Does Our Employee Assistance Program Cover Voodoo Dolls? A Cry for Help on Behalf of Those Affected by Abusive Supervision

Abstract

Consistent with the goals of a GOMusing to “refresh” readers’ minds about a topic, challenge readers to re-examine their assumptions about a topic, and/or spark a needed debate about a topic, we (1) provide a refresher on abusive supervision and the severity of its consequences, (2) acknowledge the wealth of research on its antecedents and moderators while highlighting the lack of applied research on successful interventions, and (3) encourage new research perspectives and methods to move the field forward. Our ultimate goal is to galvanize scholars to use existing knowledge as a basis to develop, test, and validate successful prevention and intervention strategies for organizations and individuals to deal with abusive supervision. As you might suspect from the title, we also hope to do all this with a bit of humor and a lot of compassion.

Keywords

abusive supervision destructive leadership evidence-based research interventions

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