The good, the bad and the evil: A unified conceptualization of negative leadership behaviour

Abstract

The level of scholarly and practitioner interest in negative leadership behaviour has been increasing, but research in this field remains fragmented, and we lack a common understanding of what constitutes negative leadership behaviour and its antecedents, consequences and contexts. To address these research gaps, we systematically review 352 papers and identify 25 different negative leadership behaviours with large overlaps in their conceptualization and operationalization. Our analysis of conceptualizations reveals common attributes that constitute the behavioural intensity and the behavioural valence of negative leadership behaviour. Behavioural intensity attributes constitute negative leadership behaviour as active, reoccurring and intentional behaviour that targets subordinates’ psychological states. Behavioural valence attributes constitute negative leadership behaviour as being unethical, lack of empathy, leader self‐worthiness and self‐orientation, verbal hostility, use of power asymmetry and harming and belittling of others. The vast majority of operationalizations for negative leadership behaviour reflect the perceptions of subordinates or colleagues, whereas only a few operationalizations reflect supervisors’ self‐assessments. Our findings further reveal that the antecedents of negative leadership behaviour focus mainly on supervisors, whereas the consequences of negative leadership behaviour focus mainly on subordinates. We develop a unified conceptualization of negative leadership behaviour and discuss our findings in the light of an impactful future research agenda that revolves around the unified conceptualization and empirical representation of negative leadership behaviour on the basis of behavioural attributes, the role of subordinates and dyad‐related factors leading to negative leadership behaviour and the integration of the negative and positive psychological and economic consequences of negative leadership behaviour.