The late Steve Jobs was one of America’s most famous CEOs, praised for his leadership of Apple Inc. and fostering a culture of innovation that few companies can match while making lots of money.

Steve Jobs was also regarded as one of corporate America’s biggest tyrants, known for throwing temper tantrums and dressing down employees in humiliating fashion.

Why was Jobs allowed to get away with his abusive behavior? Because supervisors who are productive have a long leash when it comes to bad behavior. We recently studied how outside observers reacted to abusive behavior on the part of supervisors and found that people tend to accept such behavior as long as the supervisor is seen as productive and effective, and as long as the employee doesn’t feel as if he or she is the next target.

We also found that tolerance of abusive behavior generally ends at the office door. When parties judge the personal appeal of the same high-performing abusive supervisor, they are less forgiving. In other words, although they tolerated Steve Jobs’ behavior because he was productive, they might not have wanted to be friends with him. That line of thinking is even stronger from witnesses who feel detached from the abuse.

For companies that make it a priority to treat their employees well, rooting out and stopping such abuse is important if the company wants to truly develop a reputation as a great place to work.

Reducing abusive supervision can be a challenge because most organizations evaluate their employees based largely on productivity, and few have a specific system in place to assess how a supervisor achieves those results. If an abusive supervisor is seen as effective and productive by her own supervisors, then she will likely receive high performance evaluations and may continue to abuse her own employees. One solution is for organizations to design performance evaluations that specifically take into account both the outcomes achieved by supervisors and the way in which employees are treated in the process of achieving those outcomes.

It’s true that some companies are successful despite abusive supervisors, such as Apple, which became enormously profitable despite Jobs’ leadership style. But they are rare, and it’s in the best interest of the rest to identify this kind of behavior and stop it by retraining or replacing the abusive supervisor.

Amy Colbert is an associate professor of management and organizations at the University of Iowa’s Henry B. Tippie College of Business. Jonathan Shaffer is an assistant professor of business at West Texas A&M University.