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

Abstract

Toxic leadership is becoming increasingly common in healthcare organizations and there is strong need for studies focusing on organizational factors that can trigger revenge. Additionally, how psychological well-being functions in shielding against toxicity has not been adequately studied. Hence, this study aims to examine the relationship between toxic leadership and vengeful behaviors of nurses, along with the contingency of psychological well-being on the relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this exploratory cross-sectional study, we attempt to examine the antecedent effect of toxic leadership on vengeful behaviors based on self-reports from 311 nurses. Using partial least squares and moderation analyses, the results show that toxic leadership is an important antecedent of vengeful behaviors among nurses. However, the results provide no statistical evidence to support a moderating role of psychological well-being in the relationship between toxic leadership and vengeful behaviors. This study reveals that nurses exposed to toxic behaviors by their superiors are more likely to engage in vengeance and highlights the fact that nurses are suffering psychologically during the pandemic.

Impact of despotic leadership and workplace incivility on innovative work behavior of employees: Application of mediation-moderation model

“…Psychological well-being of employees contributes great to the performance of employees and has fruitful results for employees and organizations on the whole [ 15 , 29 ]. But dilemma in current scenario for organizations is the prevalence of negative events at the workplaces that reduce the psychological capital, emotional intelligence and psychological well-being of the employees [ 56 , 57 ].…”

“…According to Ref. [ 29 ], destructive leaders like toxic, abusive, and despotic leaders can increase the emotional exhaustion among employees and affect their well-being badly. Hence, the performance and job satisfaction among employees are found very low and negative.…”

Toxic leadership and its relationship with outcomes on the nursing workforce and patient safety: a systematic review

“…Other studies found a significant and positive association between toxic leadership, vengeful behavior and deviant behavior. These studies suggest that working under a toxic leader may result in an increase in vengeful (Koç et al, 2022) and deviant behavior in nurses (Khaled Abd El-Aziz Zaki and Samir Abd El-Aziz Elsaiad, 2021). Two studies reported a significant increase in silence behavior in nurses who perceived their nurse managers as toxic (Abdelaliem and Abou Zeid, 2023;Reyhanoglu and Akin, 2022).…”

“…Therefore, toxic leadership could also negatively influence patient safety outcomes. Evidently, studies that examine mechanisms by which toxic leaders influence outcomes in the nursing workforce remained under research, with only six studies found (Abdelaliem and Abou Zeid, 2023;Bakkal et al, 2019;Budal and Erdal, 2022;Erdal and Budak, 2021;Koç et al, 2022;Reyhanoglu and Akin, 2022). Finally, as the samples from all but three studies (Labrague, 2021a(Labrague, , 2021bLabrague et al, 2020aLabrague et al, , 2020bOfei et al, 2022) were derived from a single site, future studies should consider multi-site data collection to further increase the reliability and validity of the results.…”

“…Mediators relating to nurses’ psychological states, including job burnout and psychological well-being, were examined in relation to toxic leadership. Job burnout had a partial indirect effect on the relationship between toxic leadership and job satisfaction (Budal and Erdal, 2022); however, psychological well-being did not influence the toxic leadership-vengeful behavior relationship (Koç et al , 2022). In other words, working with a toxic leader may increase job burnout, leading to job dissatisfaction (Budal and Erdal, 2022).…”