Will Abusive Supervision Promote Subordinates’ Voluntary Learning Behavior?

Abusive supervision was traditionally viewed as a unidimensional construct and found detrimental in various fields, while there may be subdimensions associating with different consequences. This study aims to justify two subdimensions of abusive supervision, namely overt abusive supervision and covert abusive supervision, and investigate their effects on subordinates’ voluntary learning behavior, with public self-consciousness as a moderator. Data was acquired from a sample of 443 employees from China through a two-wave survey, and hypotheses were tested by hierarchical regression analysis. The empirical results demonstrated that overt abusive supervision promotes subordinates’ voluntary learning behavior at lower levels of public self-consciousness and hinders it otherwise, while covert abusive supervision promotes subordinates’ voluntary learning behavior homogeneously at different levels of public self-consciousness. The results suggest that supervisors could be mean and critical when encouraging subordinates to improve themselves, with subordinates’ public self-consciousness taken into consideration. However, abusive supervision should never be overused, not only because it is unethical and detrimental in many other fields, but also because the abused subordinates may just be preparing for leaving.