Can abusive supervision motivate customer-oriented service sabotage? A multilevel research

摘要

This study explores the influence of abusive supervision on customer-oriented service sabotage (COSS). Based on social identity theory, it investigates the mediating role of organizational identification. Meanwhile, it examines the moderating role of sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment (SIM) in strengthening the effects of abusive supervision on COSS and organizational identification. To reduce the concerns of common method bias (CMB), we administrated three-wave and two-resource data collection from thirteen hotels of three cities in China. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and bootstrapping are utilized to examine hypotheses. The results showed that abusive supervision positively affects service employees' COSS through lowering their organizational identification. Furthermore, it was found that SIM can magnify abusive supervision's impacts on COSS and organizational identification such that these influences were stronger for those with higher SIM. Finally, contributions and limitations are discussed.