Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

7-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Donna Smith

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Colleen Ramos

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Joseph Halbert

Abstract

In this study, the researcher examined abusive supervision coping by military members. Based on social exchange theory and the power and influence theory, the researcher investigated whether veterans perceived emotional coping (avoidance, support seeking, and reframing) as strategies that mitigated stress caused by abusive supervision while they were serving in their respective military departments. Past studies have not accounted for junior officers or enlisted members; therefore, the researcher studied this lower ranking tier of personnel and discovered that the hierarchy of the military system affected their reporting of and receiving assistance in dealing with abusive supervision. Therefore, affected service members were more likely to utilize emotion-focused coping strategies to maneuver the situation. The results of this study indicated that the military hierarchy and loyalty to the chain of command were deterrents to lower-ranking members reporting abusive supervision. In lieu of reporting the abuse, the employees were able to find relief by utilizing emotion-focused coping with a heavy reliance on avoidance of the destructive leader. Keywords: abusive supervision, emotion-focused coping, reframing, support seeking, avoidance

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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