The dark side of leader–member exchange: Observers' reactions when leaders target their teammates for abuse

• Published in: Human resource management Vol. 61; no. 2; pp. 199 - 213
• Main Authors: Hu, Jia (Jasmine), Zheng, Xiaoming, Tepper, Benett J., Li, Ning, Liu, Xin, Yu, Jia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, USA Wiley Periodicals, Inc 01.03.2022; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subjects: Emotional abuse; helping; Human resource management; Leader-member exchange; Supervision; sympathy; teammate‐directed abusive supervision; Teams
• ISSN: 0090-4848; 1099-050X
• DOI: 10.1002/hrm.22088

We draw on deonance theory and social learning theory to propose a framework that explains how individual team members with varying levels of leader–member exchange (LMX) with their team leader have different emotional and behavioral responses upon observing teammate‐directed abusive supervision. After employing a social relations paradigm with two‐wave round‐robin data collected from a sample of 378 engineers on 89 work teams, we did not find that witnessing teammate‐targeted abusive supervision increased sympathy for the targeted teammates, but we did find that observers with a higher level of LMX were more likely to legitimize such abuse and less likely to sympathize with its victims. Furthermore, we found that for individuals with a higher level of LMX, perceiving leaders' abusive supervision of teammates was negatively related to providing help to those teammates through the mediating role of sympathy for the teammates.