Consequences of Destructive Leadership

This text explores the negative consequences of abusive supervision and exploitative leadership. As you read, focus on the theoretical and practical implications.

Methods

Study 1

Sample and Procedures

Building on prior research on leadership that has successfully used the vignette method, we created three hypothetical scenarios for abusive supervision, exploitative leadership, and organization-directed destructive leadership behaviors by covering the core elements of each construct.

Participants for this study were recruited via an open online survey conducted within the network of three Master's students. On the first page of the online survey, participants were informed that participation was voluntary and by continuing to the second page, they consented to participating in the study. A prerequisite for participating in the survey was that participants were employed full time. In total, 297 participants took part in the online survey and were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental groups (92 in the exploitative leadership, 113 in the abusive supervision, and 92 in the organization-directed destructive leadership condition). In total, 136 respondents were female, the mean age was 25.64 (SD = 7.04), and the majority of the participants (95.6 percent) worked in the for-profit sector.