Article Critique

Article Critique
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It is common for supervisors to abuse their subordinates leading to emotional distress. Emotional distress contributes to great losses in terms of health care costs, reduced productivity and withdrawal from work (Tepper, Moss, & Duffy, 2011). Research shows that more than thirteen percent of US workers experience mistreatment from their employers and superiors in the workplace. It also indicates that the primary predictor for supervisors abusing their subordinates is linked to their own mistreatment by their employers. In my view, supervisors require training on social justice and tolerance for diversity to exercise good judgment in their supervisory roles. It is also important to subject them to tests that measure their scope of justice to eliminate bullies form supervisory roles.
The authors indicate that one of the predictors of abusive maltreatment of subordinates is strongly linked to the supervisors’ perception of the degree of dissimilarity with the subordinates. Abusive supervisors make distinctions between subordinates that are less like them and those that are more like them. They show favoritism to those that are more like them and view those that are dissimilar as undeserving of justice by subjecting them to harm and undue mistreatment. Such supervisors may consciously or unknowingly subject the dissimilar subordinates to harm because they feel unconnected to them. The lack of a sense of similarity with the subordinates makes them susceptible to harboring indifference towards the subordinates’ wellbeing. “supervisors will abuse subordinates they perceive to be dissimilar to themselves” (Tepper, Moss, & Duffy, 2011, p. 281)
Another predictor of abusive supervisory treatment is low performance. Supervisors view low performers as having lower utility and are thus considered a threat to the team that supervisors head in the workplace. S...