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Synonyms

Abusive supervision; Abusive supervisory behaviors; Destructive leadership; Supervisor undermining; Supervisory abuse; Tyrannical leadership

Introduction: What Is Abusive Leadership?

There exists a litany of disparate constructs for describing abusive leadership, such as abusive supervision, petty tyranny, supervisor aggression, supervisor incivility, supervisor undermining, workplace bullying, and negative mentoring experience. Although these terminologies differ in describing abusive leadership, they all overlap to some degree. One dominant construct in the literature that has a unifying theoretical framework is abusive supervision, which is defined as subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which their supervisors engage in the prolonged display of nonphysical hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors––such as public ridiculing and belittling, taking credit for subordinates’ work, giving subordinates the silent treatment, and invading subordinates’ privacy (Tepper 2000).

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Correspondence to Lindie H. Liang .

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Liang, L.H., Brown, D.J. (2022). Abusive Leadership. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66252-3_2552

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