Jeremy R. Brees

Abusive Supervision: A Meta-Analysis and Empirical Review:

We conducted a meta-analysis and empirical review of abusive supervision research in order to derive meta-analytic population estimates for the relationships between perceptions of abusive supervision and numerous demographic, justice, individual difference, leadership, and outcome variables. The use of psychometric correction enabled us to provide weighted mean correlations and population correlation estimates that accounted for attenuation due to measurement error and sampling error variance. Also, we conducted sensitivity analyses that removed the effects of large samples from analyses. Then, we conducted subgroup analyses using samples drawn from the United States to provide population correlation estimates that corrected for attenuation due to measurement error, sampling error variance, and indirect range restriction. Finally, we examined measurement artifacts resulting from various adaptations of Tepper’s abusive supervision measure. The results reveal that although the associations between perceptions of abusive supervision and outcome variables appear to be universally negative, the magnitude of the relationships between perceptions of abusive supervision and antecedent and outcome variables varies according to the design features of studies. Contributions to theory and practice, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

An attributional perspective of aggression in organizations

Purpose – This paper emphasizes that employee attributional processing is a vital element in understanding employee aggression in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to summarize attributional perspectives and integrate recent theoretical advances into a comprehensive model.Design/methodology/approach – The paper achieved its objectives by reviewing and integrating research and theories on aggression, cognitive processing, and attribution processes to explain how employee aggression unfolds in the workplace. Propositions are suggested.Findings – It was found that early conceptualizations proposing that employee attributions and attribution styles would play important and significant roles in predicting employee aggression were supported by recent research enabling theoretical advancements.Originality/value – Over the last 15 years, research advances show how attributions influence employee aggression. This paper integrates recent theoretical advances with prior empirical evidence and provides a co...

The Mediating Role of Perceptions of Abusive Supervision in the Relationship Between Personality and Aggression

This study examines whether subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervision mediate the relationship between subordinate personality and aggression. Results from a cross-organizational sample of 411 working adults suggest that subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervision account for some of the variance in the relationships between subordinate Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and subordinate aggression. This study suggests that social-information processing and perceptions of control found within subordinates’ personality influences whether they are more or less likely to perceive supervisory abuse. Perceptions of supervisory abuse were associated with aggression.

Abusive supervision: subordinate personality or supervisor behavior?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether employees’ personalities are associated with their perceptions of abusive supervision. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 756 working adults provided data. Subjects’ began by taking personality assessments and then received a performance evaluation via a video role-play. Subjects then provided their perceptions of how abusive the supervisor was. The data were analyzed with regression analysis. Findings – The results illustrated that respondents’ hostile attribution styles, negative affectivity, trait anger, and entitlement were positively and significantly associated with perceptions of abusive supervision. Research limitations/implications – The results imply that judgments of supervisory abuse and interventions to ameliorate the negative consequences associated with abusive supervision should consider subordinates’ characteristics. Originality/value – This study controlled supervisor behavior via a video vignette to assess how multiple s...

Judgments of Responsibility Versus Accountability

We proposed and found that employees’ judgments of responsibility and accountability are distinct but positively related constructs. Using attribution theory for responsibility judgments and lay dispositionalism for accountability judgments, we hypothesized that employees hold others more responsible (i.e., causal) and accountable (i.e., punishable) than they hold themselves for the same workplace mistakes. Independent mean differences within a sample of 286 working adults revealed that people held others more responsible but not more accountable than they held themselves. Post hoc analyses revealed a counterintuitive finding. Counter to what theory would predict, as workplace mistake seriousness increased the variation between self-judgement and other-judgment decreased. Implications and future directions for accountability research are discussed.

An Examination of the Influence of Implicit Theories, Attribution Styles, and Performance Cues on Questionnaire Measures of Leadership:

We examined the direct and interactive effects of respondents’ implicit leadership theories (ILTs), attribution styles, and performance cues on leadership perceptions. After first assessing respondents’ implicit leadership theories and attribution styles, the participants were randomly assigned to one of nine performance cue conditions ([leader performance: low vs. average vs. high] × [follower performance: low vs. average vs. high]), observed the same leader’s behavior via video, and rated the leader by completing three leadership questionnaires. The results supported the notion that these three components of information have both direct and interactive effects on leadership perceptions as measured by the questionnaires. The three components of information accounted for about 10% of the variance in the three questionnaires. The results contribute to theories of information processing by demonstrating how ILTs, attribution styles, and performance cues interact to predict leadership perceptions. Implications regarding the meaningfulness, construct validity, and utility of leadership scales are discussed.

An exploration of the role of subordinate affect in leader evaluations.

Leadership research has been encumbered by a proliferation of constructs and measures, despite little evidence that each is sufficiently conceptually and operationally distinct from the others. We draw from research on subordinates’ implicit theories of leader behavior, behaviorally anchored rating scales, and decision making to argue that leader affect (i.e., the degree to which subordinates have positive and negative feelings about their supervisors) underlies the common variance shared by many leadership measures. To explore this possibility, we developed and validated measures of positive and negative leader affect (i.e., the Leader Affect Questionnaires; LAQs). We conducted 10 studies to develop the five-item positive and negative LAQs and to examine their convergent, discriminant, predictive, and criterion-related validity. We conclude that a) the LAQs provide highly reliable and valid tools for assessing subordinates’ evaluations of their leaders; b) there is significant overlap between existing leadership measures, and a large proportion of this overlap is a function of the affect captured by the LAQs; c) when the LAQs are used as control variables, in most cases, they reduce the strength of relationships between leadership measures and other variables; d) the LAQs account for significant variance in outcomes beyond that explained by other leadership measures; and e) there is a considerable amount of unexplained variance between leadership measures that the LAQs do not capture. Research suggestions are provided and the implications of our results are discussed.