The qualitative nature of this study, and the small purposive sampling despite producing thick and valuable findings, restrict the generalisability of the findings. The limited number of participants, who had in common a negative experience with an identified manager, locates the findings in the experiences of this particular sample and thus limits generalisability. Alternative methodological approaches that could be considered with small samples are clinical case study and phenomenological approaches.
The possibility of self-selection in the purposive sampling has to be considered as agreeing to take part in the interviews for this study may have required a certain amount of courage, confidence and willingness on the part of the consenting participants to recount the challenging experience with their managers. The participants who took part may have tended to self-select in that they may have reached a level of coping that enabled them to take part. Gutiérrez (1994) considers the possibility of how individuals can take action to change their situations and that empowerment theory and research suggest that the outcome of stressful events can be less debilitating when individuals are encouraged to identify with similar others, to develop specific skills, to perceive the societal or institutional components of their problems, and to engage on a collective level.
The socio-economic level and professional orientation of the participants and
managers may also carry certain egalitarian and democratic expectations from participants in terms of relationships at work, thus impacting on generalisability. A study that examined the relationship of career mentoring and compensation received by early career managers and professionals working in a variety of organisations, found that these professionals from more upper-class backgrounds received more psychosocial mentoring than employees from lower
socio-economic backgrounds (Whitely, Dougherty, & Dreher, 1991). Thus workers at lower levels may struggle to assert themselves with destructive leaders and may present with different coping and non-coping behaviours.
The study, because of its qualitative nature, could not conclusively explore the role of psychological capital in participants coping with destructive leadership behaviour. However, findings from this study indicate that, for this sample, psychological capital did play a role in coping with the perceived destructive behaviour of the identified managers, as participants’ high psychological capital was reflected in participants’ coping sufficiently to be employed in their professional capacities.
The gender imbalance of the sample, with the majority of participants being female and a single male participant, can be viewed as a limitation. Mean differences among
employee groups suggest that women’s perception of the ideal leader is a person who is more understanding, sincere, and honest; and less domineering, pushy, and manipulative than male perceptions of the ideal leader (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004). The single male participant in this study did not confirm this finding, as Fritz expressed similar values and implicit beliefs about what makes a good leader as the women participants in the study.
To maintain the confidentiality and privacy of the participants, I could not utilise focus groups to verify the analysis of data and augment the findings.
The literature on abusive supervision suggests that perceptions of abusive leader behaviour may be perceived differently by individual subordinates (Martinko et al., 2013). The focus of this study was to explore the characteristics of the destructive leader-follower dynamic; and the followers’ responses to the destructive relational exchange as a dyadic relationship between the participant and his or her direct manager. Follower differences in responses to destructive leadership and coping with destructive leadership was not directly explored in this study, as the purposive sampling procedure followed by this study invited prospective participants who experienced the relationship with their direct manager as challenging.
Although participants referred to differences in life stories between them and their managers, these differences in life stories were not explored in depth in this inquiry. Susan referred to life stores in this example: “Although he said that status was not important to him, it was not what I saw and experienced. You can be humble; you can be rich and at the same time you can be humble and then you can be rich and pretend to be humble because you grew up with hardships. We all grew up with hardships, I cannot remember, but we all did. I
experienced hardships myself. But I am not going to go into that. It is not necessary. [Short pause.] Because I do not think that defines the person who you are.”
A study of young workers suggested that the impact of abusive supervision on younger workers may be more pronounced because of a lower level of emotional regulation. There also tend to be a generational tendency of high expectations of self and their managers (Armour, 2007; Starratt & Grandy, 2010). Referring to self-concept theory, younger
employees, whose inner life and self-concept may still be in formation, may experience more lasting damage from destructive leadership behaviour in that this negative experience may play a role in shaping their self-concept (Shamir, 1991). Two of the participants in this study were younger and can be regarded as falling within the approximate age category of 18 to 29 of the so-called “Generation Y” (Armour, 2007). Nina and Nadia expressed a greater need for development and mentoring than the other participants. Nina said: “I would say three/six months into me working there, I really felt that my job was so mundane, so repetitive. So, I asked her could I go and see more clients? Can I just try and do something a bit different and more challenging? And it would always fall on deaf ears to the point where I’d, I would actually just say, I am taking this on. I would actually tell her and … hm … then that would cause conflict. Again, not overt conflict in the sense that we would have an argument, but then there was tension.” They also directly expressed expectations in terms of role modelling from their managers, though it was not clear if the expectation of the manager as role model was necessarily greater than more indirect expressions from the other participants. The findings of this study could not confirm that younger workers may have lower levels of emotional regulation or experience more lasting emotional damage from a destructive relationship with their first manager.
I was mindful that the conversation with a participant about the challenging
relationship with a direct manager was not a therapy session. Therefore, I was careful not to probe too deeply, and destabilise a facade that a participant may have built as emotional protection, and that served to enable coping for that participant. Rubin and Rubin (2011) advise that responsive interviewing is done in a gentle, non-confrontational and supportive manner and that the interviewer should be mindful that s/he imposes on the time, emotion and energy of the participant. Thus, the researcher should respond by giving the participant
loyalty and protection (Rubin & Rubin, 2011). I was also mindful that some of the issues explored during the interview probed socio-political sensitivities and could perhaps be considered taboo in the South African context. Therefore, although my caution against probing too hard was informed by care and concern for the participant and an awareness of
socio-political sensitivities, I also must consider that traces of my personal need for emotional self-preservation and my personal socio-political sensitivities may have infiltrated into the complex dynamic between the participant and me (Berger, 2015). Thus, reflecting on my positionality during the interviews (Bourke, 2014), my social position in terms of gender, age, race, socio-economic grouping, and professional status, in obvious and subtle ways, were likely to impact on the relationship dynamic between the participants and me (Berger, 2015). Considering the diversity of the participants in terms of race, age and gender, the positionality of my social attributes may have played a seminal role in filtering (impeding or facilitating) the engagement between the participants and me (Rubin & Rubin, 2011).
Protecting the identities of the participants was important and, therefore, direct and indirect identifiers and experiences that could potentially risk confidentiality were removed, even though these attributes and experiences could contribute to the issues explored in this study.