AUTHOR=Li Zeying , He Bin , Sun Xu , Zhang Yun 

TITLE=Demonstrating the Psychological Aspects of Stressors and Abusive Supervision Behavior: Attainment of Sustainability Under the Rubric of Resources Theory

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00293

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00293

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=This article builds on the conservation of resources theory (COR) and challenge-hindrance stressors framework to propose a model for understanding and investigating why and when these two distinct categorized stressors similarly promote the display of abusive supervision behavior. The data from 228 supervisors and subordinates is selected by using the lime-lagged method. Prior to hypothesis testing, we first conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) of the proposed models in Liseral software. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed why and when two distinct categorized stressors positive relates to ego depletion, thus in turn, promote the display of abusive supervision behavior. The bootstrap methods confirmed the mediating effect of ego depletion and the moderated-mediation role of emotional intelligence (EI). The findings show that both challenge and hindrance stressors are positively related to ego depletion and ego depletion is positively associated with abusive supervision behavior. Results suggest that challenge and hindrance stressors have similar positive effects on abusive supervision behavior via the mediating effect of ego depletion. In addition, we find that supervisors’ EI weakens the positive relationship between challenge stressors and ego depletion, and it also weakens the positive relationship between hindrance stressors and ego depletion. This study extends the current literature by directly testing resource depletion as a mediating mechanism and resource replenishment as boundary conditions of the effect of work stressors.