Does Abusive Supervision Affect Healthcare Employees’ Turnover Intention? Investigating the Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion and Moderating Role of Employee Resilience and Future Work Self-Salience

The main objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of abusivesupervision on turnover intention among healthcare employees. A model has been developedand tested which explains how abusive supervision affects the employee turnover intentiondirectly and through emotional exhaustion and how employees’ personality traits (employeeresilience and future work self-salience) moderate the relationship between these variables. With a sample of 375 front-line employees who work in private hospitals ofMashhad, data were collected through questionaries with a Likert scale. The face validityand structural validity of the questions were tested, and then data were analyzed using IBMSPSS-AMOS 23.0 software. The findings demonstrated that abusive supervision affected the turnover intention(P=0.17, t=3.93) and emotional exhaustion (P=0.29, t=5.28). Emotional exhaustion impactedturnover intention (P=0.67, t=12.46) and also played a mediating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intention (P=0.19, t=4.86). Moreover, employees’resilience was found to mitigate the relationship between abusive supervision and emotionalexhaustion (sig=0.022, t=-2.29), while future work self-salience increased the likelihood ofturnover intention among the employees who experienced abusive supervision. (sig=0.027,t=2.22). The findings showed that the supervisors’ behavior had a significant impact onthe employees’ feelings and actions. However, this impact was not equal for all the employees,and their personality traits played an essential role. It can be concluded that if health careorganizations attempt to control abusive supervision by properly training the supervisors,they will have less emotionally exhausted employees with lower turnover intention. Moreover,hospitals should be aware that enhancing the employees’ resilience benefits the organizationby decreasing emotional exhaustion, while future work self-salient employees negativelyimpacted the health sectors by increasing turnover intention.