Some think that abuse and employee fear and silence are recipes for success, argue Christian Kiewitz, Simon Lloyd D. Restubog, Mindy Shoss, Patrick Raymund James M. Garcia and Robert L. Tan

Garcia, James M.

Kiewitz, Christian

Raymund, Patrick

Restubog, Simon Lloyd D.

Shoss, Mindy

Tang, Robert L.

LSE Research Online

6/28/2016Too many firms ignore their abusive boss problemblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2016/06/28/too-many-firms-ignore-their-abusive-boss-problem/Not many employees expect that fearing their boss may be part of their work experience. Yet that expectation mighthave better prepared scores of Atlanta school principals to work under Beverly L. Hall, the superintendent who “ruledby fear: Principals were told that if state test scores did not go up enough, they would be fired — and 90 percent ofthem were removed in the decade of Dr. Hall’s reign”.It might also have better prepared an unnamed resident at a University of California hospital who noticed a problemwith a fetal monitoring strip on a woman in labor. The resident feared contacting “the attending physician, who wasnotorious for yelling and ridiculing the residents”. The baby later died.The incident illustrates the findings of a 2005 report by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses aptly called“Silence Kills”. However, this issue is not confined to health care. After charging General Motors with a record $35million fine over failures to disclose a deadly ignition-switch defect, federal safety regulators also noted that “literally,silence can kill”.While such dramatic outcomes might not extend to the average employee, they exemplify a paradoxical situation:although we live in the so-called ‘information age’, many employees do not share work-related ideas, insights, orknowledge with others in their organization, opting to remain silent instead. One likely motivation is to protectoneself from the possible backlash for voicing out opinions or just even making a suggestion. This fear-inducedsilence affects the bottom-line: because “employees withhold vital input out of fear,” CEB estimates that “nearly halfof executive teams lack the information they need to manage effectively”.So, who is to blame? When it comes to employee silence, practitioners and academics repeatedly mention two mainculprits: abusive superiors and a work climate where employees fear speaking up. Yet, while accounts bypractitioners brim with colorful illustrations, there is hardly any empirical research by academics on the readilyconceivable argument linking non-physical (i.e., emotional) abuse by supervisors to employees’ fear and silence.Why? One major reason is that academics used to view silence merely as the absence of speaking up. Aimed atchanging this view, scholars recently noted that silence is better understood as its own behavior: keeping silent is1/3something that one actively chooses to do. As such, the underlying motive for an employee’s silence may involvetrying to protect others, resignation, or fear.Given the two main culprits for employee silence, abusive supervisors and climates of fear, we examined both in ourstudy on fear-based, or defensive, silence. In particular, we sought to show empirically that abusive supervisionleads to fear reactions in employees who in turn would engage in defensive silence behaviors. Conceptualizingabusive supervision as sustained, hostile, and nonphysical behavior directed against subordinates, our analysesshowed support for that effect. In other words, supervisors who ridicule, berate, manipulate, and otherwiseemotionally abuse employees create fearful employees who withhold information in order to protect themselves.Furthermore, we found a significant relationship between fear-based silence and employees’ perceptions ofsupervisors being abusive one year later. The implication is, then, that abusive supervisors get away with theirbehavior because subordinates remain silent. Thus, abusive supervision, fear, and silence create a vicious cycle.The more employees fear their supervisors, the more they remain quiet, and the more their supervisors engage inthe behaviours that made employees fearful to begin with.We also found that perceiving one’s immediate work environment as one permeated by fear enhances the tendencyof employees to remain silent. For illustration, let us return to those American critical-care nurses mentioned aboveby way of a follow-up study. What was the situation for them five years later? “Silence still kills. Essentially, manyclinicians still live in a culture of fear with respect to their ability to challenge a colleague or superior regardingpatient safety issues”.Unfortunately, UK nurses do not seem to fare much better. In the aftermath of the Stafford hospital scandal, the ChiefExecutive of the Royal College of Midwives, Cathy Warwick, told the Guardian: “We hear far too often from midwiveswho are genuinely petrified about raising the alarm bell over poor quality of care …. They fear that senior managerswill come down on them hard simply for raising concerns”.So, what is to be done? One mitigating factor we examined was how assertive employees rated themselves. Ashypothesized, the effects we found were less negative for those employees who were more comfortable standing upand speaking out for their own interests and concerns. Yet, we doubt the solution to this problem is assertivenesstraining (although it might not hurt). It is likely that even the most assertive employee falls silent when speaking updoes not produce change in the work environment or the behavior of superiors.Which brings us to the role of management. While some, like hedge fund CEO Ray Dalio, strive to remove fear fromtheir company’s culture, still too many managers and organizations ignore the issue, or worse, seem to think thatabuse and fear are recipes for success (Amazon anybody?). The examples above suggest that when abuse andfear run rampant, both employees and organizations suffer. A better strategy for tapping the full potential of anorganization’s human resources? Our research suggests to get rid of the fear and the jerks.♣♣♣Notes:This article is based on Suffering in silence: Investigating the role of fear in the relationship between abusivesupervision and defensive silence, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 101(5), May 2016, 731-742.The post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Public DomainBefore commenting, please read our Comment Policy2/3Christian Kiewitz is a Professor of Management at the University of Dayton in Ohio, USA. Hisresearch topics include workplace aggression and the role of personality and emotions in theworkplace. He is particularly interested in the factors that lead to abusive supervision inorganizations. Simon Lloyd D. Restubog is Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior and LabDirector of the Work Effectiveness & Leadership Lab (www.wellab.org) at The Australian NationalUniversity. His research focuses on practically-relevant research such as psychological contractsin employment and educational contexts, destructive leadership, and barriers and supports to thecareer development of students, migrant workers and professionals in STEM-related occupations.Simon’s work has been published in top-tier journals in management and psychology.Mindy Shoss is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Florida and iscurrently serving as a Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Sustainable Human ResourceManagement and Wellbeing at Australian Catholic University. Her research focuses on employeewell-being, using it as a lens through which to examine leadership, counterproductive and abusiveworkplace behavior, adaptability, job insecurity, and the consequences of economic crises.Patrick Raymund James M. Garcia  is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University ofVermont’s Grossman School of Business. His research focuses on the antecedents, mechanisms,and consequences of workplace aggression and employee deviance. Alongside his research,Patrick also teaches courses on organizational behavior, leadership, and organizational changemanagement for sustainability. Robert L. Tang was the former Vice Chancellor for Academics at De La Salle-College of SaintBenilde in Manila, Philippines, from 2007 until he was appointed as Chancellor in May 2015. He isalso a faculty member in the Human Resource Management Program of the School ofManagement and Information Technology. He conducts research and consulting work in the areaof psychological contracts, leadership, and organizational change. Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics3/3

Too many firms ignore their abusive boss problem

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