Business Commons^™

When Do Abusive Leaders Experience Guilt?, Cass Shum, Anthony Gatling, Min-Hsuan Tu

Hospitality Faculty Research

Purpose: Drawing from the appraisal theory, this paper aims to examine the conditions under which abusive leaders experience guilt and suggests that guilt motivates leaders to help followers. Design/methodology/approach: A scenario study with a sample of 285 hospitality supervisors was used to test the theoretical model. Path analyses were conducted to test the three-way-moderated mediation model. Findings: Results show a three-way interaction among enacted abuse, managerial abuse and agreeableness on the guilt: leaders are more likely to experience guilt over their enacted abusive supervision when they do not perceive their direct manager as abusive and when they are agreeable. Moreover, …