How moral efficacy and moral attentiveness moderate the effect of abusive supervision on moral courage?

Abstract

Moral courage is a competency exercised in the workplace as employees face ethical challenges with a moral response. Managers exert considerable effort to foster subordinates’ moral courage given its positive organisational consequences. However abusive supervision, not uncommon in the organisational context, negatively affects moral courage. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between abusive supervision and moral courage as well as to test the moderating roles of moral efficacy and moral attentiveness on that very relationship. Data were collected from six public hospitals in Pakistan. The sample included 359 nurses and 121 nurse heads. The moderating roles were tested using the moderated hierarchical regression analysis. Results revealed that there was a significant negative relationship between abusive supervision and moral courage. In addition, this very relation was weaker when both moral efficacy and moral attentiveness were higher than when they were lower. The study provided new insights into the influence that abusive supervision might have on nurses’ moral courage and it also offered a practical assistance to employees in the health care industry and their leaders that moral efficacy and moral attentiveness would act as neutralisers in mitigating the pernicious effect of abusive supervision on nurses’ moral courage.