IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v50y2025i2p408-430.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Goal-focused abusive leaders: The mitigating role of conscientiousness in subordinates’ counterproductive work behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Min-Kyu Joo

    (Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, The University of Sydney Business School, Sydney, NSW, Australia)

  • Jia Yu

    (Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business, Louisiana State University Shreveport, Shreveport, LA, USA)

  • Leanne Atwater

    (Department of Management and Leadership, C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA)

Abstract

When an abusive supervisor exhibits goal-focused leadership, does goal-focused leadership buffer or deteriorate the impact of abusive supervision on subordinates? Although leaders normally exhibit different leadership styles at the same time, little effort has been made to examine how different leadership styles affect subordinates. We also investigate the three-way interaction among abusive supervision, goal-focused leadership, and conscientiousness on counterproductive work behavior (CWB). With two multinational samples, our findings consistently indicate that subordinates exposed to more goal-focused leadership along with abusive supervision are significantly more likely to engage in CWB. In addition, we find a three-way interaction such that the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates’ CWB is the strongest among subordinates who have low conscientiousness when leaders exhibit a high level of goal-focused leadership. JEL Classification: D23

Suggested Citation

  • Min-Kyu Joo & Jia Yu & Leanne Atwater, 2025. "Goal-focused abusive leaders: The mitigating role of conscientiousness in subordinates’ counterproductive work behavior," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 50(2), pages 408-430, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:50:y:2025:i:2:p:408-430
    DOI: 10.1177/03128962231211174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03128962231211174
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/03128962231211174?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Abusive supervision; conscientiousness; counterproductive work behavior; goal-focused leadership;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:50:y:2025:i:2:p:408-430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.