Psychological Mechanism Linking Abusive Supervision and Compulsory Citizenship Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Study

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to examine the effect of abusive supervision on the “dark side” of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and, specifically, compulsory citizenship behavior (CCB). The study focuses on the mediating role of psychological safety underpinning the relationship between abusive supervision and CCB, and the moderating role of Chinese traditionality in influencing the mediation. The authors tested the model with data of 434 dyads (employee–coworker pairs) in a large Chinese service company. Results indicated that psychological safety fully mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and CCB. The authors also found that Chinese traditionality moderated the strength of the mediated relationship between abusive supervision and CCB via psychological safety, such that the mediated relationship is weaker under high Chinese traditionality than under low Chinese traditionality. The article also discusses the implications, limitations, and future research directions.

Keywords:

• abusive supervision
• compulsory citizenship behavior
• organizational citizenship behavior
• psychological safety
• Chinese traditionality

Acknowledgments

Funding was provided by a grant from China's National Social Science Foundation (10BGL033) and China's Doctoral Research Foundation of Ministry of Education (20100072110010).