Destructive Leadership Behavior

Introduction

Industrial and organizational psychology (IO Psychology) is a practical discipline which is often being applied to help the companies or organizations to improve their function in leadership selection. This essay aims to evaluate the flaws of a real-life dysfunction case. A Scurities Limited Company B set up a wholly owned subsidiary, namely Securities Brokerage Limited Company A (Hong Kong). With 23 years of on site experience, Mr. Lee was sent by the headquarter to take charge of the human resource department of Hong Kong Branch. In the Hong Kong branch, the promotion decisions and the recruitment decisions must get approval from Mr. Lee. As he played a crucial role in the personnel selection, he had the chance to abuse his power

Lack of an explicit and united definition, the destructive leadership behavior was treated as a ‘you would know it when you see it’ phenomenon for long time (Padilla et al., 2007). Some scholars defined the destructive leadership as a process that included the behavior related with manipulation, alienation and betrayal (e.g. Hogan & Hogan, 2001; Howell & Avolio, 1992; Padilla et al., 2007). According to this viewpoint, the essential component of destructive leader should be bad and negative intentions rather than unsatisfying group outcome (Hogan & Hogan, 2001). Take the current case as an example. He focused on his personal gains instead of the needs and the goals of subordinates and the company. This selfish orientation may preclude the organizational development and demotivate followers (Conger, 1990; Rosenthal & Pittinskya, 2006). Moreover, different from the constructive leaders who often make use of persuasion and commitment (Howell & Avolio, 1992; Sankowsky, 1995), Mr. Lee’s leadership involved control, unfairness or even coercion. When some employees attempted to report his misbehavior to headquarter, he tried to stop them through some inappropriate ways. Although he could accomplish his daily duties and his leadership outcomes were not

Lee’s behavior was distinct from the constructive leadership behavior. Generally speaking, his leadership style fell into the category of derailed leadership, which departed from the constructive leadership on both the organization-oriented dimension and subordinate-oriented dimension (Einarsen et al., 2007). The subordinate-orientation in constructive leadership should include pro-subordinate behavior such as showing appreciation and respect (Einarsen et al., 2007), while Mr. Lee demonstrated the anti-subordinate behavior which precluded the normal advancement of the employees without affiliations. He even deceived to his affiliated subordinates in order to get some confidential client information. Meanwhile, he also performed the anti-organizational behaviors like stealing client resources for personal gains and making false report to the