The echo of abusive supervision
Martin Lund Kristensen, Anette Kaagaard KristensenPurpose
This study explores how newcomers respond to abusive supervision (AS) during the early stages of organisational socialisation. Although previous research has shown negative consequences of AS, a limited qualitative understanding exists regarding how repeated experiences during this formative phase influence newcomers' interpretations and modes of inhabiting work relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The study involves 61 semi-structured life-world interviews with nursing students and newly employed nurses in healthcare organisations. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic coding, combining dramaturgical, affective and value coding to reconstruct negative socialisation events and examine newcomers' relational interpretations.
Findings
The analysis identifies two themes, “Self-suppressive facades” and “The organisation doesn't deserve me,” capturing differences in newcomers' relational interpretations during early socialisation. Experiences of AS lead to self-suppressive facades aimed at maintaining the hope of future resonance. Repeated experiences diminish this hope, resulting in resignation, instrumental endurance and relational withdrawal. Alienation emerges as a way of inhabiting the relationship, shaped by interpreted relational detachment and blocked possibilities of voice, responsiveness and transformation.
Originality/value
This study advances research on AS and organisational socialisation by offering a qualitative, process-oriented account of how newcomers' responses unfold as relational interpretations. Drawing on the resonance theory, it develops a sociological and relational model of how experiences of AS alter newcomers’ expectations of relational quality, with implications for HRM practices in onboarding, mentoring and sustainable work communities.