Negative Implicit Followership Theories and Abusive Supervision

While positive implicit followership theories (IFTs) or positive beliefs about followers’ characteristics have been linked with various employee outcomes, our understanding of negative beliefs about followers’ characteristics (negative IFTs) is still limited. We explored the conceptual difference between positive and negative IFTs, and empirically tested the relationship between follower perceptions of negative IFTs and abusive supervision. We found that the congruence between employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s negative IFTs and employees’ demonstration of these negative characteristics may help explain perceptions of abuse.