The Inevitable Dark Side of the Organization - Counterproductive Work Behavior -

Abusive supervision has become a serious and growing problem afflicting organization and affecting employees’ well-beings. This study provided an overview of the effects of abusive supervision on counterproductive behavior in the Indonesian organizational context. This study extends the research of abusive supervision by investigating the mediating role of employees’ emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of interactional justice. Regression analysis on data of 120 respondents from Indonesian companies revealed that abusive supervision has a positive correlation to counterproductive work behavior, and employees’ emotional exhaustion has been proved to have mediating effect on the relationship between abusive supervision and counterproductive work behavior. This study also found that interactional justice showed a moderating effect on the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ emotional exhaustion. It is surprising that the moderating effect of interactional justice showed an unexpected pattern such that a stronger relationship between abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion existed when interactional justice was high. These findings showed that avoidance of abusive supervision should be taken more seriously, due to the stronger relationship between abusive supervision, employees’ emotional exhaustion and counterproductive work behavior.