Today’s organizations face a rapidly changing business environment, in which leadership is more important than ever (Krishnan, 2008). Although positive leadership has long been examined, among scholars growing interest has focused on the “dark side of leadership,” that is, deviant leader behavior (e.g., Mackey et al., 2017), with one research stream being abusive supervision. Tepper (2000) defined abusive supervision as “subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which their supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact” (p. 178). Abusive supervision has been recognized as noteworthy because it is a frequent workplace phenomenon (Mackey et al., 2017) and has considerable consequences for both employees and organizations (e.g., Mackey et al., 2017; Xu et al., 2019).

A reason for supervisors’ use of abuse is to enhance their own performance (Tepper et al., 2011). Studies have shown that employees experience abusive supervision because of supervisors’ drive to achieve organizational performance goals (Liu et al., 2012), or because of goal difficulty (Mawritz et al., 2014). These findings suggest supervisors’ desire to prove their own performance, that is, having a performance-prove goal orientation (Zhu et al., 2019), is related to abusive supervision. This elicited my curiosity about whether subordinates having a performance-prove goal orientation would also be related to abusive supervision.

Much evidence for the negative effects of abusive supervision on employees and organizations has emerged in the past decade; thus, identifying the antecedents of abusive supervision and obtaining information on them will be valuable (Camps et al., 2016). However, scientific effort to date is imbalanced: there is a larger body of research addressing the consequences than there is on the antecedents (Wang et al., 2015). Although there is evidence to suggest that subordinates are likely to play a role in the abusive supervision process (e.g., Aquino & Lamertz, 2004), there has been relatively less work on predictors of abusive supervision, especially predictors relating to subordinates (e.g., Camps et al., 2016; Henle & Gross 2014; Wang et al., 2015). Thus, the purpose of my study was to examine the relationship between subordinates’ performance-prove goal orientation and abusive supervision and, thus, to contribute to the literature on the antecedents of abusive supervision in terms of subordinate-related factors.

Theoretical Background and Hypothesis Development

Goal orientation refers to the goals that employees pursue in achievement situations in the workplace, which can be classified into two types that differ in terms of competence-relevant striving (Payne et al., 2007). A learning goal orientation involves the employee pursuing the development of their competence by acquiring new skills, whereas employees with a performance goal orientation direct their efforts toward demonstrating and validating their competence by seeking favorable judgments (i.e., performance-prove) and avoiding negative judgments (i.e., performance-avoid) about their achievement (Vandewalle, 1997; Zhu et al., 2019).

In this study I followed the suggestion made in the extant literature on abusive supervision, according to which supervisors’ performance-prove goal orientation may have an influence in the abusive supervision process. Abusive supervision is a negative perception of the supervisor’s behavior, and subordinates with more negative perceptions of the supervisor perceive the supervision as being more abusive (Harvey et al., 2014). Thus, it is a subjective assessment because each subordinate may evaluate the behaviors of a supervisor differently.

Those employees who have a higher (vs. lower) performance-prove goal orientation are more driven to the behaviors of continually proving their competence, and seeking and gaining favorable judgments about their performance (Zhu et al., 2019). That is, they spend more of their resources of time, physical energy, and attention on those behaviors. It is the eye of the beholder, rather than the situational characteristics per se, which determines an individual’s reaction (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), and findings indicate that regardless of whether the behavioral motivation is good or bad, achievement-goal interpretation leads on to that motivation (Roberts et al., 2007). Therefore, because employees with a higher performance-prove goal orientation focus their attention and resources on demonstrating and validating their competence and performance, consistent with Tepper’s (2000) operationalization of abuse, they may interpret the supervisor’s critical, negative feedback as an indication that their performance is unsatisfactory to the supervisor rather than that they are experiencing abusive supervision. Accordingly, these employees will perceive abusive supervision to a lesser degree. Thus, I proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Higher performance-prove goal orientation of employees will lead to their perception of a lesser degree of abusive supervision.

Because employees with a higher performance-prove goal orientation seek favorable judgments about their achievement to demonstrate and validate their competence (Vandewalle, 1997; Zhu et al., 2019), it is reasonable to expect that these employees will display more feedback-seeking behavior. Specifically, it has been reported that the purpose of employees’ feedback-seeking behavior is to obtain information about their own level of performance, to interpret this, and to apply it to reaching their goals (Anseel et al., 2015). Obtaining information about how knowledgeable others, such as supervisors, evaluate the achievements of employees can also help those employees to develop a sense of competency (VandeWalle, 2003). Therefore, employees with a higher (vs.) performance-prove goal orientation will engage in more feedback-seeking behavior toward their supervisors.

When subordinates seek feedback from supervisors, this may lead to supervisors forming the impression that these subordinates pay attention to and are concerned about work quality (Ashford & Tsui, 1991), and are capable in and attentive to work performance (Morrison & Bies, 1991). As a result, supervisors tend to have a good working relationship with these subordinates (Liden et al., 1997). It has been documented that a negative supervisor–subordinate relationship leads to subordinates having a more negative perception of the supervisor and, thus, being more likely to perceive that their supervision is abusive (Klaussner, 2014). Accordingly, seeking feedback from their supervisor will enhance the good relationship of the employee with the supervisor, which will lead to the employee being less likely to perceive abusive supervision. Thus, I proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Employees with a higher performance-prove goal orientation will seek more feedback from their supervisor and, thus, will perceive supervision as abusive to a lesser degree.

Method

Participants and Procedure

I distributed survey forms to 230 full-time employees engaged in a variety of occupations in Taiwan. These employees were recruited from evening classes they were attending at a university. I explained the purpose of the research and guaranteed that responses would be kept anonymous and confidential. This explanation and the guarantees also appeared on the survey form. To avoid common method bias, the survey was conducted in three waves. First, participants rated their performance-prove goal orientation at work and their emotional stability and conscientiousness. Two weeks later, participants rated their feedback-seeking behavior at work. After another 2 weeks, participants rated their perception of abusive supervision. I collected 173 valid survey forms (response rate = 75.2%) from 54 men (31.2%) and 119 women (68.8%). The ages of participants ranged between 20 and 63 years (M = 34.6, SD = 8.25), and job tenure ranged between 0.3 and 37 years (M = 9.77 years, SD = 7.95).

Measures

The English measurement scales were translated into Chinese and back-translated into English to ensure equivalence of meaning. This translation was done by two Taiwanese researchers with qualifications in the organizational behavior area, who were fluent in both Chinese and English. All items were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Performance-Prove Goal Orientation
The four-item scale developed by Zhu et al. (2019) was used to assess performance-prove goal orientation. Factor loadings ranged from .63 to .81 (e.g., “I’m concerned with showing that I can perform better than my coworkers”). Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .72.

Feedback-Seeking Behavior
I used the five-item scale developed by VandeWalle et al. (2000) to assess feedback-seeking behavior. Factor loadings ranged from .67 to .80 (e.g., “I frequently ask for feedback from my supervisors regarding my overall work performance”). Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .79.

Abusive Supervision
A 15-item scale developed by Tepper (2000) was used. One item had a factor loading below .50 and those for the other items ranged from .60 to .83, resulting in a 14-item scale (e.g., “My supervisor gives me the silent treatment”). Cronbach’s alpha for the 14 items was .84.

Control Variables
I controlled for emotional stability and conscientiousness because these factors have been found to influence the perception of abusive supervision (Henle & Gross, 2014). Each was measured using five items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006). One of the five items for emotional stability had a factor loading below .50 and the loadings for other four items ranged from .68 to .84, resulting in a four-item scale (e.g., “I am not easily bothered by things”). Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .80. The five items for conscientiousness had factor loadings ranging from .56 to .87 (e.g., “I do things by the book”). Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .79.

Results

Assessment of Common Method Bias

In addition to using a three-wave survey design, I examined the possibility of common method bias using Harman’s single-factor test (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). A principal components factor analysis of the items measured yielded eight factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, which accounted for 64.0% of the variance. The first factor did not account for a large percentage of the variance (12.3%). Hence, common method bias was not a serious problem in this study.

Hypothesis Testing

To assess fit of the proposed models, I calculated fit indices and conducted significance tests with IBM SPSS Amos 25.0. Chi-square (χ²) test results under 5; parsimonious goodness-of-fit index (PGFI), parsimonious normed fit index (PNFI), and parsimonious comparative fit index (PCFI) values of .50 or higher; standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) values under .10; and smaller χ²/degrees of freedom (df) values indicate a better model fit to the data (M. L. Wu, 2009).

Because I did not predict whether feedback-seeking behavior would partially or fully mediate the effect of performance-prove goal orientation on abusive supervision, I tested two competing models: a fully mediated model (Model 1) and a partially mediated model (Model 2). Model 2 differed from Model 1 in that it included a direct path from performance-prove goal orientation to abusive supervision. Both models included the control variables of emotional stability and conscientiousness. The results indicate that Model 2 had a better fit, χ²(459) = 997.807, χ²/df = 2.174; PGFI = .629, PNFI = .563, PCFI = .682, SRMR = .106, RMSEA = .083, than did Model 1, χ²(460) = 1009.806, χ²/df = 2.195; PGFI = .628, PNFI = .560, PCFI = .679, SRMR = .112, RMSEA = .083; Δχ²(1) = 11.999, p < .05. Accordingly, I retained Model 2, the partially mediated model, as the preferable option and used this model to examine the proposed hypotheses.

Figure 1 shows the standardized path coefficients from performance-prove goal orientation to abusive supervision and feedback-seeking behavior, and from feedback-seeking behavior to abusive supervision. These paths accounted for approximately 46% of the observed variance in abusive supervision. The total, direct, and indirect effects of performance-prove goal orientation on abusive supervision, with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), had the statistically significant coefficients of −.42, p < .01, 95% CI [−0.65, −0.20]; −.30, p < .05, 95% CI [−0.53, −0.07]; and −.12, p < .01, 95% CI [−0.27, −0.03], respectively. The empirical results indicate that the relationship between performance-prove goal orientation and abusive supervision was partially mediated by feedback-seeking behavior, which offered support for Hypotheses 1 and 2. Thus, performance-prove goal orientation increased subordinates’ feedback-seeking behavior, and thereby decreased their perception of abusive supervision.

Discussion

In this study I examined the negative effect of employees’ performance-prove goal orientation on their perception of abusive supervision, and the process by which employees’ feedback-seeking behavior mediates this relationship. The results provided empirical support for both a negative effect in the relationship of the performance-prove orientation with abusive supervision, and the mediating effect of feedback-seeking behavior in this link. The focus in the extant abusive supervision literature has been on consequences of abusive supervision and on supervisor-related and organization/context-related predictors (e.g., Klaussner, 2014; Zhang & Bednall, 2016). My findings contribute to the literature from the perspective of the antecedents of abusive supervision, which have received less scientific attention. In addition, I have contributed to the goal orientation literature by shifting understanding of the effect of goal orientation from the employee perspective (i.e., the effect on employee attitudes toward and behaviors in regard to work; e.g., Payne et al., 2007; Zhu et al., 2019) to the managerial perspective (i.e., the effect on managerial effectiveness in terms of abusive supervision).

I found it interesting that my findings show subordinates’ performance-prove goal orientation reduced their perception of abusive supervision, whereas previous studies have reported that supervisors’ performance-prove goal orientation increased abusive supervision (Liu et al., 2012). The findings of my own and of previous studies suggest that the effect of performance-prove goal orientation may vary among the members of the organization, and that one of the differences may depend on organizational level/position held. Furthermore, this notion may be worthy of further consideration to advance understanding of the effect of goal orientation in organizations. The insight proposed in regard to my own and previous study findings is that subordinates’ performance underlies supervisors’ performance. Therefore, supervisors often engage in demanding or abusive behaviors to enhance subordinates’ performance or to convey the importance of specific objectives to subordinates (Campbell et al., 2007), but subordinates’ performance depends on their own effort, which leads to their interpretation of supervisors’ behavior as being less abusive.

The findings of this study suggest that employees with a lower, compared to higher, performance-prove goal orientation tend to less seek feedback from their supervisors, leading to those with a lower performance-prove goal orientation perceiving more abusive supervision. Because individual employees differ in their degree of performance-prove goal orientation, I have four approaches to propose for organizations. First, managers of organizations should design a feedback system that enables employees to be aware of how their job performance is understood and viewed by their supervisors. Second, managers should encourage employees to actively seek feedback from their supervisors. Third, managers should encourage supervisors to actively provide feedback for their subordinates. Finally, managers should train supervisors to understand that the more feedback they give to subordinates, the more they can attenuate or even avoid their supervising behavior being negatively perceived by subordinates; that is, they can avoid subordinates’ perception of undergoing abusive supervision, which has deleterious consequences for supervisors’ leadership and organizational performance (Liu et al., 2012).

This study has limitations. Although survey data were collected in three waves, I could not establish causality between the variables studied. In addition, the sample consisted only of employees in Taiwan. Future studies in which samples from other countries or cultures are tested would likely provide a more robust test of the hypotheses, because there are cultural differences relating to workplace perceptions of employees (M. Wu & Xu, 2012). Taiwanese people tend to have Chinese cultural values (Mao & Hsieh, 2013), which are oriented toward strong authority and positive response to authoritarianism (M. Wu & Xu, 2012). Therefore, in Taiwan, compared to more individualistic countries, employees more view supervisors’ behavior and perceive supervisors less negatively, which attenuates, rather than increases, the effect of performance-prove goal orientation on employees’ perception of abusive supervision. Cultural influences in Taiwan are, thus, unlikely to compromise the validity of my study results.

Regardless of these limitations, this is the first study in which an examination has been made of how and why subordinates’ performance-prove goal orientation is associated with their perception of abusive supervision, and how this affects managerial effectiveness. My findings indicate that in the cultural of Taiwan, subordinates’ performance-prove goal orientation facilitates managerial effectiveness by increasing the subordinates’ feedback-seeking behavior and, in turn, decreasing their perception of supervisors’ behavior as being abusive.

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Hsiao-Yen Mao, Department of International Business Administration, College of Business, Chinese Culture University, 55 Hwa-Kang Road, Yang-Ming-Shan, Taipei, 11114, Taiwan. Email: [email protected]