The do and don'ts of supervisor behavior. Supervisor personality as a predictor for subordinate job insecurity and citizenship behaviors

Abstract

Supervisor behavior can be easily interpreted in a positive or negative key; therefore, subordinate perceptions regarding their supervisor behavior can be biased by numerous personal variables. In the present study, we collected data from 20 supervisors and 402 subordinates, and we investigated the relationships between these two perspectives. The supervisors completed two popular self-reported personality scales (i.e., a Big Five scale and a questionnaire that assessed psychopathic tendencies), while their subordinates responded to scales that assessed their level of job insecurity and their self-reported organizational citizenship behaviors. Our multilevel analyses indicated significant relationships between subordinate variables (i.e., job insecurity, organizational citizenship behaviors) and their manager agreeableness or their manager primary psychopathy. In addition, multilevel structural equation models confirmed that subordinate job insecurity partially mediated the relationship between supervisor primary psychopathy and subordinate citizenship behaviors. These findings confirmed the theoretical assumptions of the social learning theory, which anticipated the relationships between supervisor behaviors and employee behaviors.