Why and When Managers Behave Abusively Toward Employees in the Context of Job Insecurity

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, we offer an alternative perspective and theorize that resource depletion acts as a novel explanatory mechanism to explain why and when managers behave abusively toward employees in the context of job insecurity. We test this model through a multi-wave and multi-source field study with data collected from 508 employees of 116 teams in 23 departments over three time periods (Study 1) and an experience sampling study spread over 5 workdays with data from 42 supervisors (Study 2). Consistent with our expectations, we found that manager resource depletion stemming from job insecurity is a proximal cause of abusive supervision. Furthermore, we found that manager job insecurity is more likely to threaten and cause resource depletion and subsequently trigger abusive behaviors for managers with low level of trait resilience and low level of political skill in the form of social astuteness. However, this effect did not exist for managers who are high on these two individual characteristics. The implications of these findings for researchers and organizations are discussed.