When and How Subordinate Performance Leads to Abusive Supervision: A Social Dominance Perspective

Abstract

While we would typically expect poor performers to elicit abusive responses from their supervisors, we theorize that high performers may also be victims of abusive supervision. Specifically, we draw on social dominance theory to hypothesize and demonstrate that subordinate performance can have a positive, indirect effect on abusive supervision through the mediator of perceived threat to hierarchy. And this positive indirect effect prevails when the supervisor’s social dominance orientation is high. We found support for our theoretical model using data collected from supervisor–subordinate dyads.