Dealing with the devil: Combined effects of destructive leadership and Dark Triad personality on revenge, happiness and psychological detachment

Abstract

Utilizing the cognitive appraisal theory of stress and coping, we examined the combined effects of destructive leadership and Dark Triad personality on revenge and employee outcomes (happiness and psychological detachment). Adopting a time‐lagged research design (three time lags), we collected data from 288 employees from the service sector in Pakistan. Using Process technique, our findings showed that revenge mediated the destructive leadership and outcomes relationship. We also found that the impact of destructive leadership on revenge was more substantial for individuals having high Dark Triad personality. The results supported our moderated mediation hypothesis, proving that revenge mediates the relationship between destructive leadership and outcomes for individuals with a high Dark Triad Personality.

Health hazards in sports: Exploring the influence of despotic leadership and perceived organizational politics on well-being

“…Their unethical behaviors negatively mobilize the employees' goals, which causes harm to their health. Furthermore, they bring destructive outcomes that make the employees psychologically detached from their work [ 78 ]. Despotic leadership influences the work attitude and psychologically disengages the employees from their roles [ 30 ].…”

Neuroleadership: a new way for happiness management

“…Other authors have identified the influence of happiness at work as a mediator of the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment (Abdullah et al, 2017 ). From the opposite approach, destructive leadership is observed to have negative effects on employees’ happiness and psychological detachment (Syed et al, 2022 ). We can find some studies on the relationships between self-leadership, work stress, and happiness (Jwa et al, 2018 ).…”

Examining Nurses’ Vengeful Behaviors: The Effects of Toxic Leadership and Psychological Well-Being

“…Vengeful behaviors in the workplace represent counterproductive behaviors [ 12 , 13 ] which are punitive and damaging responsive behaviors to perceived wrongdoing [ 14 ]. Although there is a common consensus in the literature that vengeful behaviors have various negative and/or positive outcomes [ 15 ], scholarly works generally emphasize the negative outcomes that result from feeling unfairly treated [ 12 ]. In this sense, revenge may trigger counter-revenge, prolonged disputes [ 16 ] and is often seen in association with a variety of adverse psychological outcomes [ 17 ].…”

“…For example, Staub [ 18 ] argues that the desire for revenge disrupts an individual’s mental well-being, as well as their social relationships with others because of the aggressive and violent nature associated with revenge. Therefore, revenge has been conceptualized as an immoral, unethical and dysfunctional aspect of organizations [ 15 ].…”

“…To test our hypotheses, we collect data from a sample of nurses. Although the effects of negative leadership styles on employee-level adverse outcomes have been previously studied in both the organizational behavior and health management literature, there is still room for empirical studies that focus on the other organizational factors that can trigger revenge, such as toxic leadership [ 15 ]. Furthermore, the extant literature about toxic leadership was originally conducted with personnel from the military, political and business contexts [ 7 ].…”