Abusive supervision, public service motivation, and employee deviance

Rick Vogel, Fabian Homberg and Alena Gericke

Evidence-based HRM, 2016, vol. 4, issue 3, 214-231

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine abusive supervision and public service motivation (PSM) as antecedents of deviant workplace behaviours. Design/methodology/approach - The study was conducted in a cross-sectional research design with survey data from 150 employees in the public, private, and non-profit sector in Germany and the USA. Findings - Abusive supervision is positively associated with employee deviance, whereas PSM is negatively related to deviant behaviours. The employment sector moderates the negative relationship between PSM and employee deviance such that this relationship is stronger in the public and non-profit sector. Research limitations/implications - Limitations arise from the convenience sampling approach and the cross-sectional nature of the data set. Practical implications - Human resource managers should consider behavioural integrity in the attraction, selection, and training of both supervisors and subordinates. Private organisations can address the needs of strongly public service motivated employees by integrating associated goals and values into organisational missions and policies. Originality/value - This is the first study to introduce PSM into research on employee deviance. It shows that a pro-social motivation can drive anti-social behaviours when employees with high levels of PSM are members of profit-seeking organisations.

Keywords: Public service motivation; Person-organization fit; Destructive leadership; Counterproductive work behaviour; Dark side of leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ebhrmp:ebhrm-08-2015-0034

DOI: 10.1108/EBHRM-08-2015-0034

Access Statistics for this article

Evidence-based HRM is currently edited by Prof Thomas Lange

More articles in Evidence-based HRM from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().