Do That One More Time and I’ll Scream: Self-Regulation and Abusive Supervision in the Workplace

Employees respond to abusive supervision in a variety of ways; some try to silently endure the abuse while others attempt to retaliate against their supervisor. The matter of how they respond to supervisory abuse and the effect that response has on the stress they experience at work is a dynamic question that should be considered through an examination of self-regulation. Usually lauded and often revered in both the academic and popular presses, self-regulation has come to be viewed as a powerful individual-level construct capable of affecting behavioral and attitudinal outcomes. However, self-regulation should not be viewed as a monolith, but rather as a two-sided coin comprised of trait and state self-regulation. These two separate constructs are unique in both form and function, and differentially predict employee responses to abusive supervision. The goal of this chapter is threefold: provide a robust explanation of the theoretical underpinnings for trait and state self-regulation; examine the interaction between both forms of self-regulation and abusive supervision so as to better understand employee responses to supervisory abuse; and provide relevant future research directions that will help advance our understanding of self-regulation and abusive supervision.