Abusive Supervision Research Trends and Future Research Directions in Korea

Most leadership research has focused on the positive aspects of leadership, but there has been insufficient attention on the negative aspects of leadership. Although previous research has conducted a review of negative leadership, the analysis of the relationships between various concepts is still insufficient. In addition, the review focused on empirical studies of abusive supervision, which is the most frequently studied type of negative leadership, but a systematic review was necessary because sufficient discussion was not conducted. Accordingly, this study first examined the types of negative leadership currently being discussed and organized the relationship between negative leadership, focusing on abusive supervision. Second, the study analyzed research trends on abusive supervision based on previous studies, focusing on antecedents, outcomes, mediators, and moderators. Antecedents have mainly been studied at the level of supervisors' individual characteristics, with relatively less research on relational aspects or subordinates' characteristics. Outcome studies primarily focus on the subordinate level, indicating a need for more attention at the supervisor, relational, and organizational levels. Additionally, the analysis revealed that compared to antecedents and outcomes, moderators have been studied less extensively across all levels. Third, recent research has suggested the possibility of reverse causality between abusive supervision and other factors. Lastly, based on these findings, we proposed future research directions for abusive supervision.