BUS603: Managing People

In this part of our article, we delineate the proposed different effects of different destructive leadership behaviors on relevant follower outcomes.

When assuming that the target of the leader's behaviors and the level of hostility are the differentiating factors between different types of destructive behavior, these two factors would naturally impact how an employee reacts. As mentioned before, negative information, such as destructive behavior of a leader, has higher emotional and motivational significance than positive information. Thus, we first assume that followers' emotions, as the most proximal reaction when confronted with destructive leadership, are likely to differ as a function of different destructive leadership behaviors.

Secondly, we follow the argument by Baumeister that negative information has a strong motivational significance, in that it triggers an action (e.g., avoiding a negative stimulus). Thus, when relating this to destructive leadership, different levels of hostility are likely to have a different impact on the motivation to leave a leader. We thus propose to focus on emotions and the intention to leave the leader (i.e., turnover intention) in analyzing the different effects of abusive supervision, exploitative leadership, and organization-directed destructive leadership.

A very proximal effect a leader's behaviors have is on their followers' emotions. As such, all experiences of destructive leadership are likely paralleled by negative emotions. However, the extent of the negative affect is thought to vary, depending on the level of hostility and if the follower is targeted directly. Several scholars have argued that destructive leadership is destructive since it is a threat to the self-worth of the followers. Abusive supervision is described as rather high on hostility. By targeting the follower ­– for instance, by ridiculing followers in front of others or even telling them they are incompetent ­– abusive supervisors would very directly harm the self-worth of followers. Accordingly, hostile and aggressive behaviors, such as described in abusive supervision, have been consistently related to negative affect in empirical studies. In line with this, we posit that abusive supervision has a strong impact on employees' negative affect.

Exploitative leaders, on the other hand, will take credit for work or manipulate followers to further their own self-interest. Such behaviors, while still targeting the follower directly, are lower on hostility and should thus have a less detrimental effect on followers' self-worth. While being exploited would certainly relate to negative affect, we posit that it does so less strongly than abusive supervision. On the other hand, leaders that show anti-organizational behaviors will show negative behaviors that are not a direct attack on the followers' self-worth. Stealing from the organization, or talking negatively about it, primarily targets the organization, and is rather distal from the follower. We posit that this should have the least strong effect on followers' negative affect.

Thus, we specify the following predictions:

Tepper argued that when followers are confronted with self-worth threatening interactions, they feel a need to empower themselves. A very strong way to empower themselves is turnover, since a follower who intends to leave the job is less dependent on their supervisor. We expect exploitative leadership, just like abusive supervision and organization-directed destructive leadership, to relate to general turnover intentions, as previous research has shown. We therefore predict that all three leadership styles will cause followers to reconsider their employment options. However, the degree of self-worth threat is assumed to vary depending on the level of hostility and how directly a follower is targeted by the behavior. We thus expect that the urgency of the turnover intentions will vary. Since abusive supervision represents a more direct attack on the follower with high levels of hostility, this should relate to followers considering immediate turnover (i.e., leaving the situation immediately). We argue that exploitative leadership, as a less hostile behavior, poses less of a self-worth threat to followers, resulting in a less immediate need to leave the situation. Therefore, followers under exploitative leadership will take a rather more calculative approach and consider staying until, for example, the next career level is reached. Since organization-directed destructive leadership behaviors are more distal and do not target the follower directly, the effect is more difficult to predict. It may be that a leader harming the organization confronts followers with behaviors that run against their feeling of what is right and wrong. On the other hand, the anti-organizational behavior of the leader may be too distant; as Thoroughgood put it "…such behaviors might not increase turnover intentions as quickly as overtly abusive acts". Therefore, we only specify hypotheses for abusive supervision and exploitative leadership.

Our research model is shown in Figure 2.