Abstract
Research on abusive supervision typically considers employees as passive recipients of supervisory abuse. However, employees can respond actively. Based on the affect theory of social exchange, we proposed that employees with a good Guanxi (the closeness of a personal relationship, including tangible and emotional interactions, and perceptions of responsibility between the interacting parties) with their supervisors will have less anger and more self-blame when being abused. In comparison, those with bad Guanxi will have more anger and less self-blame. Furthermore, anger and self-blame influence employees’ turnover intention and job crafting. A three-wave paired questionnaire study of 382 employees and their colleagues supported our reasoning. We also discussed the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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We thank Chang Wen and Linhan Yu for their help with manuscript preparation. We fully acknowledge the funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72072058).
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The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Zhaobiao Zong, Wei Guo, and **yun Duan. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Zhaobiao Zong and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zong, Z., Guo, W., Wang, T. et al. Flight or Fight: How do employees respond to abusive supervision?. Curr Psychol 42, 23656–23668 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03470-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03470-8