Normalization of toxicity in organizations: A multilevel process framework of toxicity normalization cascade

Abstract

Workplace toxicity imposes enormous costs on employees, organizations, and society, yet scholarship lacks an integrated explanation of how harmful practices become routine and why they endure. This article develops the toxicity normalization cascade (TNC), a multilevel process framework addressing two interrelated questions: how does workplace toxicity become normalized, and why does it persist through leadership changes, regulatory interventions, and sincere reform efforts? Drawing on foundational theories of normalization of deviance and corruption, moral disengagement theory, and structuration theory, TNC traces how four dimensions of organizational context generate systemic pressures that activate psychological mechanisms of normalization. These mechanisms co-evolve through social interaction and crystallize into normalized toxic culture. The framework's central contribution is the reproduction mechanism: the process through which normalized culture feeds back to reconstitute the systemic pressures that enabled its emergence, creating self-perpetuating cascades. Six testable propositions specify the framework's architecture. We present an illustrative application, demonstrate generalizability across organizational contexts, propose a research agenda, and derive practical implications for systemic intervention.