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Shrewd Calculation or Beautiful Illusion? Exploring the Relationship between Abusive Supervision, Follower
               Perceived Leadership Effectiveness, and Supervisor-Directed Citizenship Behaviors: The Moderating Roles of
               Supervisor Political Skills and Physical Attractiveness


               and supervisor-directed helping as the dependent variable. We also include subordinates’
               negative emotions (i.e., the affective mechanism) and LMX (i.e., the relational mechanism)
               as alternative mediators and control for their effects at the Level-1. At the Level-2 (i.e.,
               the leader-level), we specify leader political skills as the moderator, whereas leaders’

               gender and tenure are included as the Level-2 control variables. Moreover, we follow  the
               suggestions to group-mean center the Level-1 predictor and moderator and grand-mean
               center the Level-2 moderator and control variables (Zhang, Zyphur, and Preacher, 2009).

               Finally, we use the Monte Carlo Simulated Confidence Intervals for Moderated Mediating
               Effects (MCCIMM) program developed by Cheung (2007) to test the indirect effects and
               conditional indirect effects using Monte Carlo simulations.


                                                 3. Findings



                    The results of the multilevel path-analysis show that leader political skills negatively
               moderate the negative relationship between abusive supervision and leader effectiveness

               (estimate = -0.70, p < 0.05). This negative relationship is stronger for politically skilled
               leaders (simple slope = -0.63, p < 0.01), failing to support Hypothesis 1. Moreover, leader
               physical attractiveness positively moderates the negative relationship between abusive
               supervision and leader effectiveness (estimate = 0.66, p < 0.01). This relationship becomes
               marginally significant and positive when the leaders are physically attractive (simple slope

               = 0.29, p < 0.10). Therefore, Hypothesis 2 is supported.
                    We further test Hypotheses 3 and 4 using MCCIMM program (Cheung, 2007). The
               results indicate that the negative indirect effect of abusive supervision on supervisor-
               directed helping via reduced leader effectiveness is stronger for leaders with better political

               skills (indirect effect = -0.066, p < 0.01; 95% CI = [-0.151, -0.016]), which is inconsistent
               with our expectations. Hence, Hypothesis 3 was not supported. Finally, the results reveal
               that the negative indirect effect of abusive supervision on supervisor-directed helping
               via reduced leader effectiveness becomes marginally significant and positive when the

               leaders are physically attractive (indirect effect = 0.29, p < 0.10; 90% CI = [0.001, 0.085]),
               supporting Hypothesis 4.
                    We also include negative emotions and LMX as additional mediators to rule
               out alternative explanations. These analyses did not change the research conclusions,



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