Bosses who are abusive to individual employees can actually throw the entire work team into conflict, hurting productivity, a new study has found.
The study, conducted in China and the US, suggests the toxic effect of nonphysical abuse by a supervisor is much broader than believed.
The study led by a Michigan State University business scholar is one of the first studies to examine the effect of bad bosses in employee teams. Teams are increasingly popular in the business world.
Lead investigator Crystal Farh said supervisors who belittle and ridicule workers not only negatively affect those workers' attitudes and behaviours, but also cause team members to act in a similar hostile manner towards one another.
"That's the most disturbing finding because it's not just about individual victims now, it's about creating a context where everybody suffers, regardless of whether you were individually abused or not," Farh said.
Farh, assistant professor of management in MSU's Broad College of Business, said the findings could likely be explained by social learning theory, in which people learn and then model behaviour based on observing others, in this case the boss.
Previous research has shown that workers emulate supervisors' positive behaviours, she said, so it only makes sense they would follow negative behaviours as well.
For the study, Farh and Zhijun Chen from the University of Western Australia studied 51 teams of employees from 10 firms in China.
Average team size was about six workers and the teams performed a variety of functions including customer service, technical support and research and development.
The study looked at nonphysical abuse such as verbal mistreatment and demeaning emails.
Employees who directly experienced such abuse felt devalued and contributed less to the team. At the same time, the entire team "descended into conflicts," Farh said, which also reduced worker contributions.
"Teams characterised by relationship conflict are hostile towards other members, mistreat them, speak to them rudely and experience negative emotions towards them," Farh said.
The study was replicated in a controlled laboratory setting in the US, with nearly 300 people participating.
The research was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
