54 The Influences of Leaders’ Negative Implicit Followership Theories on Employees’Work Behaviors: A DualPathway Model Hypothesis 1: Leaders’ NIFTs are positively related to abusive supervision. Generally, leaders’ abusive supervisory behaviors are negative and unexpected events for subordinates (Avey et al., 2015). Negative and unexpected events are more likely to trigger intense emotional reactions than positive and expected events. Employees feel especially uneasy and uncomfortable when encountering negative and unexpected events (Weick, 1995). Previous studies have found that abusive supervision can elicit such diverse negative outcomes as depression, anxiety, burnout, and emotional exhaustion (see Martinko, Harvey, Brees, and Mackey, 2013). Prolonged experiences with an abusive supervisor can cause employees to suffer from chronic distress and frustration (Avey et al., 2015; Tepper, Moss, Lockhart, and Carr, 2007). Leaders’ management style often reflects their assumptions about the fundamental nature of followers (e.g., Epitropaki, Sy, Martin, Tram-Quon, and Topakas, 2013; McGregor, 1960). When their IFTs are negative, leaders may adopt hostile and unfriendly leadership behaviors like abusive supervisory behaviors. From the perspective of AET, hostile and unfriendly leadership behaviors are stressful and disadvantageous events in work settings (Avey et al., 2015; Brief and Weiss, 2002). Employees often interpret these unexpected events or leaders’ hostile behaviors as unjust, unreasonable, and threatening (Aryee et al., 2008; Tepper, 2000), and consequently experience negative work moods. For these reasons, we propose that abusive supervision mediates the relationship between NIFTs and employee negative mood. Hypothesis 2: Through the mediation of abusive supervision, leaders’ NIFTs are positively related to employees’ negative mood. AET discusses “the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work” (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996). A number of studies have found that leaders play an important role in influencing employees’ moods or emotions (Brief and Weiss, 2002). When employees receive hostile treatment from their supervisors, they expend physical and cognitive resources to deal with these stressful events and regulate the associated negative emotions (e.g., anger, sadness, distress, and frustration) (Avey et al., 2015). Perhaps not surprisingly, the emotion-coping process draws the focus of employees away from the surrounding environment and onto themselves (Rogers, Miller, Mayer, and Duval, 1982). The resulting preoccupation with the self can be deleterious in a service
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