Abusive supervision and its influence on the mental health of Maori employees: The benefits of resilience

Abstract or Summary

Organizational justice theories suggest that employees who are abused by their supervisor are likely to respond with lower personal outcomes including wellbeing. Conversely, there is much research on resilience and its role in aiding and enhancing the wellbeing of employees. The present study brings these disparate literatures together and tests whether resilience moderates the influence of abusive supervision on the mental health of Maori employees. Maori as a population register significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression compared to the majority of the population. Using a sample of 261 random Maori employees, we tested the influence of abusive supervision and resilience towards anxiety and depression outcomes. The survey design included separating the predictor variables from outcome variables by a month. Results showed that respondents reported low levels of abusive supervision (M=1.8) and high levels of resilience (M=4.2). Regression analysis showed that abusive supervision accounted for sizeable amounts of variance, while resilience was more modest. While no significant interaction effect was found towards anxiety, there was towards depression, with respondents with high resilience buffering the influence of high abusive supervision, ultimately reporting significantly lower levels of depression than respondents with low resilience. The findings support the notion that resilience may moderate the influence of abusive supervision perceptions on employee mental health.