practice, distinguishing abusive leader is an essential task for personnel selection and assessment. Besides,
it is also necessary to adopt some abusive supervision items in company satisfaction questionnaires of
every year to monitor the degree of abusive supervision, which is important preliminary work for taking
further intervention measures.
Future research directions
Despite this study is ground-breaking empirical one, there are still some limitations need to improve in
future studies: (1) How to measure the degree of loyalty. In future studies, we should conduct
indigenous studies about loyalty to organization and develop a useful and effective measure of it. (2)
How to better prove the causal relationship between variables. In this research, inference method was
first used to obtain the relationship of variable, and then empirical data were used to verify it. Although
this method has certain advisability, it is better to use longitudinal studies to infer causal relationship.
We should trace the change of employees’ loyalty to explore the effects of abusive supervisor in future
studies.
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