Abusive supervision, power distance, and creative process engagement: a moderated mediation model in confucian societies

We adopt a culture-relevant identity approach to understanding the effects of abusive leadership and power distance culture on group members’ identity and their creative process engagement. We argue that organizational culture should be considered in explanations of how abusive supervision may influence persons’ identity-making, which in turn can affect their creative process engagement. We then collect data from a large Chinese company operating in both Hong Kong and mainland China and obtain several interesting results. Firstly, abusive supervision has a negative effect on the organisational identity of subordinates. Secondly, organisational identity mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and the creative process engagement of subordinates. Finally, power distance moderates the relationship between abusive supervision and organisational identity, as well as the relationship between abusive supervision and creative process engagement among subordinates via organisational identity, such that the relationship is more pronounced when organization culture of power distance is low rather than high. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for academic researchers and managerial practitioners.