Identification and Ranking the Antecedents of Abusive Supervision as an Unethical Leadership Style

Abusive supervision has been recognized as one of the most counter production leadership styles, due to having very negative consequences at the individual, group, organizational and outsourcing levels and not addressing this issue in previous research. The purpose of this research was to identify and ranking of antecedents of abusive supervision.

This research is descriptive – correlation. The statistical population of the study consisted of 12 executive managers in Arsanjan which were identified and selected by concept sampling and snowball sampling. By reviewing the literature and the background of the research, the antecedents were identified and Fuzzy Delphi technique was used to ensure the correctness of identified developments and in order to rank them, the paired comparison questionnaire was distributed among experts and after collection, it was analyzed by Expert Choice 11 software and the AHP technique.

The results showed that the leadership style with a weight of 0/478 was ranked first; the supervisorschr('39') characteristics with the weight of 0/218 were ranked second, and the subordinate related antecedents with a weight of 0/0139 were ranked third in importance. Stressors and negative affective state of supervisors weighing 0/071; organization related antecedents with a weight of 0/061 and demographic characteristics of supervisors and subordinates with a weight of 0/032 were ranked fourth to sixth respectively. Also, sub antecedents related to each event were also identified and ranked.

Based on research findings, leadership style and subordinateschr('39') characteristics have the greatest impact on abusive supervision. The research results can be used in planning and training efforts to prevent the emergence of this unethical leadership style.