What Does Leaders’ Abuse Mean to Me? Psychological Empowerment as the Key Mechanism Explaining the Relationship Between Abusive Supervision and Taking Charge

Abstract

We integrate the cognitive theory of empowerment and regulatory focus theory to suggest that abusive supervision, from which employees draw negative achievement and security implications, discourages employees from engaging in taking charge by damaging their psychological empowerment. We propose that this negative influence is more saliently experienced by both promotion-focused and prevention-focused employees, albeit for different reasons. To test our model, we conducted a field study (Study 1) and a scenario-based experiment (Study 2). In Study 1, we found that psychological empowerment stood as a key mechanism linking abusive supervision and taking charge. Further, promotion focus magnified the negative effects of abusive supervision on psychological empowerment, and in turn, taking charge. Yet, prevention focus did not influence these effects. In Study 2, we replicated these findings and revealed that the anticipations of both career success and job insecurity (representing employees’ achievement and security implications) are critical in linking abusive supervision and psychological empowerment. We also found that promotion focus strengthened the negative indirect effect of abusive supervision on psychological empowerment via anticipated career success, ultimately resulting in a greater negative impact on taking charge. As in Study 1, there was limited support for the moderating effects of prevention focus. Our research highlights the importance of adopting a cognitive view in understanding the impact of abusive supervision on employees’ taking charge.