Experienced Aggression and Target-Perpetrated Deviance: Is the Relationship Linear or Non-linear?
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Experienced Aggression and Target-Perpetrated Deviance: Is the Relationship Linear or Non-linear? Nathan A. Bowling 1 Qiang Wang 5
& Mo
Wang 2 & Russell A. Matthews 3 & Junqi Shi 4 &
Received: 14 May 2019 / Revised: 10 March 2020 / Accepted: 16 April 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract When workers are treated badly, they often respond by behaving badly. Research has found, for instance, that the extent to which workers experience various forms of workplace aggression is positively related to the extent to which they engage in deviant behavior. We extend this research, which has largely focused on linear effects, by examining the acceleration hypothesis. According to the acceleration hypothesis, experienced aggression’s relationship with target-perpetrated deviance is relatively weak at low levels of experienced aggression; however, the relationship becomes gradually stronger at increasing levels of experienced aggression. We tested the acceleration hypothesis within two studies. Study 1 (N = 726) used a sample of English-speaking workers and assessed experienced aggression with a measure of interpersonal conflict; Study 2 (N = 183) used a sample of Chinese workers and assessed experienced aggression with a measure of abusive supervision. Because of these differences between Studies 1 and 2, we were able to examine the generalizability of the acceleration hypothesis across diverse work settings and across different forms of experienced aggression. We found support for the acceleration hypothesis within both samples. As a result, our findings call into question the assumption that the relationship between experienced workplace aggression and target-perpetrated deviance is purely linear. Keywords Workplace aggression . Interpersonal conflict . Abusive supervision . Counterproductive work behavior . Workplace deviance . Non-linear effects
When workers are treated badly, they often respond by behaving badly. Research has found, for instance, that the extent to which workers experience various forms of workplace aggression (e.g., social undermining, interpersonal conflict) is positively
* Nathan A. Bowling [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Occupational Health Science
related to the extent to which they engage in deviant behavior (Bowling and Beehr 2006; Duffy et al. 2002; Spector et al. 2006). This research, however, has largely focused on linear effects. Researchers, in other words, have assumed that increases in experienced aggression produce proportional increases in deviant behavior. We extend this research by examining an acceleration hypothesis, which predicts that experienced aggression’s relationship with target-perpetrated deviance is relatively weak at low levels of experienced aggression, but becomes gradually stronger at increasing levels of experienced aggression. As such, our research helps address calls for the examination of non-linear effects within organizational research more generally (see Busse et al. 2016; Grant
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