Bennett J Tepper

The Ohio State University | OSU

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of leadership, but little is known about how and when leaders benefit from reflecting on their missteps. In this paper, we propose that mistakes, when reflected upon, have the potential to increase a leader's expressed humility. We detail how having leaders recall past mistakes can help them formulate plans for...

Higher-performing employees are extremely important to organizations due to their superior contribution to unit performance and vaulted value within their teams. In turn, they espouse higher work-specific self-worth evaluations that influence how they react to abusive supervision. Taking a self-verification perspective, we theoretically explain how...

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is a topic of considerable importance for organizational scholars and practitioners. Yet, despite a wide-ranging consensus that negative affect (NA) is a precursor to CWB, there is surprisingly little consensus as to whether CWB enactment will subsequently lead to lower or higher levels of NA. That is, scholars...

We invoke the person-environment fit paradigm to examine on a daily basis follower affective, attitudinal, and behavioral responses to transformational leadership needed and received. Results from two experience sampling method (ESM) studies suggested that positive affect was higher on days when transformational leadership received fit follower nee...

The overarching purpose of this article is to review and synthesize the accumulated evidence that explores the causes and consequences of abusive supervision in work organizations. Our review is organized in three sections. In the first section, we discuss research trends and provide clarification regarding the pressing and not-so-pressing problems...

For work organizations and their members, establishing and maintaining mutually satisfying employment relationships is a fundamental concern. The importance that scholars attach to employment relationships is reflected in research streams that explore the optimal design of strategic human resource management systems, the nature of psychological con...

We invoke competing theoretical perspectives to examine the consequences for subordinates of involvement in relationships that vary in terms of downward hostility (i.e., hostility enacted by supervisors against direct reports) and upward hostility (i.e., hostility enacted by subordinates against immediate supervisors). Consistent with the perspecti...

This manuscript explores cross-cultural differences in reactions to perceived abusive supervision. Based on an integration of fairness heuristic theory with principles about cross-cultural differences in the importance of hierarchical status, we theorize that subordinates from the Anglo culture perceive and react to abusive supervision more negativ...

Do you have a balanced work and family life? For many, this question is difficult to answer because the definition of "balance" varies. Regardless of the definition, it is clear that the demands of work can impact an individual's quality of life and detract from time spent with family and friends. Real estate professionals frequently experience thi...

This paper posits that ethical leadership increases important organizational and individual outcomes by reducing politics in the workplace. Specifically, we propose that perceptions of organizational politics serve as a mechanism through which ethical leadership affects outcomes. We further argue that the modeled relationships are moderated by poli...

We use broaden and build theory (Fredrickson, 1998; 2001) to examine the relationship between work-family balance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), and the extent to which these relationships are mediated by positive affect. Using a sample of 205 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found that subordinate work-family balance predicted sup...

We examined the effects of fit between leader consideration and initiating structure needed and received on employees' work-related attitudes (i.e., trust in the supervisor, job satisfaction, and affective commitment to the organization). Consistent with predictions that derive from the person-environment fit research tradition, results from Study...

We integrate moral disengagement, social identification, and social norms theories to develop, test, and replicate a model that explains how and when envy is associated with social undermining. In Study 1, a two-wave study of hospital employees, results support the prediction that the mediated effect of envy on social undermining behavior through m...

Leading organizational behavior scholars have argued that construct proliferation threatens the interpretability of interpersonal mistreatment research and have argued that researchers should employ the same terminology to refer to constructs that have been studied under distinct labels (e.g., bullying, deviance, retaliation, abuse, undermining). W...

The moral exclusion literature identifies three previously unexamined predictors of abusive supervision: supervisor perceptions of deep-level dissimilarity, relationship conflict, and subordinate performance. Invoking theory and research on workplace diversity, relationship conflict, and victim precipitation, we model the three predictors as associ...

Over the last 10 to 15 years, a disturbing number of well-publicized cases of unethical worker behavior have made national headlines. These events have been associated with tragic consequences: countless people have lost their jobs and the associated health insurance and retirement benefits on which they depended; investors have lost their nest egg...

We extend emotional-labor research by developing a time-based theory of the effects of emotion regulation in emotional-labor performance. Drawing on Gross's (1998a) process model, we argue that antecedent- and response-focused regulatory styles can be used to make differential predictions about outcomes such as performance, health, and antisocial b...

We conducted a two-study examination of relationships between abusive supervision and subordinates' workplace deviance. Consistent with predictions derived from power/dependence theory, the results of a cross-sectional study with employees from three organizations suggest that abusive supervision is more strongly associated with subordinates' organ...

The present study examined whether employees high in negative affectivity (NA) are destined to experience strain at a higher level than those low in NA. We used data collected from 230 employees to investigate the moderating effects of political skill, as a form of interpersonal control, on the relationship between NA and physiological strain. As h...

The authors developed an integrated model of the relationships among abusive supervision, affective organizational commitment, norms toward organization deviance, and organization deviance and tested the framework in 2 studies: a 2-wave investigation of 243 supervised employees and a cross-sectional study of 247 employees organized into 68 work gro...

This study reanalyzes data from Tepper's (2000) two-wave study regarding the effects of subordinates' perceptions of supervisory abuse to assess previously unexamined relationships. As predicted, we found that subordinates who more rather than less strongly perceived that they had been abused by supervisors tended to use regulative maintenance tact...

A growing literature explores abusive supervision, nonphysical forms of hostility perpetrated by managers against their direct reports. However, researchers have used different terminology to explore phenomena that overlap with abusive supervision, and extant research does not devolve from a unifying theoretical framework. These problems have the p...

The special issue begins with three conceptual pieces that address the definitional issue of destructive leadership in some manner. The first article provides a depiction in which a confluence of particular follower, leader, and environmental conditions, what they refer to as the "Toxic Triangle," permits and facilitates the emergence of destructiv...

The authors developed and tested a multilevel interactive model of the relationship between group undermining and individual undermining behavior in 2 multiwave studies of group members. Integrating the literature on group influences on individual behavior with the individual difference literature, the authors predicted a 3-way Group Undermining x...

The authors explored the validity of two perspectives as to how managers evaluate subordinates who resist downward influence attempts: a uniformly dysfunctional perspective (i.e., managers regard all manifestations of resistance as indicators of ineffective influence and rate subordinates unfavorably when they resist) and a multifunctional perspect...

The authors explored the validity of two perspectives as to how managers evaluate subordinates who resist downward influence attempts: a uniformly dysfunctional perspective (i.e., managers regard all manifestations of resistance as indicators of ineffective influence and rate subordinates unfavorably when they resist) and a multifunctional perspect...

We used data collected from a field survey of 334 supervisor–subordinate dyads to test a model of the antecedents of abusive supervision. Path analytic tests of moderated mediation provided support for our prediction that supervisors' depression mediates the relationship between supervisors' procedural justice and subordinates' perceptions of their...

The authors developed and tested the prediction that the relationship hetween coworkers' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and fellow employees' attitudes depends on the supervisors' abusiveness. Results of a longitudinal study using data collected from 173 supervised employees at 2 points in time (separated by 7 months) suggested that co...

Virtually all research on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is rooted in a social exchange based view of citizenship performance. While we do not dispute the significant role exchange motives play in citizenship performance, we nevertheless see what amounts to a preoccupation with and over-reliance on social exchange processes in extant OCB...

We investigated linkages between employees' justice perceptions and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). As hypothesized, distributive justice was positively related to OCB when employees were low in fear of negative evaluation (i.e., low in impression management motivation) and procedural justice was positively related to OCB across levels o...

The relationship between subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision and supervisors' evaluations of subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was explored among a sample of 373 Air National Guard members and their military supervisors. As predicted, the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates' OCB was stronger...

Abstract We developed and tested a model which predicts that supervisors’ procedural justice perceptions lead to supervisors’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), that supervisors’ OCB lead to subordinates’ procedural justice perceptions, and that, in turn, subordinates’ procedural justice perceptions directly influence subordinates' OCB. Usi...

Results of a study using data collected at 2 points in time, separated by 6 months, suggested that subordinates resisted their supervisors' downward influence tactics with greater frequency when their supervisors were more abusive and that subordinates' personality moderated the effects of abusive supervision. The relationship between abusive super...

I report the results of two studies that explored relationships between employees' justice perceptions and their psychological well-being. In both studies, the main and interactive effects of distributive justice and procedural justice accounted for significant, unique variance in employees' psychological distress. Consistent with predictions deriv...

A limitation of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature is that theory and empirical evidence suggest that some employees define OCBs as part of their job. A theoretical framework that addresses this problem is tested in this article. The framework focuses on 2 effects: a role enlargement effect (i.e., employees with more favorable...

A limitation of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature is that theory and empirical evidence suggest that some employees define OCBs as part of their job. A theoretical framework that addresses this problem is tested in this article. The framework focuses on 2 effects: a role enlargement effect (i.e., employees with more favorable...

Drawing on justice theory, I examined the consequences of abusive supervisor behavior. As expected, subordinates who perceived their supervisors were more abusive were more likely to quit their jobs. For subordinates who remained with their jobs, abusive supervision was associated with lower job and life satisfaction, lower normative and affective...

The authors developed and tested a model that depicts interactional justice as a mediator of the effects of managers' influence tactics on subordinates' resistance. Data collected from supervised workers provided evidence of mediated moderation: The use of hard influence tactics was associated with lower resistance when they were used with soft inf...

Confirmatory factor analysis results for Hinkin and Schriesheim's measures of interpersonal power are reported. Consistent with French and Raven's theoretical work, a five-factor oblique model provided the best fit to the data in two independent samples. No support was obtained for a two-factor model consisting of Position Power (Coercive, Reward,...

This study explored the communication strategies junior colleagues use to preserve stable mentoring and nonmentoring relationships with their supervisors. Data collected from 259 managerial and technical/professional employees suggest informally mentored subordinates use a distinctive pattern of upward maintenance tactics with their supervisors. In...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not CM represents a source of job enrichment that ultimately translates into positive outcomes for the individual and the organization. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested: (1) job characteristics mediate the effects of CM on employees' attitudes, and (2) growth need strength moderates t...

This research used theories of organizational justice to develop predictions regarding employees' judgments of the invasiveness of random-drug-testing programs. An investigation with two firms suggested that employees view random drug testing to be less invasive when they (a) hold management positions, (b) have been tested for drug use fewer times,...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not CM represents a source of job enrichment that ultimately translates into positive outcomes for the individual and the organization. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested: (1) job characteristics mediate the effects of CM on employees' attitudes, and (2) growth need strength moderates t...

Two studies investigate the latent structure of items taken from the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). In the first study, item-level confirmatory factor analyses establish the superiority of models in which transformational and transactional leadership items load on separate factors. However, the results do not provide unequivocal suppor...

Argues that the across-octant conclusions that are usually drawn from F. E. Fiedler's (1967) contingency model of leadership may be problematic, because virtually all its tests have used only within-octant research designs. Across-octant comparisons were therefore made by analyzing data from 1,282 groups used in previous research. Using nonparametr...

Investigated, in 3 studies, individuals' attitudes toward corporate drug-testing programs. 75 undergraduates in a laboratory experiment held favorable attitudes toward (1) punitive drug-testing programs for employees in safety-sensitive occupations and (2) less punitive drug-testing programs for employees in less safety-sensitive occupations. Howev...

An empirical investigation with 117 superior-subordinate dyads examines the moderating effects of subordinate gender on the relationships between the strength of upward influence tactics and three outcome variables: performance ratings, psychosocial mentoring functions, and career-related mentoring functions. The results support predictions that me...

Results of a field study suggest that in pursuit of routine influence objectives (1) transactional leaders more frequently employ exchange and pressure tactics, (2) transformational leaders more frequently employ legitimating tactics, and (3) transformational leaders engender higher levels of identification and internalization. Directions for futur...

This investigation assesses the validity of the Problem Solving Style Questionnaire's (PSSQ) two subscales (abstractness/concreteness and action/reflection). Confirmatory factor analyses with the PSSQ and Honey and Mumford's (1982) Learning Styles Questionnaire provide support for the convergent and discriminant validity of the PSSQ. Although furth...

Despite concern about method variance between measures as a bias in survey research, scholars have overlooked or ignored the effects of method variance within measures (i.e., covariation among items from the same scale that may be attributed to the method of measurement employed). Not only do few commonly used survey instruments reflect efforts to...

Based on conceptualizing leader-member exchange quality as comprised of the three subdimensions of perceived contribution to the exchange, loyalty, and positive affect, a short (6-item) new LMX scale was developed (LMX-6). Using data from two samples (N = 281 and 115), the three-dimensional structure of the new scale was confirmed by multiple maxim...

Given the psychometric shortcomings of existing measures of Kolb's (1985) learning style modes, new scales are developed and administered to two samples (N = 509 and 153). Subsequent analyses establish the internal-consistency and test-retest reliability of the scales, and the two-dimensional structure of the instrument is confirmed by multiple con...

The literature on charismatic leadership in organizational settings is reviewed and several problems with existing theoretical models are highlighted. A new model is then proposed which builds on other frameworks. According to the model, attributions of charisma depend on leader behavior, follower characteristics, and contextual factors. The model...

This study uses an input-mediators-output (IMO) theoretical framework (Mathieu et al., 2008) to examine the relationship of new venture TMTs’ intra-group abusive behavior (i.e., the degree to which team members exhibit sustained displays of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact, toward each other; Tepper, 2000) with fir...

Microfiche. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Miami, 1990. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-127).