Abusive Supervision and Employee Feedback-Seeking Behavior: The Roles of Workplace Anxiety and Regulatory Focus

Despite research primarily focused on the adverse impact of abusive supervision on employees' well-being, limited yet important empirical studies converge to suggest that employees can proactively cope with abusive supervision, resulting in adaptive rather than maladaptive consequences. Drawing from the job demands-resources theory, we argued that abusive supervision was positively related to employees' workplace anxiety, which could interact with regulatory focus to predict employees' feedback-seeking behaviors. Using two-wave data collected from 372 employees, we found that abusive supervision had a stronger positive impact on feedback monitoring through workplace anxiety for prevention-focused employees and on feedback inquiry for promotion-focused employees. Our study broadens the understanding of employees' adaptive responses to abusive supervision.