Title: Why does abusive leadership lead to employee silence? The mediating role of perceived insider status and psychological safety

Authors: Muddassar Sarfraz; Larisa Ivascu; Ilknur Ozturk

Addresses: Binjiang College, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China; Research Centre for Engineering and Management, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania ' Research Centre for Engineering and Management, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania; Department of Management, Faculty of Management in Production and Transportation, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania ' Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Cag University, Mersin, Turkey

Abstract: The study's primary objective is to examine the influence of abusive leadership on employee silence and the mediating effect of perceived insider status and psychological safety. It divulges the mechanism through which abusive leadership affects employee silence. Data is collected from 210 employees by using a simple random sampling technique. The participants are working in different industries across China. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) is used for data analysis and hypotheses testing. The study results show that abusive leadership has a significant positive correlation with employee silence. Furthermore, perceived insider status and psychological safety play a mediating role in abusive leadership's influence on employee silence. This study provides contributions for human resource management and organisational behaviour literature regarding antecedent variable theories of abusive leadership and outcome variable of employee silence.

Keywords: abusive leadership; perceived insider status; psychological safety; employee silence; China.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWOE.2021.118998

International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 2021 Vol.12 No.3, pp.268 - 282

Received: 30 Aug 2020
Accepted: 17 Jun 2021
Published online: 16 Nov 2021 *

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