Stick it to your jerk boss, study says

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Turning the other cheek might be a good way to approach some unpleasant situations; but new research suggests that, when dealing with hostile bosses, it might be better to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Writing in a recent edition of the journal Personnel Psychology, lead author and Ohio State University professor of management and human resources Bennett Tepper and his colleagues explain that employees felt less like victims if they retaliated against their employers.
Those individuals also experienced less psychological distress, more job satisfaction and more commitment to their employer, according to the OSU professor and experts from Missouri State University, the University of Georgia and the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
“Before we did this study, I thought there would be no upside to employees who retaliated against their bosses, but that’s not what we found,” Tepper said in a statement Tuesday.
“The best situation is certainly when there is no hostility. But if your boss is hostile, there appears to be benefits to reciprocating. Employees felt better about themselves because they didn’t just sit back and take the abuse,” he added.
What makes a boss hostile? And how do we usually react?
For the purposes of the study, hostile bosses were categorized as those who did things like yell at, ridicule and intimidate their workers. Employees who returned hostility by not giving 100% effort, acting like they didn’t know what their bosses were talking about, or ignoring them.
“These are things that bosses don’t like and that fit the definition of hostility, but in a passive-aggressive form. I expect that you don’t have too many employees yelling and screaming at their bosses,” Tepper said.
The research involved two separate studies. In the first, 169 people were asked to complete a pair of surveys by mail, seven months apart. The first survey featured 15 items to measure supervisor hostility in the workplace, and was developed by the OSU professor in 2000.
The questionnaire asked employees to rate how frequently their bosses did things like ridiculing them and telling them that their thoughts and feelings were stupid. Participants also reported how often they retaliated by doing things like ignoring their employers.
Seven months later, the same respondents completed measures of job satisfaction, commitment to their employer, psychological distress and negative feelings. They found that, when a person’s supervisor was hostile but employees chose not to retaliate, the workers had higher psychological stress levels, less job satisfaction and less commitment to their employer.
Those who didn’t turn the other cheek?
Conversely, employees who returned the hostility didn’t see those negative consequences, Tepper explained. However, that left the researchers puzzled as to why employees felt better when they responded to their bosses’ hostility with hostility, and whether or not such retaliation hurt their careers. So they conducted a second study, an online survey of 371 individuals.
Participants in that study were surveyed three times, each three weeks apart. The first asked many of the same questions as the first study, while the second asked questions designed to examine if employees felt like victims in their relationship with their hostile employers.
“In addition to other questions, the third survey asked employees about career outcomes, such as whether they had been promoted and whether they were meeting their income goals,” OSU said.
The results showed that employees who responded to hostility with hostility were less likely to view themselves as victims or to report psychological distress. They were also more likely to be satisfied with the jobs and committed to their employer, according to the researchers.
But couldn’t returning hostility get you, well, fired?
While this type of behavior may seem like a risky career move, Tepper said the second study found that employees who retaliated against hostile bosses reported that they did not believe that they suffered any career setbacks as a result of their actions. He believes that this may be because employees who fight back gain the admiration and respect of their co-workers.
“There is a norm of reciprocity in our society,” the professor said. “We have respect for someone who fights back, who doesn’t just sit back and take abuse. Having the respect of co-workers may help employees feel more committed to their organization and happy about their job.”
However, Tepper added that fighting back is not necessarily the best way to deal with these types of workplace situations. “The real answer is to get rid of hostile bosses, and there may be other responses to hostile bosses that may be more beneficial,” he said. “We need to test other coping strategies.”
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