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Weekly UpdatesThe deleterious health and behavioral consequences of reporting to an abusive supervisor have been documented in past research. Furthermore, recent corporate scandals have led to increased pressure to hold employees accountable for their behaviors and decisions at work. This study examines the interactive effects of abusive supervision on experienced relationships between accountability and work outcomes (job tension, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion), with a sample of 366 employees across a myriad of contexts and conditions for answerability. Specifically, it was hypothesized that high levels of perceived abuse would interact with accountability such that job satisfaction declines and tension and exhaustion escalate because of the control-depleting properties of abuse. Study results were supportive of these proposed relationships. Key contributions and limitations of the study, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.
Keywords: accountability; abusive supervision
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Accountability represents employees' perceived answerability for behaviors and decisions at work, with the assumption that reactions to external pressure for justification will affect reward allocation and discipline (Hochwarter, Ferris, Gavin, Perrewe, et al., 2007). Simply put, accountability refers to employees' beliefs about the degree to which they will be required to justify their actions at work to one or more individuals who hold reward or punishment power (Tetlock, 1985; Wood & Winston, 2005).
Accountability is endemic to all social systems (Frink & Klimoski, 1998, 2004; Hall, Frink, Ferris, Hochwarter, et al., 2003). In terms of its effects on business enterprises, organizations would cease to exist without accountability, as time spent providing goods and services would be replaced by effort targeted at reducing social disorder. It is interesting that prior research suggests that accountability can promote both favorable (e.g., Frink & Klimoski, 1998) and unfavorable (e.g., Siegel-Jacobs & Yates, 1996) outcomes--often simultaneously. For example, prior research (Hochwarter et al., 2007) found accountability to be concomitantly associated with both job satisfaction and tension, and other studies have documented relationships with involvement, citizenship, emotional labor, and job tension (Hall et al., 2003).
This predictive variability suggests the potential presence of theoretically relevant moderating variables (Hochwarter et al., 2007). Building on this research, we examine the role of abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000) on relationships between accountability and work outcome (i.e., job tension, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion). Defined as subordinates' perceptions of sustained verbal and nonverbal hostility aimed at them by direct supervisors (Harvey, Heames, Richey, & Leonard, 2006; Tepper, 2000), abusive supervision costs U.S. corporations more than $23 billion each year in terms of increased health care costs, absenteeism, and productivity losses (Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & Lambert, 2006). Furthermore, abused subordinates experience a host of negative repercussions, including increased problem drinking (Bamberger & Bacharach, 2006) and counterproductive work behaviors (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002).
We contend that when supervisors are abusive, accountability will predict adverse outcomes for employees. To date, research has failed to empirically consider this important moderating variable in the realm of accountability and its associated work outcomes, despite calls to do so (Hall, Blass, Ferris, & Massengale, 2004).
Accountability
In its most rudimentary form, accountability refers to the need to justify one's actions to others or to oneself (e.g., Scott & Lyman, 1968; Tetlock, 1985). To some extent, all employees are subject to formal accountability in the form of rules, law, policies, and procedures ranging from simply showing up to being held responsible for the work lives of thousands of employees and billions of dollars. However, in most settings, accountability is a socially construed reality (Orbuch, 1997), based largely on the psychological contracts developed between employees and agents of the organization (Rousseau, 1995). Research asserts that employees' perceptions or interpretations of this reality are the ultimate drivers of behavior (Frink & Klimoski, 1998). As such, accountability is not typically an objective, quantifiable, and externally imposed standard but rather individuals' own subjective feelings (Hall et al., 2003). Hence, two employees operating in comparable environments (e.g., staff accountants in a large public accounting firm) may report incongruent external answerability requirements (Tetlock, 1985).
Building on this research, we define accountability as an employee's perceived level of answerability for work behaviors and decisions, with the assumption that reactions to external pressure for justification will affect reward allocation and discipline (Hochwarter et al., 2007). It is useful to note that contingent rewards can be either tangible or intangible, and the accountability may be associated with formal and informal, as well as objective or subjective, conditions (Frink & Klimoski, 2004).
Frink and Klimoski (1998) stressed the fundamental importance of employee accountability. For example, research has linked accountability to a variety of outcomes, including employee motivation (Enzele & Anderson, 1993) and altered levels of cognitive complexity (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Fandt (1991) found that workers held accountable to supervisors for performance were more likely to be high performers, develop greater accuracy, and pay greater attention to others' needs than were workers with no accountability. Mero, Guidice, and Brownlee (2007) found that raters accountable to individuals of higher status or mixed status provided more accurate ratings, and Davis, Mero, and Goodman (2007) found positive relationships between both process and outcome accountability and performance. Accountability also has demonstrated positive effects on leader-member exchange, feedback-seeking context, and initiative for self-development (Rutkowski & Steelman, 2005). Finally, Frink and Ferris (1999) documented a direct effect between accountability and task performance.
However, despite these favorable documented effects, there is also a "dark side" of accountability (Frink & Klimoski, 1998, p. 4; Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). For example, high levels of accountability have been found to result in less flexibility (Klimoski & Ash, 1974) and increased anxiety (Hall et al., 2003). Van Hiel and Schittekatte (1998) found that accountability was associated with unshared information, and Mitchell, Hopper, Daniels, Falvy, and Ferris (1998) documented inverse effects with prosocial behavior.
Considerable research advocates viewing accountability expectations as one of the many stressors that individuals experience while at work (Hall et al., 2003; Hochwarter et al., 2007). The very nature of verifying the value of one's decisions or actions to an external audience has the potential to cause apprehension and its subsequent manifestations. When multiple audiences exist, the effect likely is magnified. Indeed, in any organization, employees must navigate a "web of accountabilities" (Frink & Klimoski, 1998) with the potential to provoke role conflict, ambiguity, and overload (Hall et al., 2003). In his model of job strain, Karasek (1979) defines job demands as stressors, such as workload demands, that are present in an individual's work environment. His model posits that the balance of job demands and job control becomes the primary factor in determining levels of job-related strain. Because cues provided by supervisors often influence sensemaking (Weick, 1995), treatment afforded by supervisors has the potential to affect accountability dynamics between supervisors and their subordinates.
Abusive Supervision
Abusive supervision reflects subordinates' perceptions of negative and hostile verbal and nonverbal leader behaviors (Tepper, 2000). Public criticism, loud and angry tantrums, rudeness, coercion, publicly ridiculing and blaming subordinates for mistakes they did not make (Bies, 2001; Tepper, Duffy, & Shaw, 2001), yelling, and bullying (Burton & Hoobler, 2006) are all forms of abusive supervision. Research indicates that abused subordinates are less satisfied with their jobs (Tepper, Duffy, Hoobler, & Ensley, 2004), less committed to their organizations, and more likely to display turnover intentions than nonabused subordinates are (Schat, Desmarais, & Kelloway, 2006).
Employees view abusive supervision as a source of injustice in the workplace that has the potential to influence their attitudes (Tepper, 2000). More specifically, abusive supervision may represent a violation of interactional justice, which stems from employees' perceptual judgments of the quality of interpersonal treatment they receive from organizational authority figures (Aquino, Lewis, & Bradfield, 1999). Employees form perceptions of interactional justice on the basis of how sincere, respectful, and consistent they perceive authority figures as being (Bies & Moag, 1986). Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, and Ng (2001) demonstrated that this interpersonal aspect of interactional justice should remain separate from the informational aspect regarding explanations provided for the use of certain procedures in the workplace.
Interactional justice predicts employees' reactions to their supervisors and immediate work environments (Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000). In an emergent model of abusive supervision, Tepper (2007) illustrated that subordinates' perceptions of injustice represent a highly proximal outcome of abuse, and research suggests that this injustice may explain the influence of abusive supervision on employees' organization-directed attitudes and psychological distress (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007; Zellars, Tepper, & Duffy, 2002). Because employees tend to recall negative interactions with supervisors with great ease and emotional intensity (Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2003), these violations of interactional justice may play a key role in predicting negative employee reactions to daily demands in the workplace (e.g., accountability). A consequence of these actions is a decrement in individuals' physical and psychological well-being (Grandey, Kern, & Frone, 2007; Harvey, Stoner, Hochwarter, & Kacmar, 2007; Richman, Flaherty, Rospenda, & Christensen, 1992).
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