Abusive Supervision and Organizational Resilience: The Role of Employees’ Psychological Capital

Abstract

Crises present important opportunities to study leadership. While previous research has established that abusive supervision occurs more frequently during a crisis, its effect on organizational resilience has not been studied. Micro-level mechanisms through which abusive supervision affects organizational resilience are also largely missing from prior studies. The aim of the present research was to investigate how abusive supervision relates to organizational resilience via employees’ psychological capital through the lens of the job-demands resources theory. Multi-level structural equation modelling using Stata version 18 was used to test a mediation model using a sample of 301 small and medium sized enterprises from Kenya.  Results revealed that abusive supervision erodes organizational resilience however employees' psychological capital offsets the negative effects of abusive supervision. Ultimately, this paper showed that psychological capital can aid in lessening the deleterious effects of abusive supervision in crisis.