About the Book
In this Research Handbook, Birgit Schyns, Pedro Neves, and Kimberley Breevaart bring together expert contributing authors to lay out a state-of-the-art overview of destructive leadership and explore how this can cause harm to individuals, teams, organizations, and even societies. Outlining a breadth of methodologies, the book provides new avenues for the investigation of destructive leadership to stimulate more systematic, high-quality research on the topic.
Chapters begin by discussing the many different forms that destructive leadership can take, including abusive supervision, narcissism, inconsistent leadership, laissez-faire leadership, and exploitative leadership. They pay close attention to the boundary conditions and contexts in which destructive leadership can arise, specifically in family businesses, sports, and in times of crisis. Addressing the difficulties of studying destructive leadership, the book concludes by critically evaluating existing methodologies.
The Research Handbook on Destructive Leadership will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of business ethics, business leadership, and organization studies. It will also appeal to practitioners such as consultants and human resource professionals seeking to gain insights into destructive leadership practices and how to address them.
Table of Contents:
Contents
1 Destructive leadership: state of the art and future directions 1
Kimberley Breevaart, Birgit Schyns, and Pedro Neves
PART I FORMS OF DESTRUCTIVE LEADERSHIP
2 The sustained nature of abusive supervision: an overview and synthesis
of theoretical frameworks 10
Kimberley Breevaart, Barbara Wisse, Diana Rus, and Selina Langner
3 Dark entanglement: narcissistic leaders, their followers, and the
contexts they create 30
Emily E. Forgo, Paul J. Hanges, and Dritjon Gruda
4 Inconsistent leadership: overview, measurement and an agenda for
future research 50
Jan Schilling, Birgit Schyns, and Daniel May
5 Unmasking leadership incivility: creating a research agenda for
employee health 70
Yannick Provencher, Arla Day, and M. Gloria González-Morales
6 Is there power in letting go? An assessment of laissez-faire leadership
research 95
Evy Kuijpers, Sarah Cameron, and Jesse T. Vullinghs
7 At the cost of others: the concept of exploitative leadership 115
Armin Pircher Verdorfer and Ellen Schmid
8 Grandiose and vulnerable leader narcissism in context: the role of events 132
Anna Topakas, Xiaoyu Gan, and Susanne Braun
9 The behaviour of vulnerable narcissistic leaders: a qualitative interview
study 155
Birgit Schyns, Iris K. Gauglitz, Sarah Gilmore, and Karolina W. Nieberle
PART II BOUNDARY CONDITIONS AND CONTEXT
10 Family businesses: a fertile ground for destructive leadership? 172
Jana Hermle-Boersig, Nadine Kammerlander, and Matthias Waldkirch
11 Destructive leadership in the context of sports 193
Stewart T. Cotterill and Stephanie J. Tibbert
12 Dark times, bad leaders: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic 204
Urszula Lagowska and Birgit Schyns
13 The impact of multidimensional crises on followers’ vulnerability to
destructive leadership 221
Luciana Simion and Michelle Bligh
14 Susceptible followers and destructive leadership: an integrative review
and typology 240
Christian Thoroughgood, Sung Hyoun Hong, and Katina Sawyer
15 Personality and the dark side of leadership 262
Jan Luca Pletzer, Bo Wang, and Jacek Buczny
16 Destructive leadership paradoxes 279
Miguel Pina e Cunha, Ace Volkmann Simpson, Arménio Rego, and
Marco Berti
PART III METHODS RELEVANT TO THE STUDY OF
DESTRUCTIVE LEADERSHIP
17 Methodological considerations for studying destructive leadership 294
Thomas Fischer
18 An assessment of construct proliferation within destructive leadership
research 311
Jeremy D. Mackey, Michael A. Phillipich, Charn P. McAllister, and
Katherine C. Alexander
19 A field guide to non-field research: experimental methods in abusive
supervision research 327
Pearlyn H. S. Ng, Elana Zur, Lindie H. Liang, and Douglas J. Brown
About the Author :
Edited by Birgit Schyns, Distinguished Professor, People & Organisations Department, NEOMA Business School, France, Pedro Neves, Professor, Management and Organizations Department, Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal, and Kimberley Breevaart, Associate Professor, Work and Organisational Psychology Department, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Review :
‘We live in a world where more than a quarter of countries are led by dictators and a substantial portion of leaders in business and government are destructive. While we know a lot about good leaders, there has been little attention given to studying the bad ones. This edited collection presents state-of-the-art research on destructive leadership and includes directions for future research. This book shines a bright light on the dark side of leadership and greatly helps our understanding of the dynamics of destructive leadership.’
