Research Studies

Bad Bosses Tolerated if They're Productive

Jonathan Shaffer, Amy Colbert, Stephen Courtright
University of Iowa, February 2010

A new study by University of Iowa researchers supports the notion that supervisors who are productive have a long leash when it comes to bad behavior.

The study, "Perpetuating Abusive Supervision: Third Party Reactions to Abuse in the Workplace," examines how third parties reacted to bad behavior on the part of supervisors. The study found that those third parties tend to accept the abuse if the supervisor is seen as productive and effective and they don't feel like they're the next target.

The study also found that people who are more empathetic are less likely to overlook the behavior than less empathetic people. More empathetic people, the researchers found, were less likely to evaluate the same abusive boss as being effective.

To gather their data, the researchers had a group of subjects read about a fictitious CEO that portrayed him either as a high performer or a low performer and as either a verbally abusive person or not abusive. When asked to rate the CEO, the subjects gave high marks to the productive, high-performing CEO no matter his management style. In contrast, the non-abusive but poorly performing CEO was given low marks as an executive, despite his likeability.

The researchers said this could have an impact on how companies evaluate employees because previous studies show that employees who feel they are abused are less productive. Since most organizations rate employees using some kind of third-party assessment, organizations that do not specifically have a system in place to assess a supervisor's behavior may be allowing behavior that leads to lower productivity in the long term.