The Vicious Cycle of Unethical Behavior : A Model for Destructive Leadership in the Remote Setting

Abstract: Background: Destructive leadership seeks to explain how leaders create harmful outcomes in an organizational setting – and why do they choose to do so. However, as with most leadership theories, process models are designed with a traditional office setting in mind which has its own distinct characteristics. Remote working has surged in prevalence in the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and features multiple key differences, including increased social isolation and a decrease in communication quality. The combination of this novel and different context with a high likelihood of employees experiencing destructive leadership during their career, it is of high relevance to critically examine destructive leadership processes in a remote setting. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to adapt the proposed framework of destructive leadership by Krasikova et al. (2013) in a remote working environment, and to provide a greater understanding of destructive leadership processes in a less familiar context. Through exploring a new working context, this research aims to expand the understanding of destructive leadership, its situational factors, processes, and possible destructive outcomes in the ‘modern’ workplace. Method: Our methods were built on the choices of inductive qualitative research. Ten semi-structured interviews with leaders and followers were conducted by utilizing the casemethod, and more precisely, the case-oriented research design. The use of case-oriented research design and thematic analysis allowed us to engage in within- and cross-case comparisons and enabled us to generate new insights and to further develop remote working specific factors in the destructive leadership processes. Conclusion: The results of the study demonstrate that remote working environment influences three main areas of destructive leadership: the organizational context behind the process of choosing to engage in destructive leadership, the process of discovery and organizational response, and by establishing feedback loops from existing destructive leadership that leads to further resource shortages.