Abuse for status: A social dominance perspective of abusive supervision.

Abusive supervision in the workplace is an important issue because it is detrimental to organizations and their performance. However, little is known about antecedents of supervisors' abusive behavior. To better understand the antecedents of abusive supervision, we develop a model that illustrates why, how and when supervisors display sustained abusive behavior toward their subordinates. Focusing on status, we propose that a motivation for...