This study aims to explicate how and under what conditions abusive supervision relates to employees’ unethical behavior among public sector employees.
For this study data was collected from 241 employees and their supervisors working in law enforcement agencies located in a cosmopolitan city of Pakistan. The data was collected in two phases. In the first phase, subordinates rated their manager's abusive supervision and the ethical climate of the organization. In the second phase, employees rated their moral disengagement, while their managers rated employees’ unethical behavior.
The study found that abusive supervision relates to subordinates’ moral disengagement and their unethical behavior. Moral disengagement was found to mediate the relationship between abusive supervision and unethical behavior. Finally, self-interest ethical climate was found neither to moderate the direct relationship between abusive supervision and the moral disengagement nor the mediating role of moral disengagement linking abusive supervision to unethical behavior.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study that studied the moderating role of self-interest ethical climate influencing the direct relationship between abusive supervision and the indirect relationship between abusive supervision and unethical behavior through moral disengagement.
