Association of Abusive Supervision with Creativity and Work Engagement: The Moderating Role of Trust in Supervisor

Abusive supervisory behavior is considered to be the dark side of leadership that in a Higher Education Institute (HEI) can yield a variety of outcomes for the employees. This research study examines the association of abusive supervisory behavior as an independent variable and employees’ creativity and work engagement as dependent variables and explores the moderating effect of ‘trust in supervisor’ in these associations in higher education settings. Data was collected in two waves from 221 employees of private sector higher education institutes at Peshawar, Pakistan, working in administrative cadre through multistage random sampling procedure. Hierarchical least squares regression analysis was used to test the hypothesized model, using SPSS-25. Findings suggest that abusive supervisory behavior is negatively related to work engagement and creativity and trust in supervisor positively moderates these relationships. This implies that abusive supervision reduces the work engagement and creativity of HEI’s employees, however, this negative effect can be lowered/controlled by instilling trust in the supervisors. Consequently, HEIs managers need to encourage and reward supervisors to promote trusting relationships with employees to reduce the negative consequences of abusive supervisory behavior.