Impact of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions on Subordinate’s Perception of Abusive Supervision

Abstract

This study is designed to explore and identify the impact of Hofstede's cultural dimensions on employees' perception of their supervisory abuse in a cross-cultural context e.g. Australia and Pakistan. This study is a conceptual and a literature review in nature, since the aim was to highlight and identify with the help of prior research the impact of Hofstede's cultural dimensions on the employees' perception of their supervisory abuse in a western and eastern cultural context e.g. Australia and Pakistan. The researcher with the help of literature review developed some propositions that show the impact of these cultural dimensions on employees' perception of abusive supervision in two different cultural contexts that can play a vital role in moderating employees' perception of supervisory abuse in a cross-cultural context e.g. Australia and Pakistan. The paper concludes that although abusive supervision exist in almost all countries and cultures but the intensity of abusive supervision and the subordinate's perception of their supervisory abuse is based upon their cultural values and norms which play an important role in shaping their perception regarding their supervisory abuse. The researcher has presented the Hofstede's cultural dimensions comparison table which distinguished these two countries e.g. Australia and Pakistan on multiple dimensions from each other and furthermore, it provide an important future research direction for an empirical investigation of subordinate's perception of supervisory abuse in these two countries e.g. Australia and Pakistan. Furthermore, study limitations and future research directions have also been discussed in this paper.

Bystander Intervention in the Context of Abusive Supervision: Effects of Power Distance Orientation and Gender

“…Previous studies have shown that the degree of power distance orientation in a given culture impacts perception of abusive supervision. For example, abusive supervision is perceived to be less acceptable in low power contexts, such as Australia (Khan, 2014) and the USA (Vogel et al, 2015), compared to high power distance contexts, such as Pakistan (Khan, 2014), Singapore and Taiwan (Vogel et al, 2015), and China (Pan & Lin, 2017). Similarly, people with high power distance orientation at individual level are expected to respect authority and be less likely to question it (Earley & Erez, 1997;Maznevski et al, 2002).…”

Leader’s Toxicity at Workplace: How Leader’s Decadence Affect Employees? A Pakistani Perspective

“…The findings of this research are consistent with the perspective of De Clercq et al (2020) that holds abusive leadership responsible for employees’ deviant behavior. Similarly, cultural context (e.g., high power distance) shapes the employees’ perception regarding the abuse of their leaders (S. N. Khan, 2014), confirming that the submissive behavior of employees allows mistreatment from abusive leaders.…”

Abusive Supervision and Turnover Intentions: A Mediation-Moderation Perspective

“…In comparison to western nations, where the majority of the research work on "abusive supervision" is centered, Pakistan belongs to a high power distance culture [22]. Power distance is the acceptance of employees to the unfair distribution of the organizational resources [23].…”

“…Second, the data collection from education systems existing in developing countries, i.e., universities in AJK working under the Higher Education Commission (HEC), enhances the study's uniqueness. In comparison to western nations, where the majority of research work on "abusive supervision" is centered, Pakistan belongs to a high power distance culture [22]. Power distance is the acceptance of employees to the unfair distribution of organizational resources [23].…”