Research Indicates a Sense of Entitlement Among Supervisors May Lead to Hostile Work EnvironmentPage Title
SDSU Management Professor Gabi Eissa
Many organizations have spent billions of dollars in litigation and lost productivity as a result of workplace hostility. Recent research shows that this hostility could have been avoided if organizations were willing examine the attitude of their leaders who feel psychologically entitled as they are likely to engage in abusive and undermining behaviors toward subordinates.
“Hostile Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviors”
According to San Diego State University management professor Gabi Eissa, and University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire management professor, Scott Lester, entitled supervisors often morally disengage for self-interests purposes. This motivates them to “engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact,” according to their subordinates. The professors’ research, entitled “A Moral Disengagement Investigation of How and When Supervisor Psychological Entitlement Instigates Abusive Supervision,” was published in the March 2021 issue of The Journal of Business Ethics.
The researchers maintained that supervisory abuse was not only prevalent, but it was on the rise and that abusive supervisors were consistently able to rationalize unethical conduct toward subordinates without experiencing any type of remorse. Abuse may take the form of ridicule, harassment, cheating, unethical decision-making and blaming behaviors.
Furthermore, the researchers hypothesized that supervisors with low levels of moral identity (or MI, which consists of stable moral traits such as honesty, fairness and compassion) and core self-esteem (or CSE, which consists of self-esteem, locus of control, generalized self-efficacy and emotional stability) tended to engage more in the verbal and non-verbal abuse of their employees than those with higher levels of MI and CSE. “Supervisors who are unable to self-regulate their moral processes automatically disengage from their own ethical conduct,” said Eissa. “When these supervisors psychologically remove the shame and guilt that are usually associated with questionable behavior, they are able to rationalize their unethical conduct without feeling remorse.”
“Entitlement” is On the Rise
Eissa also pointed out that the attitude of entitlement (defined as the belief the one deserves special treatment or privileges) among employees is on the rise and has become a challenge within many organizations. This premise prompted the researchers to determine whether a supervisor’s heightened sense of entitlement will lead them to engage in abusive behavior toward their subordinates while simultaneously disengaging “from potential moral quandaries in the workplace because they are convinced that they are not bound by the same rules as everyone else and they evaluate the world in a biased and self-serving way,” said Eissa. “As a result, it is likely that morally disengaged, entitled supervisors will come to believe that abusing subordinates is morally justifiable.”
To test the relationship between entitled supervisors who are lower in MI and CSE and the propensity to engage in subordinate abuse, the researchers surveyed 254 employees along with 192 of their supervisors. During the first part of the survey, the supervisors were asked questions to measure their psychological entitlement, moral identity, core self-evaluation and moral disengagement with statements such as “taking personal credit for ideas that are not your own is no big deal” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
For the second part of the survey, the employees were asked to assess abusive behavior from the supervisor by ranking statements such as “my supervisor ridicules me” or “my supervisor reminds me of my past mistakes and failures,” also on a scale from 1 (never) to 7 (always).
The Survey Says…
After the researchers tabulated the results, they noted that when supervisors showed high levels of entitlement, they were also more likely to agree with statements that corresponded with moral disengagement. In turn, supervisors that ranked high on the moral disengagement statements were more likely to be abusive, according to their employees. The researchers also found that supervisors that ranked low on MI (with statements surrounding attributes such as caring, compassionate, fair and honest) and CSE (with statements such as “I am confident I get the success I deserve in life”) were also more likely to have high rates of moral disengagement when combined with entitlement, thus, were more likely to engage in abusive behavior toward their employees.
Specifically, the results of the surveys confirmed the researchers’ hypotheses that supervisors with a high sense of entitlement, coupled with a willingness to disengage from moral behavior and low self-confidence, are not only willing to abuse their employees, but they are also willing to justify their behavior for doing so. Conversely, the research indicated that supervisors who still had high levels of entitlement were less abusive when they also reported high levels of moral identity and core self-evaluation since they were also less likely to experience moral disengagement.
“Our investigation contributes to the growing stream of research that explores the notion that supervisors that feel psychologically entitled combined with low levels of MI and CSE have a greater propensity to behave immorally and abusively to their subordinates,” said Eissa. “The research strongly demonstrates that when organizations keep their supervisors morally engaged, the likelihood of abusive supervision will diminish. This may be accomplished through promoting integrity as a core organizational value along with testing and assessing integrity as part of the supervisory recruitment process and will, hopefully, reduce the occurrence of abusive supervision and its many costly consequences.”
Note: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of this research.
