Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments: implications of the toxic triangle on moral disengagement, ethical sensemaking and ethical decision-making

Abstract

Leadership research contributes to our understanding of organizational and societal successes and failures as well as subordinate behavior, however, much of this literature focuses on positive leaders. While the literature on destructive leadership is growing, the field often fails to address the compounding effects of a destructive leader, susceptible follower and conducive environment and lacks empirical evidence of this relationship. The current study provides novel, empirical evidence for the Toxic Triangle perspective of destructive leadership (Padilla, et al., 2007) on the critical outcomes of moral disengagement, ethical sensemaking and ethical decision-making through the evaluation of destructive leaders, self-uncertain followers and environmental accountability. Results indicate that some of the moral disengagement mechanisms, ethical sensemaking variables and ethical decision-making components are affected by a destructive leader individually but can be exacerbated when evaluated in the presence of a self-uncertain follower and organization accountability. The empirical evaluation of this three-way process contributes a novel framework to the literature and provides quantitative evidence for the Toxic Triangle model. Results and implications of these findings are discussed.