BUS603: Managing People

Manipulation check

After presenting respondents with the scenarios, they were asked to rate them in terms of abusive supervision, exploitative leadership, and organization-directed destructive leader behaviors to test whether the manipulation of the independent variable was successful. Exploitative leadership was assessed by six items taken from the exploitative leadership scale (α = 0.87) introduced by Schmid. These six items covered the five dimensions of exploitative leadership (i.e., egoism, taking credit, exerting pressure, undermining development, manipulating). An example item was "This leader prioritizes their own goals over the goals and needs of followers". Abusive supervision was measured by six items taken from the abusive supervision scale by Tepper (2000; α = 0.89). An example item was "This leader puts me down in front of others". Organization-directed destructive leadership behaviors were captured with seven items from the anti-organizational leader behavior sub-scale developed by Thoroughgood. (2012; α = 0.92); a sample item was "This leader violates company policy/rules". All leadership items were rated on a five-point scale (ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

Emotional reactions

Emotional reactions Emotional reactions were measured by using the German version of the 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS;). The PANAS contains two ten-item sub-scales to measure both negative and positive affect. In the current study, both sub-scales showed sufficient reliability (α = 0.75 for both sub-scales). Respondents were instructed to indicate the extent to which they felt this way (e.g., active, interested, or excited for positive affect versus distressed, upset, or guilty for negative affect) toward the leader described in the scenario. Responses were given on a five-point scale (ranging from 1 = very slightly or not at all to 5 = extremely).

Turnover intentions

We assessed three indicators related to turnover intention. Firstly, we adapted two items from Kirchmeyer and Bullin to assess general turnover intentions ("I would start looking for a new job") as well as immediate turnover intentions ("I would hand in my notice immediately"). Moreover, we developed an item to measure calculative turnover intentions ("I would wait for the next career step is reached before leaving"). Responses were anchored on a five-point continuum (ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).