The Dark Side of Leadership: How Toxic Leadership Styles Shape Team Conflict, Loyalty, and Whistleblowing

While papers like Alsadaan & Alqahtani (2024) and Oran & Ünsar (2019) document the harm of toxic leadership, there’s a gap concerning its complex, sometimes paradoxical effects: for example, how abusive supervision might increase team solidarity against the leader, or prompt ethical whistleblowing. This research would use qualitative and quantitative approaches to map not just the damage, but also the adaptive, sometimes prosocial reactions teams develop under toxic leaders. This fresh approach (synthesizing psychology and organizational behavior, per the “novel syntheses” heuristic) could yield new theories about resistance, resilience, and ethics in organizations, and inform more nuanced interventions.

References:

1. Toxic Leadership in Emergency Nurses: Assessing Abusive Supervision and Its Team-Level Impacts on Conflict Management and Organizational Commitment. Nourah Alsadaan, Mohammed Alqahtani (2024). Journal of Nursing Management.
2. The Effects of Leadership Styles on Organizational Trust and Disclosure of Unethical Behaviors (Whistleblowing): A Practical Research. F. Oran, A. S. Ünsar (2019). Accounting, Finance, Sustainability, Governance & Fraud: Theory and Application.