A common research finding is that there is a clear relationship between supervisor abuse and deviant employee behavior. More abuse, more deviance. Why do employees who are abused by their supervisors engage in behavior that is harmful to their organizations or its members? One explanation is self-gain theory which assumes rational behavioral choices are made to even out the social exchange with the boss (a quid pro quo view “The boss hurts me so I hurt back either by harming the boss or the organization”). A second explanation is self-regulation impairment, which is not as rational. Rather, the employee’s attention and willpower are drained by trying to deal with the abuse, so they aren’t rationally assessing the consequences of their actions and don’t self-regulate well. Deviant behavior results.
Some theorists have proposed that distributive justice (like fair compensation) might lessen the negative effects of supervisory abuse. Likewise, many people kid themselves into thinking that they can stand working for an awful boss if the pay is good. This research shows that, contrary to this urban myth, distributive justice results in a stronger relationship between supervisory abuse and employee deviance, not a weaker one. Attempting to deal with the inconsistent messages of “You are a valuable, well paid employee” and “You are a rotten #$%&* employee” results in more occurrences of employee deviance, not less.