Reactions to Abusive Supervision: Neutralization and IS Misuse

ABSTRACT

The relationship between abusive supervision and employee workplace deviance has received much attention. Conceptualizing information systems (IS) misuse as a form of workplace deviance, the literature on IS security lacks a theoretical and empirical investigation of the relationship between abusive supervision and employee IS misuse. Drawing on retaliation, displaced aggression, and neutralization, we develop and empirically test a research model of the relationships among abusive supervision, neutralization, and two types of employees’ IS misuse. Results of a two-stage survey of 203 responses showed that when individuals perceived abusive supervision, they were likely to invoke the metaphor of the ledger as a neutralization technique to rationalize their engagement in IS misuse. Our results also reveal that employees’ reactions to abusive supervision could be influenced by their tenure with supervisor. These findings contribute to the IS security field and provide important guidance for learning how leaders influence employees’ IS security behaviors.

KEYWORDS:

• Abusive supervision
• metaphor of the ledger
• supervisor-directed IS misuse
• organization-directed IS misuse

Declaration of Interest Statement

There are no competing interests, financial or non-financial.

Institutional Research Board approval

Protocol ID: IRB-19–144

Principal Investigator: Merrill Warkentin

Protocol Title: Role of Abusive Supervision and Reactive Computer Abuse

Review Type: EXEMPT

Approval Date: April 02, 2019

Expiration Date:April 01, 2024

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In compliance with the submission guidelines, we affirm that all subjects read the complete details of in the approved Informed Consent protocol statement, and that all voluntarily agreed to proceed with the online survey after reading that initial webpage (informed consent). Any who wished to decline could close that page rather than proceeding to the online survey.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China-Guangdong Joint Fund [71872129]. This research project is also supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [71772042].