Part 1: Article Summary
Carlson, D., Ferguson, M., Hunter, E., & Whitten, D. (2012). Abusive supervision and work–family conflict: The path through emotional labor and burnout. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(5), 849-859.
The Purpose of the Study and Value to Practice
The article examines the relationship between abusive supervision and work-family conflict (Carlson et al., 2012). It incorporates emotional labor to burnout to mediate the process of abuse and conflict. The study adds to the leadership practice letting leaders understand the impact of abusive supervision on worker productivity. It also urges leaders to desist from using hostile and harmful behaviors in the workplace. Carlson et al. (2012) indicate that workers can be trained to regulate their emotions to match favorable emotions at work.
Constructs/Concepts
The study examines the concepts of abusive supervision, work-family conflict, surface acting, burnout, and family-work conflict. Abusive supervision is the display of hostile and harmful behavior, such as physical abuse, towards a follower by a leader. Work-family conflict involves pressures from the workplace and home becoming mutually incompatible to a point where participating in roles becomes difficult. Burnout entails emotional exhaustion, distance from other people, and decreased personal accomplishment leading to lack of confidence in relating with others. Surface acting arises when a worker fakes the required emotions. The concepts show that abuse by leaders in the workplace leads to tension in marital or cohabiting relationship between the employee and their partner.
Research Questions/Hypotheses and the Authors’ Rationale for Them
The study examines different hypotheses. These include abusive supervision positively relates to work-family conflict and family-work conflict. Abusive supervision positively relates to surface acting and burnout through surface acting. Another hypothesis involves the relationship between abusive supervision and both work-family and family-work conflicts is partially mediated through surface acting and burnout. Carlson et al. (2012) theorized that workers who experience supervisory abuse would engage in emotional labor to display desirable emotional behavior in the workplace. They applied the conservation of resources COR theory to hypothesize the process of abuse by supervisors and impact on conflict at work and home. The theory posits that people use the available resources to advance their goals while threatened or actual loss of resources leaded to stress.
The study used a sample of 328 respondents comprising 50% males who had an average of 6.2 years in their job at the time with 92% having children living with them. The requirement for the pool of respondents involved full-time employment and having a supervisor. The average age of the respondents was 38.81. Participants were recruited through a data collection company specializing in internet-based services and surveys to prescreen respondents to ensure the sample represented the population of interest. Carlson et al. (2012) utilized surveys for their study. The surveys were carried out at two time periods three months apart to mitigate common method variance. The first survey included responses to the model’s antecedent and demographic questions while the second survey involved providing response to the outcome and mediator variables. The research controlled for gender and negative affectivity since they relate to work-family conflict.
The study canvassed a wide range of hypotheses to gain numerous possibilities of the relationship between abusive supervision and work–family conflict. It tried to refute the hypotheses and removed direct affects concerning abusive supervision to work-family conflicts. It also added two paths from surface acting to test burnout as a mediator. The hypotheses sought to predict the relationship between abusive supervision and surface acting and associated burn-out. The hypothesized model provided the best data representation with direct effects of abusive supervision on both conflict directions and surface acting providing support for the hypotheses. The researchers estimated three alternative models to confirm the hypotheses. The researchers surveyed the responded across time (i.e., at two time periods three months apart). The respondents were required to complete both surveys. The items of the study were pretested and screened (Carlson et al., 2012).
The data was analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM) in LISREL 8.8 to test the hypothesized model. This involved grouping items to indicate the latent variable. Parcels for abusive supervision, work-family conflict and family-work conflict, as well as burnout were formed. The researchers, further, included surface acting with gender and negative affect as control variables. Alternative models were used to ascertain the fit of the data. The hypotheses were supported in this study with the hypothesized model being the best representation of the data and model. The study indicated that the effect of abuse is direct and having an abusive supervisor is associated with surface acting, burnout, and both family-work and work-family conflicts (Carlson et al., 2012).
The study concludes that abusive supervision related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict. The research applied emotional labor and conservation of resources theories to investigate surface acting and, thus intervene between abuse and subordinate burnout where subordinates may suppress negative emotions and fake any positive emotions when responding to the supervisor’s abuse. Abusive supervision influences conflict while loss of resources through surface acting and burnout mediate the relationship between abusive supervision and the directions of work-family conflict.
The implications of the study include increasing knowledge about the impact of abusive supervision on work and family relationships regarding conflict. The research, further, supports research linking abusive supervisions with conflict at work and family. It also expands knowledge about surface acting in the intervention between worker abuse and burnout (Carlson et al., 2012). The research builds on other studies on abusive supervision and the work-family domain. This indicates that resource draining evets impact one’s work and family environments due to the resulting emotional exhaustion.
The article extends a leader’s knowledge by providing an analysis of the impact of abusive supervision in both a worker’s personal and professional life. It indicates that a leader can apply path-goal and adaptive leadership styles to engage workers and inspire them to attain productivity both at work and home.
References
Carlson, D., Ferguson, M., Hunter, E., & Whitten, D. (2012). Abusive supervision and work– family conflict: The path through emotional labor and burnout. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(5), 849-859. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.05.003
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