The Effects of Safety-Related Abusive Supervision and Gender on Attributions and Safety Outcomes

While most research implies the harmful effects of abusive supervision, we argue that there are specific contextual factors where abusive supervision is more likely to be attributed to performance promotion intentions as opposed to injury initiation ones. We present the concept of Safety-Specific Abusive Supervision, which we define as perceptions of abusive supervisory behaviors related to safety that occur in hazardous work environments. We theorize that leaders who engage in Safety-Specific Abusive Supervision are more likely to have their behaviors attributed to performance promotion motives such that their actions are perceived to keep employees safe and motivate safety performance. We suspect that those performance promotion attributions act as a mediator between safety-specific abusive supervision and safety performance outcomes, namely safety voice and safety climate. However, we predict that this relationship is only true for male supervisors and not female supervisors. Across three studies (two experimental studies and one field study), we largely find support for our hypotheses. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of examining contextual factors for examining the attributions of abusive supervision and implications for managers of work safety relevant environments.