Date of Conferral

7-23-2024

Date of Award

July 2024

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Robert Levasseur

Abstract

Destructive leadership may negatively impact an organization and its members. Although scholars recognized that destructive leadership behavior exists, there was little qualitative empirical evidence of its effect on an organization and its members. The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the essence of the lived experiences of individual organization members based on how they perceived and gave meaning to destructive leadership’s negative influence on the organizations where they worked or had worked. The conceptual framework consisted of Van de Ven and Poole’s dialectical change theory, Benson’s dialectical analysis, Schein’s organizational culture, Schneider’s organizational climate, and Weick’s sensemaking process. Twenty individual organization members who were at least 18 years old, had at least 3 years of work experience, and had at least one experience of destructive leadership were purposefully selected and interviewed. Data were gathered using virtual, semistructured interviews. Moustakas’s modified Van Kaam method of phenomenological reduction was used to analyze the transcribed interview data. Eight themes emerged from the data to answer the research question: affected personally, affected professionally, discrimination, an employee reported destructive leader behaviors, human resources’ role, reasons for behavior, harassment, and destructive leader behaviors. Findings indicated that the essence of each organization member’s shared lived experience was the impact of the destructive leader and the destructive behaviors exhibited by the leader. Findings may promote social change by increasing awareness of the negative effects of destructive leadership on organizations.

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