Abstract
The research paper examines the phenomenon of destructive leadership with the sole aim of exploring its predictors or causes that reinforce destructive or toxic leadership behavior. The exploration process investigates the phenomenon from followers’ perspective evolved from their sensitivities towards their leaders’ behavior. Previous researches suggest that the phenomenon is least researched, and the existing literature is more related to the characteristics or personality traits of the destructive leaders. Therefore, this research, from followers’ perspective, attempts to explore the causes or predictors that persuade darkness or toxicity in the leadership behavior while driving their teams towards goals. A comprehensive exercise of literature review resulted in derivation of theoretical framework extending a research model evolved from presumed predictors of the destructive or toxic leadership behavior. Drawing from the “destructive or toxic leadership theory, the cross-sectional survey research is quantitative in its approach. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire was guaranteed through Cronbach Alpha; discriminate, construct and the convergent validity exercises. To ascertain the significance of relationship between the predictors and the phenomenon of destructive leadership structural equation modeling (PLS) was employed during the structural regression analyses. The research model established that five factors such as, narcissism, abusive supervision, authoritarianism, impulsiveness or unpredictability of leader’s personality, self-promotion were having predictive relevance for destructive behavior. The results of this research study supported acceptance of all five hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework of the research.
