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The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the thesis “bad is stronger than good” also holds true for a number of leadership issues, more specifically: trust in the immediate leader, emotional exhaustion, work atmosphere and propensity to leave.

Questionnaire responses were obtained from military personnel in Estonia, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands (n=625).

Multiple regression analyses revealed a certain pattern. Constructive leadership behaviours showed stronger positive associations with trust in the immediate supervisor and work atmosphere, than destructive leadership behaviours showed negative associations. On the other hand, destructive leadership behaviours showed stronger positive associations with emotional exhaustion and propensity to leave, than constructive leadership behaviours showed negative associations. This suggests that constructive leadership behaviours possibly have a greater impact on positive phenomenon and/or phenomenon associated with work-related relationships. On the other hand, destructive leadership behaviours appear to have a greater impact on negative phenomena with a stronger personal meaning. The results also show that the passive forms of destructive leadership are the behaviours that had the strongest impact on the investigated dependent variables.

Limitations related to item construction, common method variance, response set tendencies, translation of the instruments, and lack of response rate are discussed.

The results emphasize the importance of focusing on both constructive and destructive leadership at the selection stage, as well as during training of military leaders. Focusing on them separately obstructs optimal leader development and prevents leaders from gaining authentic self-knowledge. The results also point at the importance of including both aspects of leadership in leader evaluation processes.

The use of both constructive and destructive leadership behaviours with respondents from multiple nations in the same analysis.

The literature on destructive leadership has largely ignored the perspective of the subordinate, especially in terms of conflict coping mechanisms. This study aims to integrate research on destructive leadership and subordinates’ voice behaviour as a conflict coping mechanism. Drawing on the social exchange, conservation of resources and social identity theories, it argues that destructive leadership negatively affects employees’ voice behaviour and that this relationship is moderated by subordinate personality and organization climate.

The proposed model was tested on a sample of 275 professionals working in the banking and insurance sector in India using a temporal research design with data collected in two phases six months apart. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used for data analysis.

The results support the main effect relationship between destructive leadership and subordinates’ voice behaviour and the moderation of subordinates’ personality and organizational climate. Temporal analysis indicates that the nature of some relationships changed across the two time periods.

A greater understanding of destructive leader behaviour and resultant coping strategies of subordinates is likely to provide insights for managers facing such situations. The findings of this study will inform the creation of redressal and voice mechanisms in organizations.

This is among the first studies to examine the impact of negative forms of leadership on subordinates’ conflict coping mechanisms using a temporal lag design across two time periods.

Line managers can make or break organizational interventions, yet little is known about what makes them turn in either direction. As leadership does not occur in a vacuum, it has been suggested that the organizational context plays an important role. Building on the intervention and leadership literature, we examine if span of control and employee readiness for change are related to line managers' leadership during an organizational intervention.

Leadership is studied in terms of intervention-specific constructive, as well as passive and active forms of destructive, leadership behaviors. As a sample, we use employees (N = 172) from 37 groups working at a process industry plant. Multilevel analyses over two time points, with both survey and organizational register data were used to analyze the data.

The results revealed that span of control was negatively related to constructive leadership and positively related to passive destructive leadership during the intervention. Employee readiness for change was positively related to constructive leadership, and negatively related to both passive and active destructive leadership.

Our findings suggest that contextual factors need to be assessed and considered if we want line managers to engage in constructive rather than destructive leadership during interventions.

The present study is the first to address line managers' making or breaking of organizational interventions by examining the influence of context on both their destructive and constructive leadership.

This study aims to investigate the differences between destructive leadership in two different contexts: crisis management and usual circumstances. The specific research questions are as follows: What is the relationship between destructive leadership behaviours in usual circumstances and destructive leadership behaviours in crisis management? Are destructive leadership behaviours in usual circumstances or in crisis management the best predictors of trust in the leader and subordinate performance?

Questionnaire responses were obtained from 337 individuals who had experience from handling various societal crises, such as terror attacks and forest fires. The respondents represented four different organisations: municipalities, county administrative boards, the police and the emergency service.

The results from the study reveal that there is a strong association between destructive leadership in usual circumstances and destructive leadership during crisis management. The study indicates that everyday leadership matters the most. It is above all behaviours in usual circumstances that show the strongest associations with trust in the leader and subordinate performance. The results also show that it is especially task-related, passive forms of destructive leadership behaviours that show the strongest association with the studied outcome variables.

Limitations related to measurements and self-reported data are discussed.

The study emphasises the importance of paying attention to leaders’ task- and strategic-oriented behaviour as well as the importance of building trusting relationships with the subordinates.

The need for industry-specific studies of destructive leadership has been highlighted and this study contributes with knowledge from the crisis management context.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to increased knowledge of destructive leadership in crisis management. The specific research questions are: (1) What types of destructive leadership behaviours can be identified in leaders in crisis management? and (2) Why are these behaviours considered destructive in this context?

About 21 informants involved in crisis management at regional, local and operational levels in Sweden were interviewed. They were selected since they had recently been involved in severe accidents and/or crises (e.g. terror attacks, forest fires). A grounded theory analysis of interview data yielded two core variables: destructive leadership behaviours, and appraisal: interpretation of leader behaviour.

The study identified seven different destructive leadership behaviours: four task-related and three relationship-related. Task-related behaviours primarily led to negative consequences for the task/crisis. Relationship-related behaviours have negative consequences for subordinates' job satisfaction, well-being and/or sense of meaningfulness. The paper relates the identified behaviours to existing leadership ideals within crisis management and discusses behaviours that appear to be unique for the crisis management context.

The paper highlights the fact that great crisis managers are not always good at managing relationships, which may have negative implications for crisis management in the long term.

Destructive leadership is a research field that is rapidly expanding. However, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the nature of destructive leadership behaviours and what makes an individual appraise a leader as destructive in crisis management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of psychological contract breach on destructive by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of moral identity and moral disengagement and the moderating role of moral belief.

This study conducted a three-wave questionnaire survey and used 377 matched-sample data to test the hypotheses. PROCESS bootstrapping program in SPSS and confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS software were adopted in this study.

Results reveal that psychological contract breach has a positive effect on destructive leadership behavior, and the relationship is mediated by moral identity and moral disengagement; moral belief not only moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and destructive leadership behavior, but also moderates the mediation effect of moral identity and moral disengagement.

First, this study enriches the destructive leadership behavior literature by verifying psychological contract breach as an antecedent. Second, this study discusses the role of morality in the formation mechanism of destructive leadership behavior by testing the mediating effect of moral identity and moral disengagement and the moderating effect of moral belief.

Existing research on social inequalities in leadership seeks to explain how perceptions of marginalized followers as deficient leaders contribute to their underrepresentation. However, research must also address how current leaders restrict these followers' access to leadership opportunities. This conceptual paper offers the perspective that deficiencies in leaders' behaviors perpetuate social inequalities in leadership through an illustrative application to research on gender and leadership.

The authors situate existing research on gender and leadership within broader leadership theory to highlight the importance of inclusivity in defining destructive and constructive leadership.

Previous scholarship on gender inequalities in leadership has focused on perceptions of women as deficient leaders. The authors advocate that researchers reconceptualize leaders' failures to advance women in the workplace as a form of destructive leadership that harms women and organizations. Viewing leaders' discriminatory behavior as destructive compels a broader definition of constructive leadership, in which leaders' allyship against sexism, and any other form of prejudice, is not a rare behavior to glorify, but rather a defining component of constructive leadership.

This paper highlights the important role of high-status individuals in increasing diversity in leadership. The authors suggest that leader inclusivity should be used as a metric of leader effectiveness.

The authors refocus conversations on gender inequality in leadership by emphasizing leaders' power in making constructive or destructive behavioral choices. The authors’ perspective offers a novel approach to research on social inequalities in leadership that centers current leaders' roles (instead of marginalized followers' perceived deficits) in perpetuating inequalities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the fundamental content and structure of destructive leadership within the Chinese cultural context, through surveys of employees in Chinese organizations.

Methodologies such as documentary analysis, interview and survey were used in the study, and surveys were conducted on over 1,300 employees from Beijing, Shanghai and other cities in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces. Then the content and structure of destructive leadership perceived by Chinese employees were examined using multiple statistical techniques including EFA (exploratory factor analysis) and CFA (confirmatory factor analysis).

The results of the survey showed that destructive leadership in Chinese organizations consists of four factors: corruption, excoriation of subordinates, abuse of subordinates and the loss of professional morality. The authors then compared the structure with relevant Western research findings and revealed their similarities and differences.

The structure of Chinese destructive leadership not only reflects the characteristics of Chinese culture, but also reflects the characteristics of current Chinese organizational management, which have practical implications for identifying management problems in Chinese organizations and improving workplace leadership behavior.

This is the first paper of its kind in mainland China to empirically explore the theoretical model of destructive leadership within the context of Chinese culture, which will facilitate future research by offering a theoretical basis and research instrument.

The full-range leadership theory, and the distinction between transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership behaviour has strongly influenced leadership theory and research in the last several decades. However, in spite of its impact on theory and practice, it has a few shortcomings, as, in its essence, it disregards several essential aspects of a leader’s behaviour, such as the dark side of leadership behaviour. Therefore, to capture various leader behaviours, we provide a more comprehensive leadership model named the “complete full range of leadership”.

Based on reviewing the relevant theoretical and empirical literature, we propose an extended theoretical model, which addresses the existing shortcomings of the full range leadership model.

First, we added a new active and more destructive facet of leadership style named active, destructive leadership style. Second, based on existing empirical findings, we restructured the transactional facet of full-range leadership by collapsing its components into two new distinct facets representing active constructive leadership style and passive destructive leadership style. Finally, drawing on Hersey and Blanchard’s model, we add a new passive and constructive facet named passive constructive leadership.

Our suggested “complete full range of leadership” contributes to leadership theory by addressing the gap between existing theory and empirical findings, making a clear distinction between lack of leadership and delegation and by comprising the dark side of leadership with its bright side into one comprehensive leadership model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a short and easy to use yet psychometrically sound instrument designed to measure destructive leadership behaviours in a military context.

First, examples of destructive leadership behaviours in a military context were collected using a qualitative approach. Second, these examples were operationalised and pilot tested, which resulted in a 20‐item questionnaire called Destrudo‐L. Third, data were collected from three Swedish military groups (n=428). Dimensionality of the instrument was analysed using structural equation modelling. Conventional psychometric assessments of reliability and validity were performed.

A nested hierarchical model with a general factor and the following specific factors emerged: arrogant, unfair; threats, punishments, overdemands; ego‐oriented, false; passive, cowardly; and uncertain, unclear, messy. Meaningful subgroup differences and relationships with a criterion variable (lack of motivation/propensity to leave) were found. More use of active forms was reported by subordinates of younger military commanders and more use of passive forms was marked by subordinates of senior military managers.

The instrument is easy to administer and interpret (norm values are provided) and can be used in leader evaluation, as well as leader development, contexts.

The main contribution is methodological – the development of a new scale. Additional findings are a strong positive correlation between active and passive forms of destructive leadership behaviours in a military context, as well as significant differences between groups with different ranks.