The Dark Side Of The Leader: Dark Leadership Styles (original) (raw)

Leadership, which is the subject of many researches, increases its importance day by day because it plays important roles in all existing social structures from group level to social level (Ballı and Çakıcı, 2019). Because the leader plays a key role in man, who is a social being, in order to live in the society, to comply with the rules of the society he is in and to fulfill the duties and responsibilities that the society imposes on him. The society wants to choose the leader who will apply the best for itself during the management phase. It is understood from this choice that a leader, in its simplest definition, means being superior to his followers. Koçel (2015) defines leadership as the process of influencing and directing the activities of others in order to achieve certain personal and group goals under certain conditions. For this influence and direction, superior characteristics are required by their subordinates. When the previous literature on leadership are evaluated, it is observed that most of them are in the form of identifying and defining these positive and superior characteristics. However, within the information and technology age we live in, easy access to information and the ability of followers to succeed their leaders, closely begin to reveal the hidden and dark sides of the leaders. The mistakes made by leaders in areas that concern the large part of a society such as business life, politics and religion, now reveal the necessity of evaluating the dark aspects of leadership (Liu et al. 2012; Padilla et al. 2007). The fact that the followers express themselves more easily in front of the leader is also effective in the emergence of the sub-dimensions of the dark leadership behavior. The study conducted by Uygur and Gümüştekin (2019) identified eleven different types of dark leader behaviors in between 1994 and 2018. These are; bully leader, narcissistic leader, paranoid leader, emotionally dependent leader, petty tyranny, abusive management, passive-aggressive leader, toxic leader, destructive leadership, unethical leadership and bad leadership. In addition to the dark leader behaviors expressed, the hubris syndrome, which Koçel (2015) described in his study, reveals hubris leadership behavior, as the leader uses his power over his followers for a long time and does not recognize any obstacles to limit himself due to his success during this period. In another study on dark leadership, harassing behaviors, narcissistic behaviors, insincere behaviors and bullying behaviors are defined (Başar et al., 2016).McIntosh and Rima (1997)defined narcissistic leadership, emotionally dependent leadership, paranoid leadership, compulsive leadership and passive-aggressive leadership as sub-dimensions of dark leadership. Higgs (2009) stated that the concept of dark leader began to emerge as a result of personal flaws and lack of success in the 1980s, and the first study was done by Conger (1990). Petty tyranny of dark leadership (Ashforth, 1994), tyrannical leadership (Kets de Vries, 1994; Gillaspie, 2009), narcissistic leadership (McIntosh & Rima, 1997; Glad, 2002; Khoo & Burch, 2008), which includes negative behaviors and attitudes that are considered close to each other, (Khoo & Burch, 2008; Uygur & Teacheroğlu, 2018; Okan, 2018), abusive management (Tepper, 2000), bad leadership (Kellerman, 2004), paranoid leadership (Williams, 2005; Gillaspie, 2009), destructive leadership (Einarsen et al., 2007; Padilla et al. 2007; Krasikova et al., 2013; Tran et al., 2014), toxic leadership (Whicker, 1996; Reed, 2004; Goldman, 2006; Yavaş 2016); emotionally dependent leadership (Cook & Goff, 2002; Gillaspie, 2009), passive-aggressive leadership (Johnson & Klee, 2007), unethical leadership (Eisenbeiß & Brodbeck, 2014; Lasakova & Remisova, 2015), hubristic leadership (Hollow, 2014; Uysal & Çelik, 2018) studies have been carried out, mostly in the international literature. In this study, dark leadership behaviors and styles are discussed and defined under separate headings and their differences are evaluated.