Leader's desire for promotion, workplace anxiety and exploitative leadership: the moderating effect of Machiavellianism

Abstract

PurposeDrawing on the conservation of resources theory, the present research paper examines the moderating role of leaders' Machiavellianism in the relationships between the desire for promotion, workplace anxiety and exploitative leadership.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected matched time-lagged data from part-time MBA students and their subordinates. The subordinate questionnaires were paired and coded by the researchers and then directly distributed and instructed to be filled out, which would not be known to the MBA students. The final sample size came to 370 leader-subordinate dyads. The data were analyzed using SPSS 24 and Mplus 7.0.FindingsLeaders' desire for promotion is positively related to exploitative leadership via workplace anxiety. Furthermore, this mediating effect is significant when Machiavellianism is high, but not when Machiavellianism is low.Originality/valueFor business ethics scholars and practitioners, this study points out that leaders with a desire for promotion can produce workplace anxiety, lead to subordinates' perception of exploitative leadership and how this process varies by key personality trait—Machiavellianism.

Digital Transformation and Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance from a Human Capital Perspective

“…In this study, the moderating variable was bifurcated into two distinct componentsnamely, high-quality labor force and labor force skill level. Drawing on the framework established by Huang et al [59], high-quality labor (highlabor) and labor skill levels (laborskills) were selected as intermediary measures.…”

“…Building on the previous research on digital transformation and ESG [15,59], our model incorporates several firm characteristics and corporate governance variables as control measures. These control variables serve to enhance comparability with prior studies and mitigate the possibility of omitted variable bias, thereby strengthening the robustness of our analysis.…”

“…Controls refers to a range of control variables. To manage interference from other related factors in identifying causality, we consult Huang et al [59] and Cai et al [15] for control selection. Moreover, δ i and γ t denote the firm and year fixed effect, respectively.…”