Leaders and Followers Behaving Badly: A Meta-Analytic Examination of Curvilinear Relationships Between Destructive Leadership and Followers’ Workplace Behaviors

We draw from social psychological and resource-based theories to meta-analytically examine the existence, form, and magnitude of curvilinear relationships between destructive leadership and followers’ workplace behaviors (i.e., job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and workplace deviance). Overall, our meta-analytic results demonstrate weak evidence of curvilinear relationships between destructive leadership and followers’ workplace behaviors. However, we did find some support for the application of social psychological theories when examining the curvilinear effects of destructive leadership on followers’ workplace behaviors at extreme levels of destructive leadership (i.e., two standard deviations below and above the mean). Our findings are important because they (1) provide support for prior research that has examined the linear effects of destructive leadership on followers’ workplace outcomes and (2) refine our knowledge of the effects of destructive leadership on followers’ workplace outcomes by demonstrating the existence, form, and magnitude of curvilinear effects at extreme levels of destructive leadership. Overall, this study’s meta-analytic regression, relative weight, and semipartial correlation results have important implications for (1) how to interpret the conclusions drawn from prior destructive leadership research, (2) how to conduct future studies that examine destructive leadership, and (3) practitioners’ attempts to deter destructive leadership and limit its harmful effects on followers.