Vicarious abusive supervision and turnover in expectant working mothers: Does financial dependency trigger emotional disconnect?

Abstract

Summary Using a sample of 297 working mothers across three time periods (their last trimester of pregnancy, while on maternity leave, and after returning to the workplace), we examined the role of vicarious abusive supervision, beyond their own experience of abusive supervision, on turnover intentions through experiences of maternal mental health. Utilizing the unfolding model of turnover and Conservation of Resources theory, we found that experiencing the shock event of vicarious abusive supervision contributed to job‐related negative emotions as well as postpartum depressive symptoms in working new moms. Further, this experience of vicarious abusive supervision contributed to job‐related emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions, even after controlling for the mother's own experience of being targeted with abusive supervision behaviors. Finally, we examined the moderating role of financial dependence on this process and found that when working mothers' families were financially dependent on her job, the mothers were less likely to have turnover intentions. Implications for research and practice are provided.

Abusive leadership: A moderated-mediation through leader-member exchange and by organizational politics

“…In their review of 100 years of turnover research Hom et al (2017) called for future studies to better capture differences in context and to recognize that contextual factors can shape the influence of turnover antecedents (p. 540). Managers (specifically, with regard to abusive leadership and LMX) are one such contextual factor (e.g., Rice et al, 2020 ; Korman et al, 2021 ; Thompson et al, 2021 ).…”

Vicarious abusive supervision among restaurant frontline employees: the role of employee industry tenure

“…Secondly, employees deplete resources to cope with the stress, anxiety or depression resulting from abuse. As such, VAS, a vicarious experience of abusive supervision, would induce similar psychological processes, including negative perception and judgement, thereby considering VAS a stressor (Thompson et al , 2022). VAS elicits adaptive responses that threaten or increase the actual drain on individuals’ emotional and cognitive resources.…”

“…To address this important research gap, the current study draws on conservation of resources (COR) theory in analysing VAS as a salient job stressor that generates psychological strain and emotional load (Thompson et al , 2022). We posit that as a stressor, VAS elicits employees’ repetitive and passive mental processing of incidents, ultimately producing negative thoughts and feelings (Duffy et al , 2002), namely, affective rumination.…”

“…Our research makes three key contributions to the literature on VAS in the hospitality context. Firstly, existing literature has examined the impact of VAS on employees via emotional pathways such as anger and fear (Thompson et al , 2022). However, there is no investigation of the linkage between VAS and employees’ cognitions.…”

How daily supervisor abuse and coworker support affect daily work engagement

“…According to COR theory, people's resources are threatened or lost after negative events, and they may experience negative emotions when they try to deal with primary resource loss. However, negative emotions also function as resource consumption, and they may trigger secondary resource loss; therefore, to avoid a further depletion of resources, they may engage in ineffective behaviors (Subramony et al, 2021;Thompson et al, 2022). In summary, one's emotional response to workplace events largely determines one's attitudes and subsequent behaviors (Carlson et al, 2011).…”