BUS603: Managing People

Despite the contributions, our studies are not without their limitations. In Study 1, we chose an experimental vignette approach, which naturally has a range of limitations. Scenarios, rather than real experiences, may reflect the perception of participants. Whereas internal validity is high in our scenario study, the generalizability is limited. Nevertheless, it has been shown that scenario experiments tend to score well on common realism. In Study 2, we further conducted a field study to gain an understanding of real organizational effects. However, this was a measurement at one point in time and relied solely on followers' perceptions, thus being prone to common method bias. While self-reports are certainly well-suited to capture followers' emotional reactions and individual attitudes, future research in this field may benefit from using more objective measures, such as physiological reactions. A further limitation refers to our use of single-item measures for the different facets of turnover intention, most notably with regard to measurement reliability. Yet, prior research has demonstrated that single-item measures are a reasonable option under certain circumstances. On the one hand, we chose single-item measures to minimize respondent burden while increasing face validity. Moreover, we consider the facets of turnover intention rather concrete and specific, so that a general single item enhances respondents' clarity regarding what is actually being measured. It would certainly be fruitful in future research to test multiple- item measures to capture different facets of turnover intention.

Overall, our research opens up multiple avenues for future research. While we have focused on two types of outcome, there are certainly many more outcomes and important mechanisms that would benefit from a more differentiated view. In our view, the most promising next route would be to investigate mechanisms that can shed further light on how different types of destructive leader behavior influence followers. Organizational justice theory has been studied as an important mechanism for destructive leadership and we can imagine that the different types of organizational justice may work as mechanisms with different types of destructive behavior. Whereas abusive supervision may more strongly relate to perceptions of interpersonal unfairness, exploitative leadership will rather violate concerns of distributive and procedural justice. In a similar vein, our results suggest that negative affect may not even be the primary mechanism through which exploitative leadership affects followers. Rather, in contrast to abusive supervision, with its strong focus on hostility and aggression, exploitative leadership may work more strongly through follower cognition than affect. Future research should test this assumption by considering follower outcomes that are inherently cognitive, such as reciprocity expectations.

Furthermore, qualitative studies would be of great interest to shed light on the differences in perceptions and effects of leaders behaving destructively in either an exploitative, an abusive, or an organization-directed way. Specifically, qualitative interviews are especially suited to examine mechanisms and reasons why followers react in certain ways to destructive leadership.

Of interest, furthermore, would be to investigate different effects of different destructive leadership behaviors in a long-term field study, to capture real and longer-term follower-leader interactions. We would argue that destructive behaviors high on hostility, such as abusive supervision, would lead to negative effects on outcomes much faster than destructive leader behaviors lower on hostility, like exploitative leadership. With exploitative leadership, negative effects, such as negative emotional reactions and turnover intentions, may only unfold over time.

Since our study focused on the individual follower perspective, future research needs to provide an understanding of how different destructive leader behaviors impact teams. We see different avenues for this. Peus posited that the negative perceptions an individual develops of a leader can spread to the team through social and emotional contagion processes and create a shared negative perception of the leader. Thus, an employee who witnesses or becomes aware of the leader treating a colleague in an exploitative or abusive manner can be influenced by this. Schmid have shown first evidence for team level perceptions of exploitative leadership, but how these perceptions spread differently for different destructive leader behaviors remains to be understood. Moreover, followers may mimic their leader's behaviors. Further research should investigate how the different destructive behaviors may be mimicked and how follower mimicking abusive versus exploitative behaviors may impact teamwork. Related to this, future research should further investigate the role of followership in the destructive leader dynamic. Followers may show these different destructive behaviors toward their leader; thus different destructive upward leadership behaviors and their outcomes need to be understood.

Moreover, when it comes to better understanding antecedents, leader identity and self-concept have received much attention in the leadership literature recently. It describes three levels of the self – the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and the collective – and may be an important theory to understand why different destructive leaders behave in the way they do. We can imagine an exploitative leader focusing mainly on the intrapersonal aspect of self, whereas an abusive leader may rather focus on interpersonal aspects of their self. An organization-directed destructive leader would rather focus on the collective aspect.

In conclusion, a more tailored approach to destructive leadership, whether in research or practice, seems necessary, since all destructive leaders are destructive in their own way.