The dimensionality and measurement of destructive instructor-leadership

ABSTRACT

The conceptualization of destructive leadership has received increasing attention in recent times. Accordingly, researchers have developed a theoretical model of destructive leadership that highlights two manifestations as follows: (1) leading followers towards goals that contradict the organization’s interests and (2) the use of harmful methods in leading followers. The two manifestations of destructive leadership point to the concept being multidimensional. However, researchers rarely investigate the dimensionality of destructive leadership when measuring the concept in general and in instructor–student relationships. Moreover, the most prominent measure of destructive leadership fails to capture its two manifestations adequately. To address the apparent mismatch between the theory and measurement of destructive instructor-leadership, we enhance an existing measure of destructive leadership. Using a sample of 174 students from the U.K., the findings indicated that the two manifestations of destructive instructor-leadership can be measured by 13 items, and was composed of three dimensions including, irresponsibility, victimization and callous communication. These findings along with limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the destructive leadership literature, a myriad of terms are used to describe destructive leadership. In addition to the examples provided here, other common terms in the literature include tyrannical leadership, unsupportive managerial behaviors, despotic leadership, toxic leadership, strategic bullying and more (Krasikova et al., 2013). Krasikova et al. (2013) explain that the multiple terminologies used to describe destructive leadership are problematic for scientific communication and progress in empirical research. For this reason, we only use ‘abusive supervision’ when referring to studies that used that term. In the upcoming paragraphs, we highlight Krasikova et al.’s (2013) unified definition of destructive leadership that ties together the multiple terms under one construct.

2. The sixth step of Hinkin’s guide is replication. Replication involves repeating the study including all statistical analyses for an independent sample in order to improve confidence about reliability and validity findings (Hinkin, 1998). As such, replication within this paper would considerably add to the paper’s complexity and length. For these reasons, we omitted the sixth step in this paper, but later offer suggestions for a replication study.

3. We intentionally designed two separate papers prior to collecting data. Each paper had unique research questions and separate theoretical implications that were too expansive for a single paper to address. Although there is a minor overlap between the two papers (i.e. transformational instructor-leadership was the focus of the other paper), the present study and the other paper include substantially unique variables, different findings and different theoretical and practical implications.

4. Four cases had extremely high levels of missing data, and were deleted from the analysis. For the remaining destructive instructor-leadership variables, missing data was very low (<2%). Therefore, we used the EM approach to estimate missing data for these variables.

5. The term ‘module’ is generally used in the U.K. whereas ‘course’ is typically used in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.

6. The skewness of the destructive instructor-leadership variables indicated that destructive leadership is rare in higher education module teaching. The rarity of destructive leadership in the higher education module context coincides with its rarity in corporate contexts (Hubert & van Veldhoven, 2001). Therefore, while our skewed data presented certain challenges when using statistical tests, we were pleased to discover that destructive instructor-leadership is not a common phenomenon.

7. Even though many items were deleted during the item reduction stage, our intent was to reduce the initial item set to a smaller set of items. Hinkin (1998) explains that the item reduction creates a more parsimonious representation of the initial item set. Following Hinkin’s guide, we only retained items that clearly loaded on a single factor. Moreover, deletion of many items during scale development is not uncommon in psychometrics, e.g. the Five-Factor inventory (John & Srivastava, 1999).

8. Each destructive instructor-leadership dimension was measured by its respective EFA regression weight.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul T. Balwant

Paul T. Balwant is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. He holds a PhD in Management from The University of Sheffield, and has been the recipient of prestigious scholarships for his undergraduate and doctoral studies. In the 2014 Academy of Management Meeting, Paul was given the MED Best Paper in Management Education Award sponsored by the Organisational Behavior Teaching Society and the Journal of Management Education for the paper that offers the most significant contribution to management education. His areas of expertise are leadership, engagement and absenteeism.

Kamal Birdi

Kamal Birdi gained a PhD in Psychology from The University of Sheffield following an MSc in Occupational Psychology and a BSc (Hons) in Psychology. He is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist registered with the British Psychological Society (BPS) and Health and Care Professions Council, a Chartered Member of the European Federation of Psychologists Associations (EuroPsy) and an ESRC/EPSRC Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) Scholar. In 2010, he was given the BPS Division of Occupational Psychology Academic Contribution to Practice Award for his work on training evaluation and innovation. His areas of expertise are creativity and innovation, training and development and organizational learning.

Ute Stephan

Ute Stephan is a Professor at Aston Business School and the Director of the Aston Centre for Research into International Entrepreneurship and Business (ACRIEB). Ute is also the Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychology: An International Review (AP:IR). Previously, Ute was at the University of Sheffield’s Institute of Work Psychology, the London School of Economics, the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium and the Universities of Marburg and Dresden in Germany. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Marburg (Germany), is a certified social skills trainer, and worked as a consultant and trainer for private, public and third sector organizations. Ute’s research focuses on the relationships between culture, institutions and entrepreneurship, both social and commercial entrepreneurship.