The Effects of Mistreating Management Variability on Work Attitudes and Behaviors

Introduction

Organizational researchers have important attention to harmful behaviors performed by individuals who hold positions of authority within organizations (Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & Lambert, 2006). Research on mistreating management (Tepper, 2000) has grown rapidly over the years. Mistreating management refers to “subordinates’ which managers engage in the sustained display of unfriendly verbal and nonverbal behaviors” (Tepper, 2000, p. 178). Research shows that mistreating management can be harmful to an organization and its employees which decreased employee obligation, job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and depression, (Harris, et al, 2011; Tepper, 2000, 2007). To date, the majority of research on mistreating management has been referred to the individual level (Harris et al., 2011; Tepper et al., 2006). Tepper’s (2000) imply that behaviors that employees believe mistreating may be perceived differently by another employee. Martinko, et al, (2011) expanded this outlook by suggesting that mistreating management may be implied as a function of both a subordinate’s characteristic of perceptions and clear mistreating behaviors on the part of the manager. Mistreating management conceived as a common phenomenon to the extent that individuals experience and observe the manager engaging in mistreating behaviors toward members of the unit. Bamberger and Bacharach (2006) found that unit-level mistreating management measured by collecting other unit members’ ratings of mistreating management was negatively related to individual problems. This shows that there is an observable constituent of mistreating management that is commonly perceived by others. Researchers have linked unit-level mistreating management to outcomes (Mawritz, et al, 2012) such as unit-level counter productivity and workgroup abnormality. Despite these findings, however, there has been limited growth in the development on mistreating management. The purpose of this research shows this gap in the literature. This study tests the outcomes of a scattering regarding the model of unit-level mistreating management on employee attitudes and behaviors. Also, this research tests the incremental effects of unit-level mistreating management on employee attitudes. The main hypotheses are summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Hypothesized model (Babatunde, 2013)