Employee creativity deterrence by abusive supervision through the lens (mediation) of employee silence

Zia, Sufyan; Ahmed, Kaleem Article Employee creativity deterrence by abusive supervision through the lens (mediation) of employee silence Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Zia, Sufyan; Ahmed, Kaleem (2024) : Employee creativity deterrence by abusive supervision through the lens (mediation) of employee silence, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 11, Iss. 1, pp. 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2350787 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/326269 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Cogent Business & Management ISSN: 2331-1975 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/oabm20 Employee creativity deterrence by abusive supervision through the lens (mediation) of employee silence Sufyan Zia & Kaleem Ahmed To cite this article: Sufyan Zia & Kaleem Ahmed (2024) Employee creativity deterrence by abusive supervision through the lens (mediation) of employee silence, Cogent Business & Management, 11:1, 2350787, DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2024.2350787 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2350787 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group View supplementary material Published online: 13 Jun 2024. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1135 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=oabm20 ManageMent | ReseaRch aRticle Cogent Business & ManageMent 2024, VoL. 11, no. 1, 2350787 Employee creativity deterrence by abusive supervision through the lens (mediation) of employee silence sufyan Ziaa and Kaleem ahmedb aDepartment of Management sciences, university of Lahore, gujrat, Pakistan; bManagement sciences Department, university of Lahore, gujrat, Pakistan ABSTRACT Based on the interactionist perspective of organizational creativity, conservation of resource theory and social exchange theory, this study finds out the contextual factors from the social context of the organizations that affect the creativity of an employee. Data from the 443 engineers of software houses in Pakistan is collected through questionnaires. sPss version 25 is used for demographics, internal reliability and mediation through hayes macro process. aMOs26 is used for internal consistency, convergent validity and discriminant validity. hayes macro process model 4 is used for mediation analysis. Findings have confirmed that abusive supervision is one of the major reasons behind the decrease in employee creativity. employee silence partially mediates their relationship as the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity still remains significant. the mediating role of employee silence in the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity is an important novelty of this study. several future directions about partial mediation, measuring scales and malevolent creativity are discussed in the future directions section of the study. IMPACT STATEMENT creativity is an important tool for organizations to stay competitive in this globalized ever changing business environment. it is important to figure out the factors influencing it. abusive supervision is among one of those factors. this study finds out the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity. another important aspect is about finding the path/mechanism through which creativity of an employee is affected. this study is important for organizations directly connected with creativity. a more in depth review of their supervision systems can help to increase the creativity of their employees and hence can improve the performance of those organizations. appropriate measures to overcome such issues are also suggested in practical implications section of this study. 1. Introduction “Pfeffer (1998), a management guru at Stanford, wrote about Jobs’ management style: One day, Jobs fired a person in management—this was called “being Steved” at Apple. As that manager was cleaning out his office later that day, “Jobs came by and asked him what he was doing. ‘Preparing to leave,’ was the reply. ‘Oh’ said Jobs, ‘I did not really mean it, I was just upset. You’re rehired’”. Did Jobs use sarcasm to increase creativity for both expresser and recipients (huang et al., 2015)? Was Jobs’ provocative episode (isaacson, 2012) a real example of abusive supervision (tepper, 2000)? Was it ethical for employees to have a constant fear of losing jobs? Did it hurt victims and teammates’ feelings and creativity?” (Jiang et al., 2019) innovation is the key to success for organizations in this globalized world (Qin etal., 2020; stamm, 2008). innovation is about the implementation, and creativity is about generating those ideas to be © 2024 the author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis group CONTACT sufyan Zia [email protected] Department of Management sciences, university of Lahore, sargodha Road near national Bank, gujrat 50700, Pakistan Present affiliation of Kaleem ahmed: assistant Professor, the university of Chenab, gujrat, Pakistan. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2350787 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 22 March 2022 Revised 3 March 2024 accepted 29 april 2024 SUBJECTS interpersonal Processes & communication; Perception; creativity; innovation Management; leadership; employment Relations; asian Business KEYWORDS abusive supervision; employee creativity; employee silence; social exchange theory; innovation; hayes macro process; conservation of resource theory REVIEWING EDITOR huifen (helen) cai, Middlesex University Business school, United Kingdom 2 s. Zia anD K. ahMeD implemented in the innovation phase (stamm, 2008). so, being an integral part of innovation (amabile et al., 1996; Joo et al., 2013; stamm, 2008), employee creativity is considered as an essential component of an organization’s survival and competition (liu et al., 2017; shalley et al., 2004; stamm, 2008). it was defined as the ‘production of novel and useful ideas’ (amabile et al., 1996, p. 1155). there are many prominent models or theoretical perspectives of creativity and innovation (anderson et al., 2014). the interactionist perspective of organizational creativity (Woodman et al., 1993) is among them. according to this model of creativity, an individual is not a predictor of creativity alone (actor center approach), nor the context is a sole predictor (context center approach), but indeed both actor and context are important for creativity (Zhou & hoever, 2014). a person is an actor who will float a new and useful idea. But the contextual factors or conditions where that person is working also matter. Different studies have reported that interaction in these two results in an increase or decrease in creativity (shalley et al., 2009; Yuan & Woodman, 2010; Zhou & shalley, 2010). creativity’s contextual factors at the individual level include task contexts and social contexts (anderson etal., 2014). in a social context, leadership and supervision are considered as most influential contextual factors of creativity (tierney, 2008). in literature, mixed effects of them have been reported. For example, the impact of transformational leadership on the creativity of an employee was positive (Bono & Judge, 2003; gong et al., 2009; shin & Zhou, 2003), but on the other hand, there is a study in which it is reported that impact of transformational leadership is positive if there is high psychological empowerment of the follower does exist (Pieterse et al., 2010). the same is the case with supervision. Many behaviors of the supervisor are reported to be having a positive impact on the creativity of their employees including empowerment behavior of the supervisor (Zhang & Bartol, 2010), support of the supervisor (Madjar etal., 2002), the benevolence of the supervisor (Wang & cheng, 2010). But for abusive supervision, there are mixed results. For example (liu etal., 2012) had reported a trickle-down effect and (lee etal., 2013) had reported a curvilinear relationship between abusiveness of supervisor and employee creativity. Variations in the results of these two studies had started a discussion about the nature of the relationship between the abusiveness of the supervisor and the creativity of an employee. to address this issue motivation was introduced as a mediator by Zhang et al. (2014), to find out the true mechanism by applying the componential theory of creativity. the research findings revealed the negative relationship between the abusiveness of the supervisor and the creativity of an employee. in a recent study by shen et al. (2020), feedback-seeking behavior was introduced as a mediator. the explanatory factors in this study are the partial mediation of feedback-seeking behavior and a small portion of variance explained by the predictors (shen et al., 2020). there are theoretical arguments in the literature that suggest that it is of immense importance to understand the relationship between abusive supervision and the creativity of an employee (gu et al., 2016; liu et al., 2012; shen et al., 2020). so that more about the black box of this relationship could be found out. so, this is the time to reinvestigate the nature of relationship among these two variables. On the basis of social exchange theory, it is assumed that the relationship between an employee and his/her supervisor is an exchangeable relationship (cropanzano et al., 2017). according to greco etal. (2019), just like positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity is also exchanged between the supervisor and employee. creativity is a psychological phenomenon. the core of attitude is evaluation (eagly & chaiken, 1993). abusive supervision hinders the favorable cognitive development of employees toward the organization (tepper, 2000). Response of the employee toward the abusive supervision is not alike. so, it is necessary to enhance the understanding about destructive behaviors and their responses (Mitchell & ambrose, 2012; tepper, 2007). Due to frustration, disillusionment, disappointment, lack of trust and contempt toward organization, employees will not behave appropriately they can become silent (Kiewitz etal., 2016; Xu etal., 2015). hence, this is the time to reinvestigate the relationship between these two variables and find out the mechanism through which employee’s creativity is influenced by abusive supervision. 2. Literature review 2.1. Employee creativity the noun creativity is derived from latin word ‘creatus’ meaning ‘to make, produce’ and it is related to ‘crescere’ which means ‘arise, grow’ (Kampylis & Valtanen, 2010). as a scientific term, the roots of this cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 3 word are in psychology (guilford, 1950; Piirto, 2004; stein, 1953). the prominent presidential address of guilford in 1950 at american Psychological association become a plinth of far reaching research work in the field of creativity, where he highlighted that there are merely 186 from 121,000 entries in different Psychological abstracts that dealt with creative imagination (Barron & harrington, 1981). according to him ‘… refers to the abilities that are most characteristic of creative people. creative abilities determine whether the individual has the power to exhibit creative behavior to a noteworthy degree’ (guilford, 1950, p. 444). this definition of creativity was highlighting it as a concept similar like intelligence (i.e. it is something what intelligence tests measure). But it differs from it, because it is not merely bounded to traits of a person and cognitive thinking or intellectual functioning (Brown, 1989). in fact, it is complex mix of personality factors, motivational conditions, environmental factors and even products (Feldhusen & goh, 1995). From 1950 to 1961 more than a dozens of books and almost 300 articles were published on this subject which nullifies the past notions that ‘creativity is something mysterious’, ‘people or born to be creative or not’ and ‘creativity is more a way of feeling than a way of thinking’. Rhodes (1961) analyzed different definitions of creativity from these references and came to know that, they are not mutually exclusive and hence, arrange them in four strands, named as 4 p’s of creativity comprising person, process, product and press (Rhodes, 1961). the term ‘Person’ (person as human being) included information of personality, temperament, intellect, traits, attitudes, habits, value systems, self-concept, defense mechanism and behavior. the term ‘Process’ (mental processes) applied to perception, motivation, thinking, learning and communication. the term ‘Press’ was referred about the relationship of humans with their environment, i.e. (environmental press on the person and her/his mental processes). the term ‘Product’ (expression of ideas in the form of language or craft) denotes the communication of thoughts to other people through words, stone, clay, paint or any material. according to him these strands are interwoven which is indicating that how much complex the creativity is and this is the time to define it with precision and identify the factors associated with creative process (Rhodes, 1961). From this conception of creativity one thing become clear to the researchers that it is not merely a cognitive functioning or processing (Feldhusen & goh, 1995). later on fifth p ‘Persuasion’ (encourage others of the value of one’s work) was proposed by simonton (simonton, 1990). as it is a complex phenomenon (Feldhusen & goh, 1995; gowan, 1972), different models were proposed by researchers to conceptualize creativity. six guiding ideas of creativity (albert, 1990), theoretical conception of creativity by amabile (1990), interactionist model of creative behavior (Woodman & schoenfeldt, 1989), (Brown, 1989)’s model and model of productive thinking by treffinger et al. (1990). But 4 Ps model of Rhodes (1961) seems like to be remained as most suitable framework (Feldhusen & goh, 1995). Prominent definitions of creativity emphasized the final response or end product and stated creativity is about generating novel and useful ideas (amabile, 1988; stein, 1974). the reason behind using the product-oriented definition of creativity is that its measures are more straightforward (amabile, 1982). if an individual’s ideas considered to be reliably identified, then thought processes, environmental factors and a person’s qualities can be looked at corresponding to the production of those products or ideas (amabile, 1988). hence, this widely accepted conception of creativity will be used in this study. it is defined as the ‘production of novel and useful ideas’ (amabile et al., 1996, p. 1155). From this definition the concept of creativity becomes clear that what it is by conception. it is an important tool for organizations to survive and stay competitive. Due to its immense importance for organizations in the globalized and ever-changing business environment, research advances on this concept from the clarification of its conceptions to different factors that can influence creativity in either increasing or decreasing it. there are many prominent models or theories of creativity (anderson et al., 2014). the interactionist perspective of organizational creativity (Woodman et al., 1993) is among them. according to this model for creativity, an individual is not a predictor of creativity alone (actor center approach), nor the context alone is a sole predictor (context center approach), but indeed, both actor and context are important for creativity. a person is an actor who will float a new and useful idea, but the contextual factors or conditions where that person is working also matter. Different studies have reported that interaction in these two results in increasing or decreasing creativity (shalley et al., 2009; Yuan & Woodman, 2010; Zhou & shalley, 2010). 4 s. Zia anD K. ahMeD leadership and supervision are important, influential contextual factors of creativity (anderson et al., 2014; liu et al., 2016; tierney, 2008). 2.2. Abusive supervision (as) the abusiveness of a supervisor often damages the organizations in terms of the output of their employees. supervisors might be self-confident or have managerial skills, but they are mistaken about the needs and wants of the organization and employees (Bassman & london, 1993). ashforth (1994) referred to it as a tyrannical boss who undermines and ridicules those reporting to them. Bassman and london (1993) suggested various reasons and consequences for being abusive, but their study lacks empirical support. in another study, abusive behavior in the workplace (Keashly et al., 1994) is explained as hostile behaviors that could be verbal and non-verbal and are aimed at degrading others to ensure compliance. according to them, in abusive behavior, physical contact is excluded and from verbal with non-verbal, they mean words with annoying expressions, tone of the sound, screaming, derogatory names and explosive outbursts. Keashly et al. (1994) study results, supervisors were most certainly the actors of such behaviors with 57.8% and coworkers with 34.8% were at second. hence, confirming that the subordinates were the more predictive targets of abusive behaviors, but subjectivity, subtlety and naturalness were pointed as an issue for empirical documentation of such behaviors, which can be felt and costly (Keashly etal., 1994). Prior to tepper’s (2000) work, it was considered as a similar framework like petty tyranny (ashforth, 1994), workplace victimization (aquino & Bradfield, 2000), workplace bullying (hoel & cooper, 2001), supervisor aggression (schat etal., 2006), supervisor undermining (Duffy etal., 2002) and negative mentoring experiences (eby etal., 2000). he differentiated this construct from others based on its directions, physical hostility, content other than hostility and definition containing reference to intended outcomes and stated it as a willful behavior (tepper, 2007). after tepper’s (2000) work, many studies were conducted to explore the consequences of the abusiveness of a supervisor and the precedents of it. Discrepancies in its defining, theoretical grounds for subordinates’ performance, attitude and measurement of abusive supervision were fulfilled (tepper, 2000). he explained it as the ‘subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact’ (tepper, 2000, p. 178). 2.3. Employee silence (ES) Many definitions and conceptualizations refer to it as the deliberate withholding of important information by an employee, like concerns, questions and even suggestions (Brinsfield, 2013; tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). so, from here, one thing becomes clear it is not about the failure of communication resulting from having nothing to say or mindlessness (Van Dyne et al., 2003). Developing a valid construct from such conceptualization of silence was a difficult task. Different attempts were made based on climate factors such as supervisor’s attitude toward silence and employee’s perception of management, the extent of expressions of management and communication opportunities (Vakola & Bouradas, 2005), employee’s intention to withhold information (tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008; Van Dyne et al., 2003), employee’s assumed beliefs about the risk of speaking at work (Detert & edmondson, 2011) and group voice climate (Morrison et al., 2011). these efforts were useful in advancing the understanding about the silence of an employee but lacked quantitative investigation of employee silence such as its nature, pervasiveness and implications of its different types. Previous research focused on the risks associated with speaking or voice (Detert & edmondson, 2011). hence, psychological safety has frequently been used to mediate between antecedents and silence behavior (Detert & edmondson, 2011). But evidences in literature confirms the presence of other motives too, rather than risk avoidance only (Morrison etal., 2011; Van Dyne etal., 2003). Many studies have considered it a deliberate suppression of meaningful information, questions, ideas and concerns (tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). holding of such information is based on different motives. Researchers have referred to cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 5 it as a multidimensional concept (Pinder & harlos, 2001; Van Dyne et al., 2003). according to them, these motives provide meaning to the behavior of silence and differentiate it from a mere consideration as the nonexistence of voice. hence, a number of silence behaviors were proposed in the literature on the basis of these motives like defensive, acquiescence and prosocial (Pinder & harlos, 2001; Van Dyne et al., 2003). Many researchers (Knoll & Dick, 2013; Morrison & Milliken, 2000; Pinder & harlos, 2001; Van Dyne et al., 2003) referred to it as a multidimensional construct and classified it in four types: (1) quiescent silence ‘disengagement stimulated from fear’; (2) acquiescent silence ‘it is a disengaged behavior of an employee roused from the sense or feeling of resignation’; (3) pro-social silence ‘it is an others oriented behavior activated by the cooperative motive’ and (4) opportunistic silence ‘suppression of information for own advantage by an employee. later on, Brinsfield (2013) introduced a new classification based on supervisor-subordinate relationships. according to this study, there are six types of silence, including deviant silence ‘hiding of important information’; defensive silence ‘it is similar to quiescent silence’; relational silence ‘intentions to save the relationship’; ineffectual silence ‘similar to acquiescent silence’; disengaged silence ‘a lack of concern’ and diffident silence ‘due to lack of confidence or self-doubt’. according to Morrison (2011, 2014), employee silence is very common in organizations at the workplace and very highly dysfunctional. 2.4. Abusive supervision and employee creativity there are six prominent models or theories of creativity (anderson et al., 2014). the interactionist perspective of organizational creativity (Woodman et al., 1993) is among them. according to this model for creativity, an individual is not a predictor of creativity alone (actor center approach), nor the context alone is a sole predictor (context center approach), but indeed, both actor and context are important for creativity. a person is an actor who will float a new and useful idea. But the contextual factors or conditions where that person is working also matter. Different studies have reported that interaction in these two results in increasing or decreasing creativity (shalley et al., 2009; Yuan & Woodman, 2010; Zhou & shalley, 2010). Because it is the precondition of innovation (Joo et al., 2013), it is of immense importance to explore or investigate the effects of negative contextual factors on the attitudes and behaviors of the employees (Baumeister et al., 2001). a supervisor’s abusiveness is one of those contextual factors (liu etal., 2016). Due to its far-reaching impact and prevalence (tepper et al., 2017), investigation of the impact of abusiveness of a supervisor on the creativity of an employee is important for both reasons, i.e. theoretical and empirical importance (shen etal., 2020). it is stated as ‘subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact’ (tepper, 2000, p. 178). Prior research on outcomes of abusive supervision from an employee’s perspective is twofold (liu et al., 2016). (1) it is about being the cause of negative psychological states and behaviors in employees like anxiety, stress, emotional exhaustion, resistance, deviance and turnover (Martinko et al., 2013; tepper, 2000, 2007; tepper et al., 2017) and (2) is related to employee performance (outcomes of these states and behaviors) like creativity (lee etal., 2013; liu etal., 2012; Zhang et al., 2014). Results of the different studies in the literature indicate the conflict in nature of the relationship between these two variables (gu et al., 2016; liu et al., 2016). some studies indicate that the relationship between them is negative (liu et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2014), while others indicate that the relationship between these variables is curvilinear (lee et al., 2013). so, this is the time to reinvestigate the nature of the relationship between these two variables. Based on the social exchange theory, it is postulated that the relationship between an employee and their supervisor is exchangeable (cropanzano etal., 2017). according to greco et al. (2019), negative reciprocity is also exchanged between the supervisor and employee, just like positive reciprocity. hence, because of the abusiveness of the supervisor, employees will exhibit low creativity performance in exchange (shen etal., 2020). H1: there is a negative relationship between the abusiveness of a supervisor and the creativity of an employee. 6 s. Zia anD K. ahMeD 2.5. Abusive supervision and employee silence creativity is a psychological phenomenon (stamm, 2008). the core of attitude is evaluation (eagly & chaiken, 1993). abusive supervision hinders the favorable cognitive development of employees toward the organization (tepper, 2000). the response of the employee toward the abusive supervision is not alike. so, it is crucial to enhance the understanding of destructive behaviors and their responses (Mitchell & ambrose, 2012; tepper, 2007). Due to frustration, disillusionment, disappointment, lack of trust and contempt toward the organization, employees will not behave appropriately, i.e. they may react to that abusiveness in terms of voice or remain silent (Morrison, 2014; Pinder & harlos, 2001; Van Dyne et al., 2003). literature provides evidences that employees may remain silent over such behavior, i.e. abusiveness. the results of many studies have reported a positive relationship between the abusiveness of supervisors and employee silence (guo et al., 2018; Kiewitz et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2015). it is therefore hypothesized that: H2: there is a positive relationship between the abusiveness of a supervisor and employee silence. 2.6. Employee silence and employee creativity employee silence is engendered for different reasons, including abusive supervision among one of them. an employee will remain silent depending on the motives behind it, as discussed earlier. this silence will become the reason for the decrease in an employee’s creativity. literature provides evidence that creativity is largely influenced by employees’ silence (Detert & treviño, 2010; Morrison, 2014; Van Dyne & lePine, 1998). there are evidences in the literature that the relationship between employee silence and creativity is negative (Milliken et al., 2003; Morrison & Milliken, 2000). hence, it is hypothesized that H3: there is a negative relationship between employee silence and employee creativity. 2.7. Role of employee silence as a mediator initial studies on abusive supervision highlighted it as a precursor of the negative outcomes (tepper, 2000), but later on, more refined models were proposed (Wayne et al., 2008). abusive supervision is considered the single yoke of a chain in antagonistic workplace events (hoobler & Brass, 2006). there is still much more to find out that how employee creativity is affected by abusive supervision (chan & Mcallister, 2014), as the findings of the previous studies indicate that the relationship among these two variables is not as simple as it seems to be (liu et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2014). so, different mediators have been introduced in the literature to investigate it (gu etal., 2016; han et al., 2017; Jahanzeb etal., 2019; liu et al., 2016; Meng et al., 2017; shen et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2014). the existence of partial mediation in their results (liu et al., 2016; shen et al., 2020) indicates some other variables mediating this relationship. there are theoretical arguments in the literature that suggest that it is necessary to understand the relationship between the abusiveness of the supervisor and the creativity of an employee (gu et al., 2016; liu et al., 2012; shen et al., 2020). so, to understand this relationship, employee silence is introduced as a mediator. Due to abusive supervision, an employee will become silent. this silence will be intentional as investigated by the many researchers that due silence is not just an absence of voice or lack of confidence. the narrative adopted in this study is based on the conservation of resource theory that due to the abusiveness of the supervisor, an employee will become silent and will not deliver or float new ideas. as a result, creativity will decrease. therefore, it is hypothesized that H4: employee silence mediates the relationship between the abusiveness of the supervisor and the creativity of an employee. cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 7 3. Methodology software engineers of private companies in Pakistan were the target population of this study. a sample of software engineers was selected by using convenient sampling technique as they are vulnerable to abusiveness of supervisor and creativity is the essential part of their work as well. Questionnaires were used to collect the data from the software engineers of the software houses. For this purpose, questionnaires were created on google forms and distributed through emails. sample size larger than 30 and less than 500 is appropriate for most of the research (Roscoe, 1975). about 467 responses were received in total from software engineers in a month and among those 443 were completely filled. there were the questionnaires that were not filled completely. Few of them were merely filled up to demographic variables. such responses were deleted and data collected from 443 employees was used for analysis. as per sample size formula mentioned above, responses collected against the variables of the study were sufficient. therefore, such responses were deleted. Questionnaire included five items for abusive supervision (Mitchell & ambrose, 2007), sample item is ‘My supervisor ridicules me’, five items for employee silence (tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008), the sample item is ‘You choose to remain silent when you had concerns about work’ and three items for employee creativity (Dul et al., 2011), the sample item is ‘in my work, i often have new and innovative ideas’. all scales are measured on a seven-point likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Four demographic questions were also the part of the questionnaire, including age, gender, education and experience. as the questionnaires were self-reporting so there were the chances of common method bias. it was ensured to participants that their responses will be anonymous and confidential. to test it statistically harman’s single factor test was performed. First factor variance explained should be less than 50% and in this case, its value is 45.158% (hsiung, 2012). so, this bias is not a major issue for this study. sPss version 25 (sPss, chicago, il) and amos 26 are used to perform the analysis. 4. Results it includes characteristics of respondents, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, internal reliability, confirmatory factor analysis and mediation analysis by Preacher and hayes macro process (hayes, 2018). Factor loading, discriminant validity, convergent validity, internal reliability and model fit indices are the part of the results. For mediation analysis, hayes macro process is applied. to be more specific model 4 is applied. 4.1. Respondents characteristics control variables have been introduced in literature while investigating the relationship among abusiveness of supervisor and creativity of an employee. so, in this study too data for these variables have been collected. it includes respondent’s age, gender, education and experience. so, here in table 1 detailed characteristics of the respondents or variables to be controlled are being presented. the demographic characteristics of the respondents are given in table 1. Most candidates were males; their age was between 20 and 30 years, having master’s education and 2–5 years of experience. 14 s. Zia anD K. ahMeD Bassman, e., & london, M. (1993). abusive managerial behaviour. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 14(2), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437739310032683 Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, e., Finkenauer, c., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). 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