Moderating effects of organizational justice and commitment in the relationships of abusive supervision with employee outcomes

Abusive supervision includes regular hostile behaviors such as silent treatment and ridiculing subordinates in front of others (Tepper 2000: 178). It is related to several negative work outcomes for employees such as higher turnover intentions, negative attitudes toward work, and low job satisfaction (Zellars et al. 2002:1068). Therefore, abusive supervision is an important issue in organizations. However, the negative effects of abusive supervision may be weaker when subordinates have high levels of organizational justice and organizational commitment than when they have low levels of these perceptions and attitudes (Tepper et al. 2006: 102; Wang et al. 2020: 52). The present study aimed to investigate the moderating effects of organizational justice (i.e., distributive, procedural, and interactional) and organizational commitment (i.e., continuance, affective, and normative) on the relationships of abusive supervision with employees' turnover intention, job satisfaction, and organizational identification. I suggested that abusive supervision is negatively related to job satisfaction and organizational identification; and positively related to turnover intention. In addition, organizational commitment is proposed to moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intention negatively; organizational justice is proposed to moderate the relationships between abusive supervision with job satisfaction and organizational identification positively. Data were collected from 485 working adults. The results showed that abusive supervision was negatively associated with organizational identification and job satisfaction and positively associated with turnover intention. Moreover, interactional justice significantly and negatively moderated between abusive supervision and intrinsic job satisfaction and between abusive supervision and turnover intention. Distributive justice significantly and negatively moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intention. The findings were discussed along with theoretical and practical implications, as well as suggestions for future research. Keywords: Abusive supervision, Organizational justice, Organizational identification, Turnover intention, Organizational commitment, Job satisfaction.