Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
11-2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Dr. Richard Dool
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Dr. Joe Cardot
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Dr. Ian Shepherd
Abstract
Sales supervisors can tremendously influence the sales teams they manage, and their behaviors can influence a team’s engagement and sales performance. Because of the supervisor’s influential role, their behavior, positive or negative, can ripple throughout the organization. As a result, a supervisor who role models abusive behavior within their organization also promotes a climate of abuse and incivility that can contribute to a toxic workplace. Abusive supervision (AS) is a significant problem in many business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations that negatively impacts the financial welfare and subjective well-being of organizations and their employees. This quantitative correlational study aimed to examine how an abusive supervision climate (ASC) impacts B2B sales performance and understand the roles of psychological safety and leader–members interdependence. The data were collected through social media service LinkedIn and audience panel services MTurk and Centiment. A sample of 319 responses was used to analyze the relationships of a moderated mediation model. The analysis results supported the moderated mediation model, with leader–members interdependence as the moderator and team psychological safety as the mediator. The moderated mediation model explained approximately 40% of the variance between the conditional indirect effect of ASC and outcome sales performance (OSP). The results also showed that ASC had a positive direct relationship with OSP and a significant negative conditional indirect effect on team psychological safety, depending on the level of leader–members interdependence. The results of this study may help companies understand the broader implications of an abusive supervision climate. Organizations may choose to prioritize interventions and implement policies to reduce the frequency within their B2B sales organizations, thereby fostering higher levels of psychological safety and building high-performing teams.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Daniel, Matthew J., "How an Abusive Supervision Climate Impacts Business-to-Business (B2B) Sales Performance, and the Roles of Leader–Members Interdependence and Team Psychological Safety" (2022). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 528.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/528
Included in
Behavioral Economics Commons, Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons, Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, Organizational Communication Commons, Organization Development Commons, Performance Management Commons, Sales and Merchandising Commons, Strategic Management Policy Commons