Do bad bosses stop you doing good deeds?

By Chris Wheal

February 29, 2024

Bad behaviour from bosses made employees less likely to be helpful or socially responsible outside work

Mean or abusive bosses can harm their employees’ desire to do good deeds outside the workplace, research from Dublin’s Trinity Business School has revealed. Or at least that was the claim that landed in the Pharma News inbox this week. But let’s take a closer look at that.

Trinity professors Wladislaw Rivkin, Nishat Babu, Kenneth De Roeck, and Sudeshna Bhattacharya had, the news release claimed, “delved into the complex dynamics of workplace environments, focusing on the weekly relationships between abusive supervision and employee socially responsible behaviours”.

The 12-week study looked at how bosses' mean or abusive behaviours affect employees, especially when it came to doing good things for others outside the workplace. They wanted to see if bad behaviour from bosses made employees less likely to be helpful or socially responsible outside work.

They found that in those weeks when bosses were mean, employees felt engaged in less socially responsible behaviours, such as donating money to charity or helping out in a local food bank.

Inconsistent abuse is different

The researchers did admit there was a catch. Among employees who did not perceive their supervisor to be particularly abusive, and in those weeks when the employees did not face high levels of stress, the findings indicate there was no detrimental impact.

According to Rivkin: “While we cannot deny the harmful implications of abusive leadership within and outside the workplace these leader behaviours may not be as harmful as we previously assumed. 

“Our study surprisingly shows that as long as one’s boss is not viewed as engaging in generally consistent abusive behaviours, and as long as weekly work demands are kept in check, leaders' abusive behaviours do not affect employees' engagement in socially responsible behaviours.” 

He went on: “Identifying under which circumstances abusive supervision is less harmful to employees has important practical implications. Any leader may accidentally engage in mean behaviours towards employees, for example, because the leader is drained or under pressure. 

“Our research shows that while such behavioural slip-ups are not ideal, all is not lost for leaders if they do not consistently display such behaviours and as long as work demands are low. This highlights additional ways organisations and employees can deal with abusive supervision.”

Lies, damn lies and statistics

The trouble is, the actual research was published four months ago in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. What the details reveal is that 114 people filled out the weekly diaries, but clearly not everyone did so every week as only 790 weekly surveys were completed – just over half at 58%.

Survey Monkey says: “The closer your sample is in relation to the total population, the more representative your results are likely to be. If you can live with a 10% margin of error, you'll only need responses from 80 out of 500 people, as opposed to 220 for a 5% margin or 345 for a 3% margin.”

A publicity stunt press release would extrapolate the entire population from a survey of 2,000 people. Even advertisers of cat food can no longer claim nine out of 10 cats prefer their brand. A drugs trial would require a huge level of scrutiny and accuracy before approval.

This ‘research’ is the result of 114 people filling in half the diary sheets required. I’d take that with a huge pinch of salt.

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