关键词: 职场宣泄行为, 自我耗竭, 辱虐管理, 认知调整

Abstract: Venting at work refers to the behavior of employees expressing their negative emotions or feelings to others in the workplace. In nowadays, venting is not only a very common problem in workplace, but also a management dilemma that every leader has to face every day, because they often become an important target for employees to vent. Therefore, scholars began to study venting and found that employee venting may have both negative and positive effects. It is worth noting that although venting is a phenomenon involving both the ventor and the receiver, most existing studies are conducted from the perspective of the ventor, and few of attentions are paid to the perspective of receiver. As far as the authors know, there is only one empirical study adopt receiver perspective and find that leaders may have negative emotions after receiving venting from subordinates, and then lead to negative leader behaviors. However, recent literature suggests that receivers (including leaders) respond to complex workplace messages through not only "hot" emotional mechanisms, but also "cold" cognitive response. Further, the literature clearly indicates that cognitive mechanisms may be more explanatory than emotional mechanisms in explaining how receivers respond to complex workplace messages. Unfortunately, the existing literature has not paid much attention to the cognitive mechanisms that influence leaders' responses to subordinates' venting. In addition, existing studies emphasize that organizations can reduce the negative impact of subordinates' venting by recruiting leaders with specific characteristics such as high need for cognition. Such measures are not only extremely costly, but also difficult for leaders to navigate. There is an urgent need to identify lower-cost and more effective coping strategies for leaders to response to venting from subordinates. In view of this, this paper discussed how receiving venting from subordinates affects leaders’ behavior by applying transactional theory of stress. We regarded venting from subordinates as a stressor of leaders, and argued that if leaders can view venting from subordinates as a learning opportunity (rather than a threat), the effect of venting from subordinates on leaders' ego-depletion and thus to abusive supervision toward subordinates will be weaken. To test our model, we conducted an experience sampling method to collect data. Participants were middle managers from an electronic manufacture enterprise and a financial services company in Eastern China. The survey included two stages. First, 192 managers completed a baseline survey of between-person level variables. Second, they completed 3 surveys per day for 10 consecutive working days to report within-person variables. After data matching, the final sample consisted of 1532 observations from 188 middle managers. Results of multi-level path analyses showed that at within-person level, receiving venting from subordinates was positively related to leader ego-depletion, and leader ego-depletion mediated the relationship between venting from subordinates and abusive supervision toward subordinates. Besides, learning opportunity appraisal weakened the positive relationship between venting from subordinates and leader ego-depletion, such that the relationship was significant only when leaders’ learning opportunity appraisal was low. Furthermore, learning opportunity appraisal moderated the indirect relationship of venting from subordinates and abusive supervision toward subordinates via leader ego-depletion. This paper makes theoretical contributions in the following three aspects: First, this paper enriches the research on the "receiver" perspective of workplace venting behavior. The study of Rosen et al. (2021) mainly focused on the emotional mechanism of subordinates' venting affecting leaders as recipients. This paper introduces the transactional theory of stress to discuss the mediating role of ego-depletion in leaders' receiving venting from subordinates and abusive supervision, and further points out that cognition is also an important mechanism leading to leaders' negative reactions. Second, different from the emphasis on recruiting leaders with specific personal characteristics to cope with the negative impact of workplace venting on receivers (Rosen et al., 2021), we find that leaders adopt some cognitive strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal of venting from subordinates, which is less costly and easier for leaders to conduct. Third, by discussing the influence of receiving venting from subordinates on leaders’ abusive supervision, this paper enriches the research on situational causes of abusive supervision. At the same time, this paper further points out that leaders can reduce their abusive supervision behaviors in adverse situations by their cognitive reappraisal.

Key words: Venting at work, ego-depletion, abusive supervision, cognitive change