Goal-focused abusive leaders: The mitigating role of conscientiousness in subordinates’ counterproductive work behavior

Abstract

When an abusive supervisor exhibits goal-focused leadership, does goal-focused leadership buffer or deteriorate the impact of abusive supervision on subordinates? Although leaders normally exhibit different leadership styles at the same time, little effort has been made to examine how different leadership styles affect subordinates. We also investigate the three-way interaction among abusive supervision, goal-focused leadership, and conscientiousness on counterproductive work behavior (CWB). With two multinational samples, our findings consistently indicate that subordinates exposed to more goal-focused leadership along with abusive supervision are significantly more likely to engage in CWB. In addition, we find a three-way interaction such that the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates’ CWB is the strongest among subordinates who have low conscientiousness when leaders exhibit a high level of goal-focused leadership. JEL Classification: D23