Final Arm Review

CRITICAL REVIEW ON The Toxic Triangle: Destructive Leaders, Susceptible Followers, and Conducive Environments

Introduction Introduction part of this review includes: y

Authors

background

y

Summary of the article

y

Leading findings of the article

Authors background:

This article is written by three authors. They are Art Padilla, Robert Hogan, and Robert B. Kaiser. All

of them are widely known for their numerous works on leadership, personality testing,

personality assessment and organizational effectiveness. They provide se veral research services to help organization frame, study and solve vexing leadership issues. Summary:

Recent abuses of authority in business, politics and religion have revived interest in destructive leadership.

Although

philosophers from plato to hobbes to Bertrand Russell have analyzed

leadership, modern social sciences has tended to take a one-sided- view to the topic, emphasizing its positive and constructive aspects while avoiding its darker side(Hogan & Kaiser,2005; kellerman, 2004; Yukl, 1999). This paper begins by reviewing how the term destructive leadership has been used in the professional literature and they find little clarity or consensus. Due to this they develop a definition of destructive leadership that emphasizes negative outcomes for organization and individuals linked and affected by them. There were several definitional issues, based on such issues they define destructive leadership in terms of f ive features which define what destructive leadership is. Five features are as follows: 1. Destructive leadership is seldom absolutely or entirely destructive: there are both good and bad results in most leadership situations. 2. The process of destructive leadership involves dominance, coercion and manipulation rather than influence, persuasion, and commitment. 3. The process of destructive leadership has a selfish orientation; focus more on leaders need than needs of social group

4. The effects are outcomes the compromise the quality of life for constituents and detract from the organizations main purposes. 5.

And

these outcomes are not exclusively the result of destructive leaders, but are also

products of susceptible followers and conducive environments. Then they develop the concept of toxic triangle-a confluence of leaders, followers, and environmental factors that make destructive leadership possible. This is followed by an analysis of the literature on each of the three domains to develop a framework of the factors involved in destructive leadership. Each domain has elements itself which are as follows:

Destructive Leaders charisma personalised power narcissism negative life themes ideology of hate

Susceptible

Followers

Conducive Environments

conformers unmet needs low core self evaluations low maturity

instability

colluders ambition similar worldview bad values

lack of checks & balances and ineffective institutions.

perceived threat cultural values

Then they illustrate this above framework using the example of the Cuban dictator, Fiedal Castro. Castro as destructive leader, Cubans as susceptible followers and cubas propitious environment. Then authors provide implications for further s tudy. Leading findings: Authors

have tried to make two points in this paper. First, destructive leadership should be

defined in terms of negative group and organizational outcomes. Second, these outcomes result from a confluence of factors concerning destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. They encourage a more holistic, systems view of destructive leadership. This article would be helpful in learning about destructive leaders and about the factors that make destructive leadership possible. The toxic triangle offers some insight into the more important elements within each of these three elements.

Critical Analysis This article is published in The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 176-194, an international journal of  political, social and behavioral science. LQ encourages traditional quantitative and / or qualitative empirical and theoretical articles. Articles

in references are mostly from the leadership quarterly, academy of management

  journal, American psychiatric association, journal of applied psychology, behavior science research, academy of management review etc.

Critical analysis includes the ontology, epistemology, methodology of this article. y

Ontology:

I inferred that authors are Realists/functionalist. I inferred this particular ontology on the basis of references which are reviewed and analyzed by author as a literature review. Most of the articles are from those authors and journals that are functionalist, who view leadership as a structures and systems. i.e.

Adams,

Sage.

G.B., & Balfour, D. L. (1998). Unmasking administrative evil. London:

In this article author is summarizing the debate among intensionlist and

functionalist scholars. Here the authors are discussing about the culture that emphasizing the scientific-analytic mind set and the belief in technological progress. y

Epistemology: On

the basis of ontology, authors epistemology is objectivist/positivists.

I inferred this particular epistemology from the following line in the article; Padilla and Hogan (2007; p. 188) states that they encourage a more holistic, systems view of destructive leadership, where they view leadership as a functional resource for group performance. y

Methodology:

The method which is used by the authors is Qualitative Research. Here qualitative research is used as the cornerstone for understanding leadership. This particular methodology is mentioned in this article i.e. Conger (1998; p.187) suggests that qualitative methods might be useful in early stages of development in leadership theories. Literature

review is being done where authors analyze and review the critical points

and the previous research on this topic done by other researchers.

Comparative Evaluation For comparative evaluations I found two related articles as follows:

1.

Leadership toxicity- An

inevitable affliction of organizations? By Michael Walton, Published in

Organizations & people, February 2007, VOL 14. No 1. 2.

A

method for measuring destructive leadership and identifying types of destructive leaders

in organizations. By James B. Shaw, Michael Harvey, and

Anthony

Erickson (25 may 2011)

published in The Leadership Quarterly. y

In the first article author based on his personal consulting and coaching assignments examines the circumstances in which normally competent, accomplished leaders behave badly to the detriment of the effectiveness of their organization. Such toxic leaders could be seen as silent killers who inhibit openness, Creativity and healthy workplace. This article advocates looking at leader behavior-in-context which can help to highlight the probability of leader toxicity exploding on to the scene. The material on which this article is based comes from consultancy experiences where, over varying periods of time he observe some ways in which leaders found themselves behaving badly.

Author

looks leaders effectiveness more as the product of the

contexts within which they were operating. Here the author ontology is interpretive, his epistemology is subjective and he uses Qualitative research as methodology. From his experiences and reflections (Walton, 2005) on the consulting assignments he examined it helpful to consider leadership behaviour-in-context by looking at it through three lenses which form the  ACE framework (i.e. actor- contextexternal). y

In the second related article authors describe the development of a measure of the nature of  destructive leadership in organizations. Here they use scales developed from the measure in the cluster analysis to empirically drive a behavior-based taxonomy of destructive leaders. Data were obtained through a web based survey that generated 707 respondents. Results identified seven types of destructive leaders by using behavior focused scales and the discovery was that most of the destructive leaders were not all destructive but rather perceived as extreme on just one or two characteristics. Here the author ontology is realists/functionalist, his epistemology is objectivists/positivists, and methodology is Quantitative research. Evaluation:

In my article author is focusing on literature review and conducting qualitative research. He objectively reviewing that how destructive leadership has been discussed in the literature and encourages more holistic, functional, and systems view of destructive leadership whereas, in these two related articles one author is subjectively observing and studying the leadership toxicity in the context in which they operates. He gave many examples and cases regarding such behaviour. And in the second related article authors are functionalist they did quantitative research for describing the method for identifying the prevalence and types of destructive leadership in organization.

Conclusion Destructive leadership is as much a practical problem as it is a theoretical one.

Authors

have reviewed

information from politics, business, and religion because they assume that destructive leadership is the

same regardless of the macro-context (Hogan, 2006). Nonetheless, they are unaware of testing this assumption directly.

As

empirical work accumulates, comparisons of results across different

environments will determine the degree to which research results generalize. Based on their three-part framework, they provide three sets of suggestion: leaders selection and development; follower strengthening and empowerment; and organizational improvement. Perhaps the most important environmental factor for preventing destructive leadership is the presence of checks and balances. Hierarchy, accountability, and a chain of command often provide needed controls at the lower organizational levels. But at the top of organizations, strong oversight by a board of directors is necessary (Kaiser & Hogan, 2007). Further development in the study of leadership depends on taking a less ideological perspective, one that acknowledges that effective leadership can yield results ranging from constructive to destructive. Moreover, destructive leadership should be studied in its natural ecology, in terms of the interactions among leaders, followers, and contexts.

References

y

Adams, G. B., & Balfour, D. L. (1998). Unmasking administrative evil. London: sage.

y

Conger, J. (1998). Qualitative research as

y

Hogan, R. (2006). Personality and

y

y

y

y

y

y

the cornerstone methodology for understanding leadership. Leadership quarterly, 9, 107-121. the fate organizations. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. (2005). What we know about leadership. Review of general psychology, 9, 169-180. Kaiser, R. B., & Hogan, R. (2007). The dark side of discretion: Leader personality and organizational decline. In R. Hooijberg, J. Hunt, J. Antonajis, & K. Boal (Eds.), Being there even when you are not: Leading through strategy, systems and structures, monographs in leadership and management, Vol. 4. (pp. 177-197) London: Elsevier science. Kellerman, B. (2004). Bad leadership: What it is how it happens, why it matters. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Padilla, A. (2005). Portraits in leadership: Six extraordinary university presidents. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Walton, M. (2005) It aint what you do its the way that you do itor is it? 6 th international conference on HRD research and practice across Europe. Leeds, UK. Y ukl, G.A. (1999). An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic leadership theories. Leadership quarterly, 10, 285-305.