International Journal of Stress Management

Do Employees Cope Effectively With Abusive Supervision at Work?

An Exploratory Study
Dana Yagil, Hasida Ben-Zur, and Inbal Tamir
Online First Publication, October 4, 2010. doi: 10.1037/a0020548

CITATION
Yagil, D., Ben-Zur, H., & Tamir, I. (2010, October 4). Do Employees Cope Effectively With Abusive
Supervision at Work? An Exploratory Study. International Journal of Stress Management. Advance
online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0020548
Do Employees Cope Effectively With Abusive
Supervision at Work? An Exploratory Study
Dana Yagil, Hasida Ben-Zur, and Inbal Tamir
University of Haifa

Abusive supervision is a major organizational stressor yet little is known about

how employees cope with such stress. The purpose of the present study was
twofold: (a) to develop a new scale assessing how employees cope with abusive
supervision, and (b) to investigate the effectiveness of coping with abusive
supervision in terms of negative and positive affective outcomes. The study was
conducted in two parts: Two samples of 108 and 101 student employees com-
pleted the initial versions of the new coping with abusive supervision scale; and
another sample of 225 employees completed the final, 25-item coping scale,
which consisted of five subscales: ingratiation, direct communication, avoidance
of contact, support-seeking, and reframing. Additional measures used were
abusive supervision, influence tactics scale, abuse-related negative and positive
affect scales, and social desirability. The internal and test–retest reliability levels
of the subscales of the newly developed questionnaire were high and it was
validated by its subscales associations with influence tactics subscales. High
levels of abusive supervision were related to coping strategies of avoiding
contact, support seeking, ingratiation, and reframing. The first two strategies
were also related positively to negative affect and mediated the effects of abusive
supervision on affect. The results suggest that most coping strategies are invoked
in response to abusive supervision. They are, however, found to be mostly
ineffective in regard to their relationship with employees’ affective reactions.
Keywords: abusive supervision, coping, negative affect, stress

Employees who report to an abusive supervisor frequently find them-

selves being publicly ridiculed, blamed for mistakes they have not made, or
being responded to with silence (Tepper, 2000; Tepper, Duffy, & Shaw,
2001). Not surprisingly, constant exposure to such behaviors by a significant

Dana Yagil, Hasida Ben-Zur, and Inbal Tamir, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health
Sciences, University of Haifa.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Professor Hasida Ben-Zur,
School of Social Work, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Mt.
Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail: zbz@netvision.net.il

1
International Journal of Stress Management © 2010 American Psychological Association
2010, Vol. ●●, No. ●, 000 – 000 1072-5245/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020548
2 Coping With Abusive Supervision

authority figure results in considerable distress (Tepper, 2007). Furthermore,

the asymmetrical power relationship between employee and supervisor usu-
ally inhibits reactions that would have been possible in other contexts, such
as direct retaliation to abuse (Tepper et al., 2001). The purpose of the present
study is to investigate how employees cope with this stressful situation,
considering their limited options for response.
Tepper defined abusive supervision as “subordinates’ perceptions of the
extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal
and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact” (Tepper, 2000, p. 178).
Abusive supervision has been linked with manifestations of psychological
distress (Tepper, 2000) such as job strain (Harvey, Stoner, Hochwarter, &
Kacmar, 2007), job tension (Breaux, Perrewé, Hall, Frink, & Hochwarter,
2008), burnout (Breaux et al., 2008; Duffy, Ganster & Pagon, 2002; Tepper,
2000; Tsung & Changya, 2009; Yagil, 2006), somatic health complaints
(Duffy et al., 2002), and reduced self-esteem (Burton & Hoobler, 2006) and
self-efficacy (Duffy et al., 2002). Adverse effects of abusive supervision may
also spill over to employees’ lives outside work (Schat, Frone, & Kelloway,
2006), thereby affecting general wellbeing as well as resulting in absentee-
ism, health care costs, and reduced productivity (Tepper, Duffy, Henle, &
Lambert, 2006). Tepper maintains that abusive supervisory behavior is “a
significant social problem that warrants continued scholarly inquiry” (Tep-
per, 2007, p. 262).
The positive relationship of abusive supervision with distress reactions
can be best explained by the cognitive model of stress and coping (Lazarus,
1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), according to which stress is the result of
primary and secondary appraisals. Primary appraisal of an event can be of
three kinds: loss, threat or challenge. Loss or threat of loss may be material
(e.g., loss of money) or psychological (e.g., separation from a close friend).
Secondary appraisal is a person’s evaluation of his or her ability to cope with
the threat. Constant abuse on the part of the supervisor actually involves loss
or the threat of loss in several areas: it may be perceived as a threat to a
person’s employment (Harvey et al., 2007), and because it often involves
humiliation and derogation it also reduces dignity and self-esteem, as well as
damaging one’s organizational reputation in the case of public derogation.
Furthermore, because abusive supervision is often arbitrary it poses a threat
to the employee’s sense of control over his or her fate (Duffy et al., 2002).
Behavioral and cognitive efforts to manage stress are conceptualized as
coping strategies (e.g., Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), either
problem-focused (aimed at problem-solving) or emotion-focused (aimed at
reducing or managing emotional distress). To date, few studies have explored
the ways employees cope with the stress caused by abusive supervisors.
Tepper, Moss, Lockhart, & Carr (2007) found that openly discussing rela-
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 3

tionship problems with the supervisor reduced the abusive supervision/

distress association, while avoiding contact with the supervisor resulted in a
stronger relationship. The authors suggest that the emotion-focused strategy
of avoiding a hostile supervisor may have negative consequences reflected in
role ambiguity, reduced productivity, and reinforcement of the subordinate’s
self-image as a target for further victimization. Nonetheless, employees
prefer to avoid contact with an abusive supervisor because, in the short run,
not undergoing abuse is highly rewarding (Tepper & Lockhart, 2005; Tepper
et al., 2007). Thus, employees’ communication behaviors tend to exacerbate
rather than neutralize the negative effects of exposure to an abusive super-
visor (Tepper & Lockhart, 2005). In a study of interpersonal influence,
Harvey et al. (2007) found that the positive relationship between abusive
supervision and job strain decreased when subordinates used ingratiation as
an upward-influence tactic. In another study on upward-influence tactics,
Yagil (2006) found that forceful tactics toward an abusive supervisor were
positively related to employee burnout.
Although the studies were designed to measure employee coping with
abusive supervision, they only measured interpersonal behaviors. However,
coping consists of both externally directed interpersonal behaviors (e.g., ingra-
tiation) and internally directed strategies that are designed to affect the individ-
ual’s cognitions rather than another person’s behavior (e.g., minimization).
Furthermore, none of the above studies employed scales of coping strategies or
scales adapted for measuring coping with abusive supervision. Harvey and
colleagues scale (2007) measured general ingratiation, Yagil’s (2006) was a
general scale of influence tactics, while Tepper and colleagues (2007) measured
employees’ reactions using a general scale of employee communication with
supervisor. Furthermore, only a small number of scales have been developed to
explore specific coping strategies in the context of work and organizational
stress, such as coping with job-related stress (Latack, 1986; Spielberger &
Reheiser, 1994), or coping with harassment at work (see Cortina & Magley,
2009). Thus, the first purpose of the present study was to develop a new scale
aimed at the assessment of coping with abusive supervision strategies. The
proposed strategies are based on the coping models of Lazarus and Folkman
(1984) and Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989), and incorporate problem-
focused and emotion-focused strategies. However, in selecting the strategies for
inclusion in the scale we were guided by characteristics of the stress context.
The source of stress in abusive supervision is interpersonal. Extant studies
show that employee reactions to abuse are often also interpersonal, directed at the
supervisor (Tepper et al., 2001). Our coping scale consists of two problem-
focused coping strategies (see Table 1) used by employees in attempts to
improve their relationship with abusive supervisors: Ingratiation: that is, flattery,
conformity, and doing favors for others (Harvey et al., 2007; Tedeschi &
Melburg, 1984; Yagil, 2006); and direct communication, that is, communicating
4 Coping With Abusive Supervision

Table 1. Coping Strategies Description

Coping strategies Description
Problem-focused Attempts to stop abusive behavior
1. Ingratiation Stimulating positive emotions towards the employee
in the supervisor
2. Direct communication Open discussion with the supervisor
Emotion-focused Attempts to reduce abuse-related distress
3. Avoiding contact Avoiding the supervisor
4. Support-seeking Talking with others about abusive occurrences and
consequent emotions
5. Reframing Engaging in reassuring thoughts

relational expectations, questioning relational injustices, and openly discussing

relationship problems with supervisors (Tepper et al., 2007; Waldron, 1991).
Ingratiation and direct communication are both problem-focused strategies be-
cause the behaviors they describe aim at solving or eliminating the problem, and
are designed to reduce abuse either by creating a more positive attitude in the
supervisor, or by convincing the supervisor that his or her behavior toward the
employee is unacceptable. Emotion-focused coping, intended to reduce psycho-
logical distress, consists of two strategic employee behaviors within the social
environment that reflect attempts to reduce stress by maintaining distance from
the source of stress and/or approaching people who provide support, that is,
avoiding contact with an abusive supervisor (Tepper, 2007) and support-seeking,
that is, obtaining moral support, sympathy, or understanding (Carver, Scheier, &
Weintraub, 1989) from others. An additional emotion-focused strategy repre-
sents attempts to generate self-reassurance by reframing (based on Carver et al.,
1989), that is, by mentally decreasing the threat associated with the abuse.
The second purpose of the following study was to assess the extent to which
abusive supervision at work relates to affective reactions and coping strategies
aimed at dealing with the abuse, and their effectiveness in terms of their
differential associations with affect. The research model depicted in Figure 1 is
based on the Lazarus and Folkman (1984) and Carver et al. (1989) coping
models and on research findings (e.g., Ben-Zur, 2009; Ben-Zur, Yagil, and Oz,
2005; Tepper, 2000). In this model, coping is conceived to be a mediator of the
effects of abusive supervision on affective reactions. This conjecture follows
from the cognitive model of stress (Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984),

Figure 1. The research model.

Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 5

which depicts coping as a mediator of the effects of stressors and threats on

short-term emotional reactions, and is also based on empirical findings from
studies in which coping was found to mediate the associations between custom-
ers’ aggression and service providers’ burnout (Ben-Zur & Yagil, 2005), be-
tween psychological abuse from intimate partner and women’s distress (Calvete,
Corral, & Estevez, 2008), and between community violence and inner-city
African American adolescents’ psychological symptoms of distress (Dempsey,
2002). The hypotheses were:

H1: High levels of abusive supervision would be related to both prob-

lem- and emotion-focused coping strategies.

H2: Problem-focused coping would be related to high positive affect and

low negative affect whereas emotion-focused coping strategies would
show an opposite pattern.

H3: Coping strategies would mediate the effects of abusive supervision

on affect.

The following study is divided into two parts: Part 1 presents the
development stages of the new questionnaire and its psychometric properties,
and Part 2 presents the method and results of the sample of employees used
to test the study hypotheses.

PART 1: SCALE DEVELOPMENT

Method

Samples and Procedure

(a) A sample of 108 Israeli social workers enrolled in graduate courses

in the social work school of an Israeli university, consisting of 71.2% women,
with mean age was 29.7 (SD ⫽ 6.18, range 21–57), and 82.7% Israeli-born,
43.3% married, 86.5% Jews and the rest Christians, Muslims, or other
religion (5.8, 3.8, and 3.8%, respectively) completed the first version of the
inventory. (b) An additional sample of 101 Israeli social workers enrolled in
graduate studies, consisting of 78.8% women, mean age 35.23, SD ⫽ 8.89,
range 24 –57, 85.7% born in Israel, 61.6% married, 77.3% Jews and the rest
Christians, Muslims, or other religion (8.2, 12.4, and 2.1%, respectively)
completed the coping scale and another instrument used for validation
purposes (c) A subsample of 49 social workers participating in Part 2 of the
study (see description in Part 2) completed the coping with abusive super-
6 Coping With Abusive Supervision

vision scale twice, 2 months apart, to assess its test-retest levels. All students
completed the questionnaires at the university, in classes, voluntarily, and
anonymously.

Inventories

(a) Coping With Abusive Supervision Scale

This is a new scale developed by the authors specifically for the study in
several stages. The first stage consisted of an initial list of 100 items
generated by the first two authors, using a deductive approach, guided by
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) and Lazarus’s (1999) cognitive model of stress
and coping, the COPE scale (Carver et al., 1989), and previous studies on
employees reactions to abusive supervision (Harvey et al., 2007; Tepper et
al., 2007; Yagil, 2006). The items were then analyzed by three graduate
students with comprehensive knowledge of the coping literature. Based on
the judgments, 60% of the items were deleted (unclear, repetitive) and 40
items were retained as the first version of the inventory. The first sample (n ⫽
108) were given examples of abusive supervision, and then asked to rate the
frequency of experiencing such behaviors by their supervisor (1 ⫽ highly
frequent; 5 ⫽ highly rare). Then they were asked to rate the 40-items coping
questionnaire according to how often they employed each strategy (0 ⫽ not
at all; 4 ⫽ a lot). Most participants reported that they experienced frequent
(21.6%) or rare (27.8%) abusive supervision, only a few reported very
frequent (8.2%) or highly frequent (1.0%) abuse and the rest (41.2%) re-
ported highly rare abuse. An exploratory factor analysis applied to the coping
items revealed a structure of 10 factors, of which six were prominent. A rerun
with the six main factors revealed six dimensions of 6 –7 items each, of which
four accorded with the proposed coping strategies: support-seeking (14.81%
of the variance), direct communication (9.4%), ingratiation (8.89%), and
avoiding contact (8.47%). Items concerning reframing were loaded on two
factors, explaining 9.19% and 6.79% of the variance. The second sample
(n ⫽ 101) completed the second version of the scale. This version consisted
of the 40-item scale plus two items, to achieve seven items per subscale and
was used to derive the final version of the scale.

(b) Influence Tactics Scale

The scale is based on Kipnis, Schmidt, and Wilkinson (1980) and

consists of eight tactics: ingratiation, rationality, exchange, assertiveness,
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 7

sanctions, blocking, upward appeals, and coalitions was used to assess

convergent validity. In the original study the reliability of most scales was .60
to .70. An exploratory factor analysis applied to this scale revealed the
following three factors: ingratiation and exchange, threat and blocking,
rationality and assertiveness. The correlations between the two items in each
scale were .61, .59, and .67, respectively (all p ⬍ .0001). This scale was used
to validate the coping with abusive supervision scale.

Results

The second version of the coping with abusive supervision scale was
subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Eight factors emerged, five of them with
the designated items. Retaining only the 25 items representing these five dimen-
sions, a confirmatory factor analysis replicated the exact five-factor structure:
direct communication, with 16.34% variance explained, support seeking
(16.0%), avoidance of contact (13.14%), ingratiation (12.53%), and reframing
(12.16%). Internal reliabilities were high: support seeking .93, direct communi-
cation .93, avoidance of contact .87, ingratiation .82, reframing .81.
To assess convergent validity (Campbell & Fiske, 1959), correlations
between the coping with abusive supervision and the influence tactics sub-
scales were calculated, and found to be as predicted: ingratiation and direct
communication were related to ingratiation/exchange (r ⫽ .52, p ⬍ .05) and
assertiveness/rationality (r ⫽ .28, p ⬍ .05), respectively. Finally, test–retest
reliability values were based on the correlations between first and second
assessments of the coping scales, which were medium to high and significant:
.54, .63, .69, .72, and .73 (p ⬍ .001) for direct communication, ingratiation,
support seeking, avoiding contact, and reframing, respectively.
The final scale used in the study is presented in Appendix 1. It includes
25 items, with a 0 –3 rating scale (0 ⫽ not at all, 3 ⫽ to a large extent). The
scale was translated by a professional English-speaking editor, and the
translation validated by the authors.

PART 2: SCALE TESTING

Method

Sample and Procedure

Employees working in two hospitals (n ⫽ 194), mostly nurses (80%),

and graduate social work students (n ⫽ 106) completed the abusive super-
vision scale (Tepper, 2000) as described below. Those who reported never
8 Coping With Abusive Supervision

experiencing any abusive supervision were not included, which left 71% of
the first sample (n ⫽ 136) and 84% (n ⫽ 89) of the second. Of the
Participants 72.3% were women, 66.8% Israeli born, most of them Jewish
(81.6%), and married (74.1%). Their age range was 21– 62 (M ⫽ 39.54,
SD ⫽ 9.98), years of education range 8 –26 (M ⫽ 15.31, SD ⫽ 2.32), and
seniority years range 0 – 40 (M ⫽ 12.03, SD ⫽ 10.13). No significant
differences were found between the participants and those of the original
sample in any of the demographic variables. The scales were completed
personally by the hospital employees during work and by the students at the
university. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. The study was ap-
proved by the internal review board of the university.

Inventories

(a) Coping With Abusive Supervision Scale

The new 25-item scale development and psychometric properties are

described in Part 1.

(b) Abusive Supervision

The 15-item scale developed by Tepper (2000) asks employees about

experiencing supervisors’ abusive behavior (e.g., ridicule, invasion of pri-
vacy, rudeness, lying), rated on a 1–5 scale (1 ⫽ never; 5 ⫽ highly frequent).
The questionnaire was translated by the back-translation method, and its
internal reliability was .90.

(c) Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)

The scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988; Hebrew version Ben-Zur,
2002) comprises 20 adjectives describing positive and negative affective
states (e.g., enthusiastic, hostile). The two subscales, namely, positive affect
(PA), and negative affect (NA), showed high internal reliabilities (.84 to .90)
and were validated through their correlations with anxiety and depression
(Watson et al., 1988). In the present study, affect was assessed as a reaction
to abusive supervision: participants were required to indicate how strongly
they experienced each of the emotions when treated negatively by their
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 9

Table 2. Factor Structure of the Coping With Abusive Supervision Scale

Support- Direct Avoiding
Item number seeking communication contact Reframing Ingratiation
1 .87
2 .90
8 .79
12 .67
19 .73
5 .82
10 .87
11 .84
15 .75
20 .74
4 .67
7 .76
13 .71
17 .82
22 .73
3 .71
9 .59
23 .78
24 .82
25 .81
6 .58
14 .85
16 .82
18 .77
21 .78
Note. Items are given in Appendix 1.

supervisor (1 ⫽ not at all, 5 ⫽ a lot). The two subscales constructed to assess

PA1 and NA showed high internal reliabilities (see Table 3).

(d) Social Desirability

This 8-item short version of the scale, based on Crowne and Marlowe
(1964) (Hebrew version, Ben-Zur, 2002) explores social desirability, namely
the tendency to portray oneself in an overly favorable light (e.g., “I am
always willing to admit that I have made a mistake”). Participants are asked
to report whether each statement is true or false. The scale showed medium
reliability values in several Israeli samples (.57 to .66; Ben-Zur, 2003) and in
the preset study it was satisfactory (see Table 3).

1
The PA subscale was based on 9 items since item 3 showed low correlation with scale
total.
 10

Table 3. Psychometric Properties and Pearson Correlations of Study Variables

Variable M (SD) ␣ 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ
1. Abusive supervision 1.59 (0.56) .90 .28 .13 .48 .41 .27 .02 .26 ⫺.16ⴱ
2. Ingratiation 0.84 (0.74) .84 .22ⴱⴱ .35ⴱⴱ .27ⴱⴱ .33ⴱⴱ .13 .23ⴱⴱ .09
3. Direct communication 1.20 (0.88) .89 .30ⴱⴱ .32ⴱⴱ .42ⴱⴱ .36ⴱⴱ .14ⴱ .06
4. Avoiding contact 0.95 (0.80) .86 .50ⴱⴱ .54ⴱⴱ .06 .42ⴱⴱ ⫺.02
5. Support-seeking 1.37 (0.87) .90 .47ⴱⴱ ⫺.01 .47ⴱⴱ ⫺.14ⴱ
6. Reframing 1.52 (0.89) .88 .18ⴱⴱ .32ⴱⴱ ⫺.02
7. Positive affect 2.64 (0.87) .86 .08 .02
8. Negative affect 2.52 (0.87) .90 ⫺.12
9. Social desirability 1.59 (0.29) .72 —
ⴱ ⴱⴱ
p ⬍ .05. p ⬍ .01.
Coping With Abusive Supervision
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 11

Results

Table 3 presents the scale means’ SDs, reliability values and intercorre-
lations for the study sample. The subscales reliabilities were high, in the
range of .84 to .90. A confirmatory factor analysis replicated the scale
structure (see Table 2) with the following percentages of explained variance:
support-seeking, 14.63%; direct communication, 14.33%, avoiding contact,
13.85%; ingratiation, 13.47%; reframing, 13.15% variance explained. Table
3 presents the scale means’ SDs, reliability values and intercorrelations for
the study sample. The subscales reliabilities were high, in the range of .84 to
.90. Table 3 also presents the intercorrelations of coping strategies with
abusive supervision and with NA and PA. As can be seen in the table, high
abusive supervision was related positively and significantly to NA and to
ingratiation, avoiding contact, support seeking, and reframing. All coping
strategies were correlated positively and significantly with NA, but only
direct communication and reframing were also positively correlated with PA.
To assess the independent contribution of abuse to each coping subscale and
the contribution of coping to affect, multiple regression analyses were con-
ducted, using background and social desirability as control variables. The
background variables included gender, age, education, religion, and origin.
Group dummy variables were also included [(Dummy 1 ⫽ social workers (0)
hospitals 1 and 2 workers (1); Dummy 2 ⫽ hospital 1 workers (0) social
workers ⫹ hospital 2 (1)]. As seen in Table 4, after controlling for back-
ground variables, abusive supervision still contributed positively to all coping
strategies except direct communication, mostly confirming H1. Table 5
shows the hierarchical regressions conducted to assess, in the first step, the
contribution of abusive supervision to NA or PA, and in the second step, the
additional contribution of coping strategies. The results for the first step

Table 4. Multiple Regressions of Coping Subscales on Background Variables and

Abusive Supervision
Independent Direct Avoiding Support
variables Ingratiation communication contact seeking Reframing
Dummy l ⫺.05 .18 .18 ⫺.26ⴱ .02
Dummy 2 ⫺.04 .17 .24ⴱⴱ .01 .20ⴱⴱ
Gender ⫺.06 .07 .13 .02 .16
Age ⫺.14 ⫺.09 ⫺.20ⴱ ⫺.03 ⫺.10
Years of education ⫺.06 .00 ⫺.03 ⫺.01 .04
Origin ⫺.01 ⫺.02 .03 .04 .03
Religion .09 .21ⴱⴱ .07 ⫺.16ⴱ .16ⴱ
Social desirability .23ⴱ .11 .08 .07 .15
Abusive supervision .33ⴱⴱⴱ .12 .46ⴱⴱⴱ .36ⴱⴱⴱ .23ⴱⴱ
R2 .14 .08 .29 .27 .13
F(9, 175) 3.35ⴱⴱⴱ 1.58 7.89ⴱⴱⴱ 7.11ⴱⴱⴱ 2.94ⴱⴱ
ⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱⴱ
p ⬍ .05. p ⬍ .01. p ⬍ .001.
12 Coping With Abusive Supervision

Table 5. Hierarchical Regressions of Negative and Positive Affect on Background

Variables, Abusive Supervision, and Coping Subscales
Negative affect Positive affect
Independent variables Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2
Dummy l ⫺.09 ⫺.07 .13 .07
Dummy 2 .05 ⫺.02 .07 .02
Gender .06 .02 .10 .08
Age ⫺.22ⴱ ⫺.15 ⫺.02 .00
Years of education ⫺.08 ⫺.07 .00 .00
Origin .08 .06 ⫺.06 ⫺.05
Religion ⫺.11 ⫺.10 .20ⴱ .10
Social desirability .06 .00 .02 ⫺.03
Abusive supervision .22ⴱⴱ .01 .00 ⫺.01
Ingratiation .04 .07
Direct communication ⫺.04 .33ⴱⴱⴱ
Avoiding contact .23ⴱⴱ ⫺.09
Support seeking .22ⴱⴱ ⫺.09
Reframing .09 .07
R2 .15 .29 .05 .16
F 3.53ⴱⴱⴱ 4.86ⴱⴱⴱ 1.0 2.24ⴱⴱ
df 9,174 14,169 14,168
ⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱⴱ
p ⬍ .05. p ⬍ .01. p ⬍ .001.

showed that abusive supervision contributed significantly to high NA, but not
low PA. The second step results showed that the effect of abusive supervision
on NA disappears after including coping in the analysis. The coping results
suggest that H2 was confirmed in part, since the emotion-focused strategies
of support seeking and avoiding contact contributed to high levels of NA, and
direct communication contributed to PA. However, ingratiation and refram-
ing did not contribute to either positive or negative affect in these analyses.
The results for abusive supervision effects suggest that support seeking and
avoiding contact strategies may mediate its effects on NA.
The mediation tests were based on Baron and Kenny (1986) guidelines
and the Sobel test (Sobel, 1982) performed by means of an Internet-based
interactive software program (Preacher & Leonardelli, 2006). According to
Baron and Kenny (1986), mediation is tested in several steps: (a) the
independent variable is correlated with the dependent variable (path c); (b)
the independent variable is correlated with the mediator (path a); (c) the
mediator is correlated with the dependent variable (path b); (d) the effect of
the independent variable on the dependent variable when controlling for the
mediator (path (c⬘)) is either zero (in case of complete mediation) or signif-
icantly reduced (in the case of partial mediation). Accordingly, we tested
mediation effects as follows: The first column (path c) in Table 6 shows
regression results of the dependent variable NA on the independent variable
abusive supervision, the second (path a) shows regression results of the
coping mediators on abusive supervision, the third (path b) and the forth
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 13

Table 6. Explaining the Negative Affect and Abusive Supervision Association: Mediation
Analyses Results-Beta Coefficients (and t-Tests)
Mediator Path c Path a Path b Path c⬘ Sobel Z
ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ ⴱⴱ
Support seeking .26 (3.94 ) .41 (6.57 ) .44 (6.64 ) .08 (1.25) 4.64ⴱⴱⴱ
Avoiding contact .26 (3.94ⴱⴱ) .48 (7.96ⴱⴱ) .38 (5.37ⴱⴱ) .09 (1.22) 4.45ⴱⴱⴱ
Note. Path c: negative affect regressed on abusive supervision; Path a: coping strategy
(mediator) regressed on abusive supervision; Path b: negative affect regressed on coping
together with abusive supervision; Path c⬘: negative affect regressed on abusive supervision,
together with coping; t-tests for beta coefficients are given in parentheses.
ⴱⴱ
p ⬍ .01. ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

(path (c⬘)) columns show the regression results of NA on the mediators

and abusive supervision, respectively, and the fifth column presents the
Sobel test results. As can be seen in the table, in each analysis the
inclusion of the mediator (i.e., coping strategy) lowered the association of
abusive supervision with NA. Thus, H3 was partially supported, suggest-
ing that some of the effects of abusive supervision may have been
mediated by the coping strategies of support seeking and avoiding con-
tact, leading to high levels of NA.

Discussion

The present research presents a newly developed scale to assess coping

with abusive supervision. The final version of the scale contained five
subscales: two problem-focused strategies, namely ingratiation and direct
communication, and three emotion-focused strategies, namely avoiding con-
tact, support-seeking, and reframing. The results concerning the scale psy-
chometric properties showed that the five subscales had high internal and
test–retest reliability values, and it also showed convergent validity by its
subscales associations with the influence tactics subscales.
The study also assessed employees coping patterns in the context of
abusive supervision. The effectiveness of the five coping strategies was
assessed by their associations with abuse-related negative and positive affect.
The results of the study showed that abusive supervision was related posi-
tively to most coping strategies, and that two of these strategies, avoiding
contact and support-seeking, were related positively to negative affect and
may have mediated the effects of abusive supervision on this negative
affective reaction to abuse.
The finding that abuse was related positively to four out of the five
coping strategies, suggests that employees use both problem- and emotion-
focused strategies when confronting supervisor abuse. Such results were also
reported by Folkman and Lazarus (1980) who found people to report both
14 Coping With Abusive Supervision

types of strategies in coping with life events. The strongest relationship

between abuse and coping was with avoiding contact while the weakest
relationship was with direct communication. Of the emotion-focused strate-
gies in the scale, avoiding contact is the only strategy that involves com-
pletely distancing oneself from the stressor, that is, the abusive supervisor,
while support-seeking and reframing require awareness and processing of the
stressor.
Thus, the study results suggest that as employees experience high levels
of abuse, they tend to disengage from the supervisor as much as they can,
avoiding meeting or interacting with him/her in the various contexts of the
working environment. Such a strategy is not functional in solving the prob-
lem, and while it might lead to short-term relief, it can impede adaptive
coping in the long run. Thus, in terms of outcomes, such avoidance might be
the most harmful emotion-focused strategy, as demonstrated by Tepper et al.
(2007) who found avoidance to elevate distress in a relationship with an
abusive supervisor. Furthermore, avoidance coping in general is found to be
ineffective and highly related to negative affect in general and in a variety of
specific contexts (see Ben-Zur, 2009). Indeed in the present study avoiding
contact is related to high negative affect, thus attesting to the ineffectiveness
of this strategy. The support-seeking scale in the present study was also
related to negative affect. It consisted of emotional rather than instrumental
support, and according to Carver et al. (1989) it may also be expected to be
ineffective, as found in the present study, because it may be used as an outlet
for one’s feelings, exacerbate distress, and prevent one from dealing with the
problem in a problem-focused mode.
These data are in line with other study results conducted in other
contexts. Thus, the use of emotion-focused coping as a reaction to customers’
aggression was related to depersonalization (a burnout component) among
service providers (Ben-Zur & Yagil, 2005). Among women, disengagement
coping mediated the intimate partner violence and high distress associations
(Calvete et al., 2008), and among inner-city African American adolescents
avoidance and aggression coping strategies (negative coping) mediated the
association of exposure to community violence with psychological symptoms
(Dempsey, 2002).
In contrast to emotion-focused coping strategies, direct communication
is intended to achieve immediate reduction of stress by modifying the
supervisor’s behavior. However, the study results show that people do not
tend to use this strategy in dealing with supervisor abuse, and less so than
using ingratiation. Because confronting an abusive supervisor presumably
requires considerable determination and courage (Tepper et al., 2001), direct
communication requires more personal resources than ingratiation. However,
unlike ingratiation, direct communication was related to positive affect, as
found in past research for problem-focused coping (e.g., Ben-Zur, 2009;
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 15

Ben-Zur et al., 2005; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000). Thus, although direct
communication cannot be considered a strong mediator of the abuse-negative
affect relationship, it does suggest that using it may be adaptive in terms of
the resulting affective responses to abuse.
The study reported in this paper has some limitations. First, its cross-
sectional design prevents drawing cause and effect conclusions. Although it
may be reasonable to posit that coping efforts affect emotions, it could also
be argued that an employee’s emotions affect his or her choice of coping
strategies. Additionally, Most of the participants in our sample were from the
helping professions. Thus, frequency of use of strategies might be different
among employees in other types of job or contexts. Furthermore, all data
were gathered from participants’ self-reports, which may have caused com-
mon-source bias and led to inflated correlations among variables. It should be
pointed out, though, that the findings was obtained while controlling for
social desirability.
Lastly, respondents were asked to answer the abusive supervision scale
in regard to “your supervisor” without further specifications of the supervi-
sor’s role. Thus, while we believe that most respondents have answered the
scale in regard to their direct supervisor, some respondents might have
referred to a more remote supervisor. It would be desirable in future studies
to specify the type of supervisor as well as to compare strategies for coping
with close and remote abusive supervisors. Furthermore, it would be desir-
able to explore the effect of job security (permanent vs. temporary employ-
ees) and organizational status on the strategies employees use to cope with
abusive supervisors.
The coping with abusive supervision scale could be used in future
research to study antecedents and outcomes of different strategies. For
example, in light of the importance of perceived control in coping (e.g.,
Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), researchers could explore what determines the
employee’s evaluation of control over supervisory behavior. It could also
explore outcomes of coping in terms of organizational attitudes and perfor-
mance. Because abusive supervision is an interpersonal stressor, the effec-
tiveness of coping strategies can be also measured in regard to their effect on
the quality of interaction with the supervisor. The scale should also be
examined in other countries, because strategies relating to supervisory abuse
are likely to be affected by cultural norms. For example, in Israel, because the
power distance between employee and supervisor is low (Hofstede, 2001),
direct communication is likely to be more pronounced than in other countries.
Because managers might unintentionally engage in abusive behaviors,
our finding can be applied to training programs designed to increase man-
agers’ awareness of the consequences of abuse. First, providing managers
with information regarding the efforts employees put in to coping with
supervisory abuse is important in itself because it reveals the stress caused by
16 Coping With Abusive Supervision

such behaviors. Furthermore, managers should be aware that some problem

subordinate behaviors (e.g., avoidance) might be responses to their own
behavior which is experienced as abusive by the subordinate. Thus, detection
of such behaviors among subordinates should alert managers the possibility
that their behavior is some way offensive.
In summary, supervisors’ abuse causes considerable distress to employ-
ees. Our scale of coping with abusive supervision consists of employees’
everyday behaviors intended to reduce that stress. Results suggest that the
coping strategies used to deal with the abuse are mostly emotion-focused
strategies and maladaptive. These results may suggest that individual em-
ployees have no solutions on how to cope effectively with abusive supervi-
sion, and call for intensive future research to discover and implement effec-
tive strategies for coping with abusive supervision at work.

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Appendix 1: Coping With Abusive Supervision Scale Items

INGRATIATION

1. (6) I take every opportunity to be nice to the supervisor so that

he/she will think I am a good friend.
2. (14) I support the supervisor in matters that are important to him/her,
so that he/she will see I am on his/her side.
3. (16) I offer to help the supervisor with tasks connected to work, so
that he/she will behave better.
4. (18) I behave in a friendly manner towards the supervisor so that
he/she will stop acting like that.
5. (21) I publicly express my belief in the supervisor in his/her pres-
ence so that he/she will feel that I’m on his/her side.

DIRECT COMMUNICATION

6. (5) When I talk to the supervisor I ask him/her clearly to change

his/her attitude.
7. (11) I talk to the supervisor about the problems in our relationship so
that he/she will stop acting that way.
8. (10) I tell the supervisor directly and clearly that he/she must not
treat me like that.
9. (15) I Insist that the supervisor stop behaving like that towards me.
10. (20) I ask the supervisor politely to stop behaving like that.

(Appendix continues)
Yagil, Ben-Zur, and Tamir 19

AVOIDANCE OF CONTACT

11. (4) I avoid having to work together with the supervisor.

12. (7) I try to encounter the supervisor as little as possible.
13. (13) At meetings I try to sit as far from the supervisor as possible.
14. (22) If I see the supervisor from a distance, I try to ‘disappear’, to
prevent meeting him/her.
15. (17) I try to have the least possible contact with the supervisor.

SUPPORT-SEEKING

16. (1) I explain to others how my feelings are hurt by the supervisor’s
behavior.
17. (8) I pour out my heart to others about the supervisor’s behavior
towards me.
18. (2) I talk to other people about how the supervisor’s behavior upsets
me.
19. (12) I relieve myself by talking to other people about the supervi-
sor’s behavior.
20. (19) Every time the supervisor behaves like that towards me I tell
somebody.

REFRAMING

21. (3) I convince myself that I do my job well, so that the supervisor
can’t harm me.
22. (9) I tell myself that I have a reasonable position, so I don’t have to
take the supervisor seriously.
23. (23) I remind myself that there are more important matters in my
life.
24. (24) I convince myself that this is a small, unimportant matter.
25. (25) I tell myself that this is only a job and that there are other things
in life to deal with.

Note. The serial number of items in the questionnaire is given in

parentheses.