Linking manager implicit racial and religious bias to abusive supervision : consequences for diverse employees
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Abusive supervision is a distressing problem for individuals and organisations, with workplace\naggression impacting a disconcerting number of employees. The costs and concerns include\nabsenteeism, health care, and lost productivity.\nNumerous studies have explored the adverse consequences of abusive supervision, but this\nstudy is one of the fewer studies designed to add to the knowledge on antecedents of abusive\nsupervision. In this study, I test a model of implicit bias, microaggressions (employees'\nevaluations of supervisors’ behaviour as being discriminatory), abusive supervision and\nemployee outcomes (intentions to quit, psychological distress and symptoms of post-traumatic\nstress disorder). Manager-related moderating factors between implicit bias and\nmicroaggressions (self-monitoring and individualised consideration) are also tested, as are\nemployee-related moderating factors of microaggressions and abusive supervision\nperceptions (external and hostile attribution styles). Lastly, psychological capital as a\nmoderator of the relations between abusive supervision and adverse employee outcomes is\ntested. The theoretical framing is social identity and job demands-resources theory, and the\nsample is a diverse group of manager-employee dyads in the manufacturing industry in South\nAfrica.\nThe critical contribution made by this study is establishing that abusive supervision may be a\nreflection of managers’ implicit bias toward employees who are racially different from them, via\nemployees’ perceptions of managers’ microaggressions. However, results show that, for\nmanagers who also exhibit greater transformational behaviours, racial bias may be associated\nwith lower reports of abusive supervision, as compared to managers who exhibit less\ntransformational leadership: Employees can still recognise the good in an otherwise badly\nbehaving manager. Also, congruent with social identity theory, results show that employees\nare more likely to perceive their manager’s behaviour as abusive when they project\nantagonistic and hostile intent onto the manager’s behaviour. A particularly important result,\nconsidering the serious implications of this finding for organisations and individuals, is the\nfinding that abusive supervision and post-traumatic stress symptoms are positively associated.\nTherefore, the psychological toll of abusive supervision may be more severe than demonstrated in previous research. The major methodological contribution of the study is the\nuse of implicit attitude testing (IAT) rather than other or self-reports of racial bias.\nIn summary, my study contributes to the field of organisational psychology by demonstrating\nthat not only does racial bias exist in the workplace today, but that it has also “gone\nunderground,” perhaps becoming more subtle and insidious than earlier forms of racial\ndiscrimination. I also found that racial bias was linked to subordinate reports of abusive\nsupervision, through employee reports of subtle acts of racial discriminatory behaviour. The\ndetrimental outcomes from this for diverse employees were numerous. Themes for future\nresearch include the determination of the contexts where psychological capital may best\nfunction as a mitigating resource on the effects of abusive supervision, to explore religious bias\nand religious-based microaggressions, and to explore what effect employee social status may\nhave on these relations.
Author: Carin Bergh
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2904938656