The Effect of Abusive Supervision on Job Performance: The Role of Leadership Identification and Subordinates’ Tradition

Drawing on the theory of social identity, this study investigated the effect of abusive supervision on job performance intention through a moderate mediation model. The results indicated that: abuse supervision for job performance have significant negative effects, and this relationship is mediated by leadership identification; the mediation effect is further moderated by subordinates’ tradition. For subordinates with higher tradition, the mediating effect of abusive supervision on job performance intention through leadership identification is much stronger.


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Published by SCHOLINK INC. supervision on job performance, exploring the mediating role of leadership identification and the moderating role of subordinates' tradition drawing on the theory of social identity, and to explore a more comprehensive solution to the abusive supervision. Figure 1 depicts our theoretical framework.

Abusive Supervision and Job Performance
Tepper 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 (2000, p. 178).
Borman and Motowidlo (1997) define job performance as "a work activity that directly states clearly the job task and that the work activity contributes directly or indirectly to the organization's core goals".
Previous studies on job performance have shown that job performance is influenced by both organizational context and individual factors. Among them, leadership behavior is one of the most important contextual factors.
Based on resource conservation theory research show that the superior abusive of subordinates will threaten the resources owned by subordinates, which in turn leads to a decrease in performance (Harris, Kacmar, & Zivnuska, 2007). Tepper et al. (2009) based on the social exchange theory, points out that when subordinates are abused by their superiors, subordinates will respond to by reducing the task performance and reducing the behavior within the roles. Based on this argument, the following hypothesis can be offered: Hypothesis 1: Abusive supervision is negatively related to job performance.

The Mediating Effect of Leadership Identification
According to the theory of social identity, when employees form an ego concept, they mainly achieve the relationship with the organization or other people in the organization (such as leaders). Leadership identity is a state in which individuals define themselves according to their relationship with leaders (sun, song, & wang, 2013). Leadership identification reflects subordinates' attachment to leaders, and high leader identification increases attachment. Subordinates are more eager to develop and maintain this good relationship with their superiors in their daily work. At the same time, subordinates will also be motivated by the expectation of this relationship, and more involved work, while doing their job well, will also increase extra role behavior. As a destructive leadership, abusive management will damage the self-esteem of the staff, reduce the trust and job satisfaction of the leaders, which will destroy the relationship between the leaders and subordinates, weaken their identity to the leadership, and eventually lead to the reduction of the task performance and the relationship performance. Based on this argument, the following hypothesis can be offered: Hypothesis 2: Leadership identification mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and Job performance.

The Moderate Effect of Subordinates' Tradition
Tradition is considered as one of the concepts that best reflects the orientation of Chinese people's personality and values. Tradition refers to: "a set of organized cognitive attitudes, ideas, values, temperamental characteristics, and behavioral wills of individuals in traditional societies" (Farh, Hackett, & Liang, 2007). In the organizational relationship, the relationship between leaders and subordinates is not equal. Leaders can exert repressive influence on subordinates and are less subject to relevant regulations. As the subordinates face the abuse management from the superior, they should be unconditional and uncritical of acceptance and obedience. Therefore, under the organizational context of China, employees with different degrees of tradition will react differently when facing the abuse of superiors. In the face of the abuse of leadership, the highly traditional subordinates will endeavor to restrain their emotions and maintain their identification with the leaders. For low-traditional subordinates, they believe that each individual is independent and has equal rights between superior and subordinate. In the face of leadership abuse, it will reduce or terminate its recognition of leadership.
Based on this argument, the following hypothesis can be offered: Hypothesis 3: Subordinates' tradition will moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and Leadership identification. The lower the subordinate's tradition, the greater the negative impact of abusive management on leadership identification.

Samples and Procedure
We

Measures
The scales used in this study are domestic and international mature scales. All scales were measured on a five-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree).
Abusive supervision. we was assessed by subordinates using a shortened five-item version of Tepper's (2000) abusive supervision measure developed and validated by Mitchell and Ambrose (2007). Job performance. We were assessed by leader using Tsui et al. (1997) six-item scale. leadership identification. We was assessed by subordinates using Kark et al. (2003) eight-item scale. Subordinates' tradition. We was assessed by subordinates using Farh et al. (1997) five-item scale. Control variables.
To rule out alternative interpretations, subordinates' gender, age, tenure, education and position level were controlled in regression analyses.

Tests of Hypotheses
According to the method proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986), we use SPSS 22.0 software to test hypotheses by hierarchical regression in this study.
In all the models, gender, age, tenure, education level and position level were taken as control variables. Table 2 presents the results of the hierarchical regression, from model 6, we find that abusive supervision is significantly negatively correlated with subordinates' job performance (r=-0.398, p <0.01). These results support Hypothesis 1. Model 2 shows that abusive supervision is negatively correlated with leadership identification (r=-0.436, p<0.01). Model 8 shows that when the mediate variable of Leadership identification to join, abusive supervision has a significant negative effect on job performance (r=-0.289, p<0.01), but the negative effect weakened. Therefore, Leadership identification is a partial intermediary effect between abusive supervision and job performance.
These results support Hypothesis 2. Model 4 shows that after controlling the main effects of abusive supervision and subordinates' tradition, the supervision and subordinates' tradition interaction items have a significant effect on leadership identification (r=0.130, p<0.01), indicating the mediation effect is further moderated by subordinates' tradition. For subordinates with higher tradition, the mediating effect of abusive supervision on job performance intention through leadership identification is much stronger. These results support Hypothesis 3.

Discussion
This study finds that abusive supervision can not only directly reduce the performance of subordinates, but also can have a negative impact on performance by reducing the identity of subordinates to leadership. This study further reveals the boundary conditions of abusive management through subordinates' job performance. Previous cross-cultural studies show that Chinese have different characteristics from westerners. Traditional as one of the most can reflect the concept of Chinese value orientation, the results of this study indicate that the Subordinates' tradition has a moderating effect on the relationship between abusive management and leadership identification.

Managerial Implications
The results indicate that abusive supervision has significant negative impact for subordinates job performance. In order to have a good performance, the enterprise can improve from two aspects. On the one hand, enterprises can regularly conduct leadership team training activities to improve the quality of leadership teams, and increase the identification of subordinates for leaders. On the other hand, in the selection of leading team members, the candidates should be strictly controlled in all aspects, so as to minimize the leaders who have the abusive tendency to enter the leadership team.