Abusive Supervision and Employees' Work Alienation: Comparative Analysis of Migrant Workers and Urban Workers

Data from the Statistics of China's Migrant Workers Survey of 2011 indicates that, the amount of migrant workers goes up to 250 million people. However, they are faced with a lot of very serious problems. Using empirical data from a survey from several provinces (N=305), this study discussed the effect of direct supervisor's abusive behavior to employees' work alienation as well as the moderating effect of locus of control, furthermore, the level of the sense of abusive supervision, work alienation and its three dimensions were compared between migrant workers and urban workers. The results showed that abusive supervision had a significant positive effect on work alienation and its three dimensions (sense of powerlessness, isolation, repression), The mean level of variables had a significant difference between migrant workers and urban workers, however, the moderating effect of locus of control didn't pass the test of significance.