Are Bad Leaders Indeed Bad for Employees? A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies Between Destructive Leadership and Employee Outcomes

Does having bad leaders have long-lasting adverse effects on employees? While previous studies have primarily viewed subordinate deviant behavior as a crucial consequence of destructive leadership, aggression theory suggests that subordinate deviant behavior could also be an antecedent of destructiv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2024-05, Vol.191 (2), p.399-413
Main Authors: Li, Peikai, Yin, Kui, Shi, Jian, Damen, Tom G. E., Taris, Toon W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Deviance
Education
Employees
Ethics
Job performance
Job satisfaction
Leadership
Long term
Longitudinal studies
Management
Meta-analysis
Philosophy
Quality of Life Research
Review Paper
Satisfaction
Side effects
Work
Work commitment
Workplaces
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Summary:Does having bad leaders have long-lasting adverse effects on employees? While previous studies have primarily viewed subordinate deviant behavior as a crucial consequence of destructive leadership, aggression theory suggests that subordinate deviant behavior could also be an antecedent of destructive leadership. To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis by focusing on longitudinal field studies (i.e., time-lagged and panel designs), and investigated the longitudinal associations as well as the reciprocal relationships between destructive leadership and employee outcomes. Results from 82 articles with 104 independent prospective and longitudinal studies ( N  = 30,314) showed that destructive leadership has a lagged detrimental impact on employee behavioral (e.g., OCB, workplace deviance, CWB, and avoidance) and attitudinal outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction and work commitment). There are no significant differences between destructive leadership and employee outcomes for the long-term and short-term effects. Surprisingly, after accounting for auto-regression effects, the cross-lagged analysis showed that destructive leadership did not significantly relate to employees’ negative behavior over time, whereas negative employee behavior did relate to destructive leadership across time. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-023-05449-2