关键词: 职场宣泄行为, 自我耗竭, 领导日常辱虐行为, 下属宣泄学习机会评估

Abstract:

Venting at work is a common issue and management dilemma that leaders, at whom it is often targeted, confront daily. Studies have revealed that venting is a double-edged sword. Furthermore, existing research tends to focus on the ventor’s perspective, largely ignoring the ventee. To our knowledge, only one empirical study has looked at the issue from the ventee’s perspective, revealing negative emotions and destructive leadership behaviors as consequences of subordinates’ venting. Nevertheless, recent studies argue that receivers respond to intricate workplace messages both through “hot,” emotional responses and through “cold, ” cognitive reactions, and the latter might be more explanatory. Unfortunately, research on subordinates’ venting has largely ignored the cognitive processes, suggesting instead that the solution may lie in recruiting leaders with certain characteristics. However, not only is the strategy extremely expensive, but it also presents leaders with navigational challenges. Therefore, based on the transactional theory of stress, this paper explored how leaders’ behaviors are affected by subordinates’ venting. By conceptualizing subordinates’ venting as a stressor for leaders, we proposed that the impact of subordinates’ venting on leaders’ ego depletion and subsequent abusive supervision may be alleviated if leaders can reframe such venting as a learning opportunity rather than a threat.

To capture within-person variability and test our model, we collected data using a time-lagged interval-based experience sampling method. The study participants included middle managers from an electronics manufacturing firm and a financial services company in eastern China. The survey was conducted in two stages. First, 196 managers completed a baseline survey of demographic data and managerial self-efficacy. Afterward, the participants completed three surveys per day over ten consecutive working days. Time 1 was a measure of daily receipt of subordinates’ venting and negative affect. Time 2 included appraisal of the learning opportunity provided by daily subordinates’ venting, appraisal of threat perceived in daily subordinates’ venting, and appraisal of daily ego depletion. Time 3 measured daily abusive supervision. After data matching, the final sample comprised 1, 532 observations from 188 middle managers.

Multilevel path analyses showed that, at the within-person level, daily receipt of subordinates’ venting was positively related to leaders’ daily ego depletion, and that leaders’ daily ego depletion mediated the relationship between daily receipt of subordinates’ venting and daily abusive supervision. Moreover, learning opportunity appraisal weakened the positive relationship between daily receipt of subordinates’ venting and daily ego depletion, as a result of which this relationship was significant only when leaders’ learning opportunity appraisal was low. Further, learning opportunity appraisal moderated the indirect relationship between daily receipt of subordinates’ venting and daily abusive supervision through daily ego depletion.

There are three key respects in which the present study significantly advances the ventee’s perspective within the relevant literature. First, instead of treating leaders as passive recipients of venting, this paper applies the transactional theory of stress to argue for leaders’ active role in managing subordinates’ venting, particularly by employing learning opportunity appraisal. Second, it stresses the role of “cold” cognitive mechanisms over “hot” emotional mechanisms, delineating the mediating role of ego depletion as a key cognitive process underlying leaders’ negative reactions. Third, as opposed to suggestions of recruiting leaders with specific personal characteristics to combat the negative consequences of workplace venting, this paper shows that the strategy of learning opportunity appraisal is a cost-effective and practical approach for leaders to implement. This study also enriches the general understanding of situational antecedents of abusive supervision. Thus, this paper offers practical ways to effectively address subordinates’ venting and minimize the potential abusive supervision arising from unfavorable situations.

Key words: venting at work, ego-depletion, abusive supervision, learning opportunity appraisal