Hostile climate, abusive supervision, and employee coping: does conscientiousness matter?

The current study draws on the transactional theory of stress to propose that employees cope with hostile work environments by engaging in emotion-based coping in the forms of organization-directed deviance and psychological withdrawal. Specifically, we propose that supervisors' hostile organizational climate perceptions act as distal environmental stressors that are partially transmitted through supervisors' abusive actions and that conscientiousness moderates the proposed effects. First, we hypothesize that supervisor conscientiousness has a buffering effect by decreasing the likelihood of abusive supervision. Second, we hypothesize that highly conscientious employees cope differently from less conscientious employees. Among a sample of employees and their immediate supervisors, results indicated that while hostile climate perceptions provide a breeding ground for destructive behaviors, conscientious individuals are less likely to respond to perceived hostility with hostile acts. As supervisor conscientious levels increased, supervisors were less likely to engage in abusive supervision, which buffered employees from the negative effects of hostile climate perceptions. However, when working for less conscientious supervisors, employees experienced the effects of perceived hostile climates indirectly through abusive supervision. In turn, less conscientious employees tended to cope with the stress of hostile environments transmitted through abusive supervision by engaging in acts of organization-directed deviance. At the same time, all employees, regardless of their levels of conscientiousness, tended to cope with their hostile environments by psychologically withdrawing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.