Abusive Supervision and Employee Voice Behavior: Mediation of Voice Efficacy and Moderation of Political Skills
Author
Abstract
This study adopted the Social Cognitive Theory to develop a Voice Efficacy Inventory (Study 1) and investigated the mediating effect of voice efficacy and the moderating effect of political skill on the relationship between abusive supervision and employee voice behavior (Study 2). In Study 1, a questionnaire draft was developed after a qualitative interview was conducted. Quantitative analysis was performed on two groups of samples comprising 407 employees. After exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, a 11-item, two-factor inventory was derived. The two factors are the Supervisor Oriented Voice Efficacy (SOVE) and Team Oriented Voice Efficacy (TOVE). Study 2 adopted multiple data sources as the research design to gather valid data on 285 supervisor-subordinate dyads. The result of a hierarchical regression analysis and moderated mediation analysis revealed that abusive supervision was negatively related to voice behavior, and that the voice efficacy's SOVE has complete mediation effects and voice efficacy's TOVE has partial mediation effects. In addition, the result of the moderated mediation analysis showed that employees' political skills can moderate the indirect effect of abusive supervision on voice behavior through voice efficacy's SOVE and TOVE. Finally, theoretical and practical implications, research limitations, and future research orientation were discussed.
Key Words
abusive supervision, political skill, voice efficacy, promotive voice behavior
