Harmful Leader Behaviors: Toward an Increased Understanding of How Different Forms of Unethical Leader Behavior Can Harm Subordinates

Abstract

Research on unethical leadership has predominantly focused on interpersonal and high-intensity forms of harmful leader behavior such as abusive supervision. Other forms of harmful leader behavior such as excessively pressuring subordinates or acting in self-centered ways have received less attention, despite being harmful and potentially occurring more frequently. We propose a model of four types of harmful leader behavior (HLB) varying in intensity (high vs low) and orientation (people/relationships or tasks/goals): Intimidation, Lack of Care, Self-Centeredness, and Excessive Pressure for Results. We map out how these relate to other constructs in the unethical leader behavior field in order to integrate the existing work on how leaders can cause harm to followers. Next, in five studies (N = 35, N = 218, N = 352, N = 160, N = 1921 in 196 teams), we develop and test a new survey instrument measuring the four proposed types of perceived HLB. We provide initial validity evidence for this new measure, establish its psychometric properties, and examine its nomological network by linking the four types of HLB to related leadership constructs and soft and hard outcome correlates at the individual and team level. We find that HLB is negatively related to constructive forms of leadership (e.g., ethical and transformational) and positively to unethical ones (e.g., abusive supervision). HLB is also related in the expected direction to job satisfaction, engagement, psychological safety, knowledge sharing, knowledge hiding, deviance, and objectively recorded team-level stress-related absenteeism.

Unethical Leadership: Review, Synthesis and Directions for Future Research

“…Under unethical leadership, however, different forms of unethical leader behaviours can target both followers and organisations. This confirms the view that abusive supervision is highly psychological in nature, encompassing high-intensity hostile behaviours that are directed at people (Almeida et al, 2021). The preceding discussion, however, suggests that unethical leadership need not be highly intense or hostile.…”

“…In fact, pseudo-transformational leadership, yet another form of destructive leadership, has the potential to yield positive organisational outcomes (Almeida et al, 2021). In contrast, unethical leadership includes behaviours that are undeniably illegal and, at the same time, violate moral standards, thus, granting no benefit of the doubt to the intentionality of the leader's behaviour.…”

The effects of expert power and referent power on knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding

“…Transfer and conversion of knowledge to institutional memory essentially adds to the vibrancy of any organisation (Del Giudice et al , 2015). Previous studies have shown that effective knowledge sharing is positively related to prompt project completion (Ardito et al , 2019; Issac et al , 2021a, 2021b), improved organisational performance (Fait et al , 2019; Pereira and Mohiya, 2021), drastically lower costs of production (Pereira et al , 2021) and increased sales and revenue (Ali et al , 2021; Almeida et al , 2021; Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002). Considering these holistic benefits, organistations have diligently invested in efficient knowledge management systems to optimise the levels of knowledge sharing.…”

Workplace gaslighting: Conceptualization, development, and validation of a scale

“…The study makes a significant contribution to the literature on harmful leader behaviors by conceptualizing and operationalizing gaslighting behavior in the workplace. Despite its harmful effects on individuals and organizations, gaslighting has received relatively Gaslighting in the typology of harmful leader behaviors (Almeida et al, 2021).…”