Toxic Leadership and Empowering Leadership: Relations with Work Motivation.

Purpose: The present study aims to verify the association between two opposing models of leadership, toxic and empowering, and the different dimensions of work motivation. Participants and Methods: Three questionnaires (Toxic Leadership Scale, Empowering Leadership Questionnaire, and Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale) were applied to 408 workers. Cluster analysis was performed. Results: Cluster analysis produced eight clusters based on the different configurations of leadership dimensions, namely coercive, centralizer, false paternalistic, toxic role model, coach, narcissistic-empowering, toxic, and empowering. Those clusters relate differently to work motivation dimensions. Conclusion: The profiles with higher scores in empowering leadership dimensions are more generally related to autonomous regulation (identified and intrinsic work motivation). The profiles with higher toxic leadership dimensions are more related to amotivation and controlled regulation (extrinsic work motivation). One profile stood out: the narcissistic-empowering profile that combines high scores in narcissistic leadership and empowering leadership dimensions. This profile unexpectedly relates significantly to autonomous regulation. This study contributed to the knowledge of the work motivation dimensions concerning empowerment and toxic leadership. Therefore, it contributes to deepening the nomological network of the concepts and providing inputs to human resource processes suitable to improving the organizational results and the workers' quality of life.

Appetite for Destruction: A Psychometric Examination and Prevalence Estimation of Destructive Leadership in Sweden.

There is a growing awareness that destructive leadership has a significant negative impact on employe outcomes. However, little is known about the content and dimensionality of this multidimensional concept, and there are few reliable measures available for organizations and researchers to evaluate these behaviors. Based on a representative sample (N = 1132) of the Swedish workforce, the aim of this study is threefold: first, to examine the factor structure and validity of an easy-to-use multidimensional destructive leadership measure (Destrudo-L)in the general Swedish work context; second, to identify destructive leadership profiles using latent profile analysis (LPA), and determine in what way they are related to employe outcomes; third, to examine the prevalence of destructive leadership using population weights to estimate responses of a population total in the Swedish workforce (N = 3100282). Our analysis supported the structural validity of Destrudo-L, reflecting both a global factor and specific subdimensions. We identified seven unique destructive leadership profiles along a passive and active continuum of destructive leadership behaviors, with the active showing a less favorable relation to employe outcomes. Finally, we found that a substantial proportion of the Swedish workforce report being exposed to destructive leadership (36.4-43.5%, depending on method used). Active destructive leadership was more common in the public sector and passive destructive leadership in the private. Given the potentially severe effects and the commonness of these behaviors, we argue that organizations should work actively with strategies to identify and intervene, to prevent and to handle the manifestation of these harmful behaviors.