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Repair the house before it rains! Investigating third-party’s impression management reaction to peer abusive supervision: the roles of face threat and chaxu atmosphere

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Abstract

Previous literatures of peer abusive supervision mainly investigated the third-party’s impulsive reactions (e.g., supervisor-oriented deviation) towards their coworkers’ mistreatment events from the deontic justice perspective, ignoring the third-party’s self-protective reactions in the behavioral decision process. To bridge the above research gap, drawing on face theory, current study constructed a theoretical framework for the relationships between peer abusive supervision, face threat, impression management, and team chaxu atmosphere, which helps explain whether, how, and when will peer abusive supervision arouse the third-party’s self-protective response (impression management). The empirical results indicated that peer abusive supervision is positively related to third-party’s impression management, among which third-party’s face threat plays a mediating role. In addition, the team chaxu atmosphere further moderated the indirect effect of peer abusive supervision on third-party’s impression management via their face threat. Multi-wave data of 490 employees in 63 teams from 7 real estate and electronics manufacturing companies in China supported the framework. The proposed model contributes to both theory and practice.

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Data Sharing Statement

Data supporting the findings presented in the current study will be available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participants in the study. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71902128], the MOE Layout Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences [21YJA630035].

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Correspondence to Ziyang Li.

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Ethical Statement

Our study did not involve human clinical trials or animal experiments. Meanwhile, current paper did not involve any sensitive topics that may make the participants feel uncomfortable. No deception or concealment of participant information. Based on the above reasons, the research is deemed to meet the institutional requirements and is therefore exempt from ethical recognition. All participants were informed of the research process and provided written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

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The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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Liang, X., Guo, G., Gong, Q. et al. Repair the house before it rains! Investigating third-party’s impression management reaction to peer abusive supervision: the roles of face threat and chaxu atmosphere. Curr Psychol 42, 15497–15514 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02698-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02698-8

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