Increasing Darkness: Combining Toxic Leadership and Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA)

Abstract

In an article entitled “Identifying and combating organizational leadership toxicity,” authors Watt, Javidi, and Normore (Watt, Javidi, & Normore, 2015) identified and outlined techniques for combating leadership toxicity in Law Enforcement. This chapter extends this work by linking Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) to toxic leadership. Crisis happens. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), (a term) coined at the Army War College in the early 1990s (Mack, O., Kare, A., Kramer, A., & Burgartz, T. (2015), Managing VUCA world. New York, NY. Retrieved from http://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/2015/12/02/capturing-the-moment-counter-vuca-leadership-for-21st-century-policing/#sthash.IKYJInr4.dpuf), is a sobering new reality for leaders and the organizations they serve. In simple terms, VUCA is chaos. It falls on leaders to understand it, prepare for it, and minimize the disruptive and destabilizing effects of it.

Citation

Watt, S.R., Javidi, M. and Normore, A.H. (2016), "Increasing Darkness: Combining Toxic Leadership and Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA)", The Dark Side of Leadership: Identifying and Overcoming Unethical Practice in Organizations (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 26), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 195-206. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-366020160000026015