{"id":29247,"date":"2022-04-14T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=29247"},"modified":"2022-04-23T14:37:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T14:37:47","slug":"abusive-bosses-often-blame-a-workers-lack-of-effort-or-care-for-poor-performance-when-its-their-own-biases-that-may-be-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/abusive-bosses-often-blame-a-workers-lack-of-effort-or-care-for-poor-performance-when-its-their-own-biases-that-may-be-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Abusive bosses often blame a worker\u2019s lack of effort or care for poor performance when it\u2019s their own biases that may be the problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zhanna Lyubykh<\/a>, University of Calgary<\/a><\/em>; Jennifer Bozeman<\/a>, West Chester University of Pennsylvania<\/a><\/em>; Nick Turner<\/a>, University of Calgary<\/a><\/em>, and Sandy Hershcovis<\/a>, University of Calgary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Research Brief<\/a> is a short take about interesting academic work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big idea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Managers may mistreat employees who perform poorly because they assume it results from a lack of diligence rather than other factors, according to research we published in September 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surveys show that about 1 in 7<\/a> U.S. workers feel that their manager engages in hostile behaviors toward them. Abusive supervision may range<\/a> from relatively mild behaviors such as lying or not giving credit for work to more severe actions, such as insults or ridicule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While past research<\/a> has suggested<\/a> that it\u2019s the poor performance of workers provoking managers\u2019 abusive reactions, we wanted to examine whether the faulty perception of the supervisor deserves at least some of the blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we conducted two studies, drawing on research showing<\/a> that people are prone to perceptual errors when judging negative events. One of these is the fundamental attribution error<\/a>, a tendency to overattribute negative outcomes to others\u2019 personalities rather than other explanations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first study, we recruited 189 pairs of employees and supervisors from a variety of industries. We asked supervisors to rate their employees\u2019 job performance as well as their conscientiousness<\/a> or diligence \u2013 that is, how organized, industrious and careful they are. We then asked employees to rate themselves on the same measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we asked employees to rate how abusive their supervisors were toward them \u2013 such as by ridiculing them in front of others \u2013 within the previous month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found that managers assessed lower-performing employees as less diligent than the workers rated themselves. Research shows self-ratings of personality traits like diligence are generally more accurate than external ratings<\/a>. This suggests supervisors believed poor-performing employees were less diligent than they actually were. In addition, these employees perceived higher levels of abuse than others did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This study didn\u2019t include independent measures of the employees\u2019 diligence or their managers\u2019 abuse. So in our second one we wanted to determine if the managers still blamed a lack of diligence for an incident involving poor performance even when the supervisor knew that the employee wasn\u2019t the primary cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We recruited 443 supervisors via an online portal to complete two surveys. In the first, we asked them to think of one of their employees whose first name began with a randomly generated letter and rate their degree of conscientiousness. We used random letters to avoid bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One week later, we contacted the same supervisors to complete the second survey, presenting each with an imagined incident in which the employee from the earlier survey performed poorly on a work project. We then randomly assigned them to various scenarios indicating what was responsible for the poor outcome, such as the employee, a software malfunction or both. We asked them what share of the blame they put on the software versus the employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found that when supervisors were told that the employee\u2019s lack of effort and the malfunction were equally responsible for the poor outcome, they still blamed the employee most. When asked to provide feedback, managers who blamed employees were more objectively abusive<\/a>, such as by using expressions of anger or threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why it matters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The consequences and costs of abusive supervision are significant. For example, it can worsen employees\u2019 psychological health<\/a> and may be costing U.S. employers<\/a> up to US$24 billion a year in lost productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggesting abusive management behaviors are justified<\/a> or that a worker may deserve the treatment<\/a> is problematic because it puts the onus for correcting these harmful actions on the targets of abuse rather than the perpetrators<\/a>. Our research suggests it may be perceptual errors on the part of managers that deserve more blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We would like to explore how people and employers can reduce instances of abusive supervision. And we\u2019d like to look into what other factors besides perceptual biases might be responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation\u2019s newsletters to understand the world.<\/em> Sign up today<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zhanna Lyubykh<\/a>, PhD Candidate in Organizational Behavior, University of Calgary<\/a><\/em>; Jennifer Bozeman<\/a>, Associate Professor of Management, West Chester University of Pennsylvania<\/a><\/em>; Nick Turner<\/a>, Professor of Organizational Behaviour & Distinguished Research Chair in Advanced Leadership, University of Calgary<\/a><\/em>, and Sandy Hershcovis<\/a>, Associate Dean and Future Fund Professor in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, University of Calgary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zhanna Lyubykh, University of Calgary; Jennifer Bozeman, West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Nick Turner, University of Calgary, and Sandy Hershcovis, University of Calgary The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Managers may mistreat employees who perform poorly because they assume it results from a lack of diligence rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":29248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,277],"tags":[2481,9182,5714,11645,2197,7727,11647,11646,1753,10575],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29249,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29247\/revisions\/29249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}