The moderator role of supervisor's gender and participants' psychological resilience on the relationship between power distance and attitudes towards abusive supervisor behavior

The aim of this thesis is to examine the moderator role of supervisor's gender and participants' psychological resilience on the predictive relationship between power distance and abusive supervision attribution. As part of the research, the scenarios that contain abusive supervisor behaviors were created and offered to participants. Following the scenarios, the participants were asked the questions that measure attitudes towards abusive supervisor behavior in the scenario. Besides, with created questions, the perceived suitability of the subordinate's intention of complaining the abusive supervisor and turnover was evaluated. In this research, besides the scenarios containing an abusive supervisor's behavior that was developed for the purpose of the study, previously developed and adapted scales in Turkey was used. The data was collected on the internet with an online survey that enables online data collection. The participants of this study are white-collar employees who work actively in different sectors. The participants were reached with the snowball sampling method. Firstly, the effect of attitudes towards abusive supervisor behavior on perceived suitability of subordinate who has a part in the scenario intention of complaining and turnover was examined but no significant effect was obtained. Afterwards, the effect of power distance on attitudes towards abusive supervisor behavior was examined and the negative predictive effect was obtained. Depending on this result, when the power distance level of employees decreases, the negative attribution towards abusive supervision's behavior increases. In the predictive relationship between power distance and attitudes towards abusive supervisor behavior, the moderator role of supervisor's gender and participants' psychological resilience was examined but was not found to have any moderator effect. There was a difference between male and female participants' responses to whether the subordinate should complain or turnover after being exposed to such an abusive supervisor behavior depicted in scenarios. As a result of the analyses, it was found that male participants perceived more approval intention to complain to abusive supervisor at scenario and turnover. Finally, the relationship between being exposed to similar abusive behavior in the work life of participants and their attitudes towards abusive supervision depicted in the scenarios was examined but no significant difference was observed.