Exploring toxic leadership factors on a Hungarian management sample
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14267/VEZTUD.2024.10.01Keywords:
toxic leadership, toxic leadership scale, exploratory studyAbstract
While defining ‘good’ leadership has been the subject of management studies for decades, research on ‘bad’ leadership is still relatively rare. Many of us experience the ‘dark side’ of leadership in the workplace, however, there is little exploratory research about it in Hungary. The aim of this study is to promote the understanding of ‘toxic’ leadership, revealing its basic characteristics and effects, as well as the possible organisational interventions and coping methods. In the qualitative phase of this study, the authors defined its characteristics by collecting data from managers, experts (N = 15) and employees (N = 76), and content analysing 658 phrases, and in the next, quantitative phase, they tested the dimensions of toxic leadership (narcissism, self-promotion, unpredictability, abusive supervision, and authoritarian leadership) with an online survey (N = 198) using the items of Schmidt’s Toxic Leadership Scale.
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