POSTED 2 JAN 2003
The driven, obsessive boss. So many jump to mind that it's hard to keep them straight: Martha Stewart, General George Patton, "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani. But perhaps no-one exemplifies the breed better than Captain Ahab, the wailin' whaling captain of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
No "I feel your pain" mellow fellow, Ahab peg-legged across the deck, haranguing his crews toward his obsessive mission: Destroy the white whale. It had, after all, nearly killed Ahab on the previous voyage.
Never
one to listen to his crew's cavils, he charged onward to inevitable (and
well-deserved) destruction. But unless you love whales, you'd have to
say Ahab's voyage ended on a sour note.
Why Files scribbler David "General George Patton" Tenenbaum embodies all of the worst bossly qualities -- aggression, arrogance, mean-spiritedness -- at least in this photo-reconstruction.
If you blame Ahab's problems on his, er, "management style," that would not surprise Kelly Zellars, an assistant professor of management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She's just published a study that may surprise only drill sergeants, corporate managers and the odd whaling captain or two.
Abusive managers, she says, make subordinates less likely to go the extra mile. The underlings won't speak well of the organization to outsiders, will be less likely to help co-workers, and more likely to kvetch over trivialities, not to mention more likely to find another berth, I mean job.
Honest.
Sure, you could say, "no duh," and click the mouse.
Even Zellars admits she has, to some extent, plumbed the obvious. "I work
in the human resource area, and yes, this is a 'duh' thing, that people
who perceive abuse will be less likely to be good corporate players,"
she says. "But we need to remind companies that one abusive manager can
negate all the things they are trying to do to motivate employees. Sometimes
employers don't want to get rid of a manager, say he's a key technology
guy or has good contacts.... I say, you've got to somehow teach people
how to be better managers, because this one manager's behavior is negating
all your time and money spent on motivating employees."
The study
In a study of 373 members of the Air National Guard,
Zellars and colleagues asked subordinates to list abusive boss behavior:
hostile staring, yelling, intimidating, threats of job loss, and public
humiliation.
The researchers then asked supervisors of those employees to rate the subordinates' organizational "citizenship behavior" - essentially, their willingness to go beyond their position descriptions to help the Guard.
The linkage was clear. Subordinates of abusive bosses were less willing to extend themselves. But why?
Abuse, says Zellars, undermines employee's belief in "procedural justice"
- the idea that workplace policies and procedures are fair, that everybody
is treated equally. "The abusive supervisor is one factor that diminishes
the perception of fair treatment," she says. "In the last 10 years, there's
been a big push suggesting that fairness is very motivating to people,
and companies have put in place policies and procedures so everybody feels
their pay and chances of promotion will be fair."
The present study, she says, shows that one abusive manager "could diminish that perception of justice."
Bottom line: Abuse can hurt the bottom line
Role obligations also influence the relationship between
abusive management and employee effort, she adds. "Some people who perceive
abuse will still show initiative, courtesy, if they feel it's part of
their job and they will be rated on it for promotions or raises. So they
may still engage in those behaviors, at least when they think their boss is
watching."
Thus while "you can't automatically say abused people will not go the extra mile," she adds, any organization that wants to have bosses watching over subordinates' shoulders may as well return to the whaling economy of the 1840s.
Extra-mile behaviors, she indicates, are likely to help any organization excel, and will feed directly into the bottom line.
Tell that to Captain Ahab. He certainly went the
extra nautical mile in his self-destructive quest to kill Moby-Dick, the
White Whale. And look where it got him...
--
David Tenenbaum
Bibliography
Abusive Supervisors and Subordinates' Organizational
Citizenship Behavior, Kelly Zellars et al, Journal of Applied Psychology,
87:6, 2002.
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1851, or on-line.
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