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Political context matters: a joint effect of coercive power and perceived organizational politics on abusive supervision and silence

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Abstract

Abusive supervision is a manifestation of power and can lead to serious negative consequences for employees. Drawing upon the approach-inhibition theory of power, we examine how supervisors’ coercive power affects abusive supervision, an approach behavior, and how subordinates then respond to abusive supervision in the form of silence, an inhibition-related behavior. More importantly, recognizing that exercises of and reactions to power may depend on the political environment of an organization, we also investigate the moderating role perceptions of organizational politics (POPs) play in these relationships. Using multi-source time-lagged data collected from 188 supervisor-subordinate dyads in Taiwan, we found a positive main effect of supervisors’ coercive power on abusive supervision and further showed an accentuating moderating effect of supervisors’ POPs on this relationship such that the relationship was only significant when supervisors’ POPs were high. Moreover, while the abusive supervision – subordinate silence relationship was not significant, different from our prediction, we found a somewhat unexpected moderating effect of subordinates’ POPs on this relationship. Specifically, silence stayed relatively high regardless of the level of abusive supervision when subordinates’ POPs were high whereas a negative relationship was observed for subordinates with low POPs. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

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Change history

  • 20 August 2022

    The original version of this paper was updated to change the title of first author Ying‑Ni Cheng to "Associate Professor" instead of "Assistant Professor".

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Richard Gardner for his constructive feedback and helpful assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Defense University, 70, Sec. 2, Zhongyang N. Rd, Taipei City, 112, Taiwan

    Ying-Ni Cheng

  2. National Chengchi University, 64, Sec 2, Zhinan Rd, 116, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Changya Hu

  3. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 S Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV, 89154, USA

    Sheng Wang

  4. National Taipei University of Business, 321, Sec 1, Jinan Rd, Taipei City, 100, Taiwan

    Jui-Chieh Huang

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  1. Ying-Ni Cheng
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Correspondence to Sheng Wang.

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Cheng, YN., Hu, C., Wang, S. et al. Political context matters: a joint effect of coercive power and perceived organizational politics on abusive supervision and silence. Asia Pac J Manag 41, 81–106 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-022-09840-x

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