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The purpose of the paper is to examine the impact of Machiavellian leadership and organisational cynicism on the emotional exhaustion of employees.

Survey data were collected from 463 employees of Slovenian municipalities. Surveys were used to collect Machiavellianism, organisational cynicism and emotional exhaustion data. Hypotheses were verified by means of three methods: the contingency table, χ² test and Pearson coefficient.

Machiavellian leadership has an impact both on the presence of emotional exhaustion and organisational cynicism. According to the results, both Machiavellianism and organisational cynicism have a direct linear impact on the increase of emotional exhaustion.

The findings of the research were formulated on the basis of a survey conducted according to a self-assessment online survey.

Even though the concept of Machiavellianism was developed 500 years ago, the existing literature suggests that it continues to be relevant in modern times, most frequently in terms of examining the way leaders establish their power and adopt (un)ethical leadership practices and the implications their behaviour has on their direct working environment. Only select authors have examined Machiavellianism in correlation with organisational cynicism and emotional exhaustion, with an emphasis on the public sector. Due to a lack of research conducted on the subject, the main research challenge was to establish actual correlations between the three factors above.