New York : Frustration arising out of family stress can make managers verbally abusive towards subordinates at workplaces, says a study, reports IANS. “We found that supervisers who experienced more family-work conflict were more likely to verbally abuse their employees,” said one of the researchers, Stephen Courtright, professor of management at Texas A&M University in the US.
“This happened because supervisers who experienced high levels of family-work conflict also experienced higher levels of ‘ego depletion’, which then led to more frequent displays of verbal abuse,” Courtright said.
Ego depletion is the inability to control one’s impulses due to mental exhaustion, Courtright said. “And family-work conflict occurs when family demands or problems affect one’s ability to work,” he said.
To examine the connection between problems at home and abusive supervision, the researchers first sent surveys over a four-month period to more than 150 mid-level managers and all of the employees who report directly to them at a Fortune 500 company in the US and Canada.
