The role of abusive supervision in predicting teachers’ withdrawal and revenge responses / El papel de la supervisión abusiva en la predicción de las respuestas de venganza y abandono de los docentes

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in the phenomenon of abusive supervision in the last two decades through theory development and empirical investigations in management literature. In particular, educational scholars have paid attention to this issue with different terms such as ‘dark side of leadership’, ‘mistreatment’, ‘bullying’ or ‘abusive supervision’. This research provides insights into the relationship of abusive supervision with withdrawal and revenge behaviours of teachers, using a sample of 330 teachers working in public primary and secondary schools in Turkey. Despite its low rate, abusive supervision has a predictive potential on revenge and withdrawal. It was found that as teachers’ teaching experience decreased, withdrawal and revenge tendencies increased. Male teachers tended to respond with withdrawal and revenge more than females when they were abusively supervised. Lastly, primary school teachers were more likely to respond with withdrawal and revenge than secondary school teachers in times of abusive supervision.