Abstract
This study investigates an overlooked perspective in abusive supervision literature concerning a victim’s attribution that a supervisor’s abuse is intentional and aimed to inflict harm. Drawing on signaling theory (ST), we hypothesize that abusive supervision leads to victim turnover intentions is because the abusive supervisor signals to a victim that he/she is no longer valued. The victim develops beliefs that their career has plateaued and are thus likely to develop turnover intentions. These signals are more likely to be more strongly perceived where a victim perceives that the rude behavior of the supervisor is intentional and designed to inflict harm. We test our predictions across two studied. In the first study–– a vignette-based experiment conducted with 206 working adults ––we found that victim’s career plateau beliefs mediate the abusive supervision-turnover intentions relationship. Moreover, this relationship is moderated by both victim perception that the supervisor intends harm and general career concerns. These findings are replicated in Study 2 utilizing a time-lagged study of employees with multi-wave data (N = 208) collected from full-time employees working in Pakistani-based organizations. The second study confirmed our findings from the first study. We discuss theoretical and practical contributions.