BUS603: Managing People

Behaviors that fall under the category of organization-directed leadership characterized by high levels of hostility have not been explicitly described in the destructive leadership literature. However, from a theoretical viewpoint and borrowing from research in the field of workplace deviance, such behaviors refer to acts of genuine aggressiveness toward the organization. Examples would be sabotage, equipment destruction, or vandalism (e.g., spreading computer viruses). We assume that this type of destructive leadership represents a low base rate phenomenon. While this is in part true for all forms of destructive leadership, such explicitly hostile behaviors against the organization are likely to be performed particularly covertly and thus remain unseen by others. As such, they are less likely to elicit effects on followers. Thus, in the current study, we focus on those behaviors that are more prevalent and feasible to assess and that are established constructs in the destructive leadership literature.

In conclusion, we propose that two important differentiating factors of destructive leadership are: (1) the level of hostility and (2) the target of the behavior. Based on this, in the next section we develop different hypotheses for three recurring destructive leadership behaviors: abusive supervision, exploitative leadership, and organization-directed destructive leadership.