Linking manager implicit racial and religious bias to abusive supervision : consequences for diverse employees

Abstract

Abusive supervision is a distressing problem for individuals and organisations, with workplace aggression impacting a disconcerting number of employees. The costs and concerns include absenteeism, health care, and lost productivity. Numerous studies have explored the adverse consequences of abusive supervision, but this study is one of the fewer studies designed to add to the knowledge on antecedents of abusive supervision. In this study, I test a model of implicit bias, microaggressions (employees' evaluations of supervisors’ behaviour as being discriminatory), abusive supervision and employee outcomes (intentions to quit, psychological distress and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder). Manager-related moderating factors between implicit bias and microaggressions (self-monitoring and individualised consideration) are also tested, as are employee-related moderating factors of microaggressions and abusive supervision perceptions (external and hostile attribution styles). Lastly, psychological capital as a moderator of the relations between abusive supervision and adverse employee outcomes is tested. The theoretical framing is social identity and job demands-resources theory, and the sample is a diverse group of manager-employee dyads in the manufacturing industry in South Africa. The critical contribution made by this study is establishing that abusive supervision may be a reflection of managers’ implicit bias toward employees who are racially different from them, via employees’ perceptions of managers’ microaggressions. However, results show that, for managers who also exhibit greater transformational behaviours, racial bias may be associated with lower reports of abusive supervision, as compared to managers who exhibit less transformational leadership: Employees can still recognise the good in an otherwise badly behaving manager. Also, congruent with social identity theory, results show that employees are more likely to perceive their manager’s behaviour as abusive when they project antagonistic and hostile intent onto the manager’s behaviour. A particularly important result, considering the serious implications of this finding for organisations and individuals, is the finding that abusive supervision and post-traumatic stress symptoms are positively associated. Therefore, the psychological toll of abusive supervision may be more severe than demonstrated in previous research. The major methodological contribution of the study is the use of implicit attitude testing (IAT) rather than other or self-reports of racial bias. In summary, my study contributes to the field of organisational psychology by demonstrating that not only does racial bias exist in the workplace today, but that it has also “gone underground,” perhaps becoming more subtle and insidious than earlier forms of racial discrimination. I also found that racial bias was linked to subordinate reports of abusive supervision, through employee reports of subtle acts of racial discriminatory behaviour. The detrimental outcomes from this for diverse employees were numerous. Themes for future research include the determination of the contexts where psychological capital may best function as a mitigating resource on the effects of abusive supervision, to explore religious bias and religious-based microaggressions, and to explore what effect employee social status may have on these relations.