Chapter 1 Introduction
In recent years, many enterprises throughout Vietnam have seen successes and failures in their businesses. The enterprises which have seen failures due to management inadequacies experienced difficulties and decline after a period of promising growth. The management of any business enterprise is supposed to be the most professional element of a business. As such, managers are directly responsible for the conduct and success of an enterprise, subordinate employees and outside interests. It is the vital role of management to guarantee all components of a business can run effectively and efficiently by communicating across all interests found within the enterprise. Executives and upper management are responsible for making decisions that affect the operations of an enterprise particularly with regards the behaviors of some superiors in the enterprise. At the same time, managers must convey the need and rationale of changes to subordinates. This is necessary to help ensure workers do their best to support versus hinder reforms in the workplace. Meanwhile, managers should also be tasked with aiding workers in accomplishing their roles in the enterprise. As a consequence, managers must be knowledgeable on all fronts. In fact, workers can be a key source of information when considering ways of improving operations, thus wise and talented management will be certain to transmit employee ideas to executives. In all, management truly serves as a bridge between all members of a business community, thus the role of management is pivotal for all enterprises. However, in pursuing these roles, superiors were seen to engage in behaviors that may affect subordinate employees. When subordinate employees feel aggrieved and there is no mediator to their grievances, they resort to certain behaviors that may affect the enterprise. Behaviors such as bullying, harassment, oppressive, vindictive, arbitrary use of rights and powers, verbal and non-verbal behavior, corruption, hypocrisy by superiors may seriously undermine the progress of the enterprise. These behaviors, called destructive leadership behavior have been seen to invariably undermine or sabotage the well-being, motivation and satisfaction of subordinates, as well as the effectiveness of the organization by targeting tasks, resources and goals. This is the first empirical research paradigm to investigate the destructive leadership content and structure in the context of Vietnam culture and related issues. It will provide a more in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the nature of the leadership process, rich, and localized systems that were not recognized by destructive leaders in order to prevent the adverse consequences of destructive leadership as an important practical value. It is against this backdrop that this dissertation sought to investigate the impact of destructive leadership on subordinate behavior mechanism in Vietnamese enterprises with applicable recommendations.
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Chapter 2 Theoretical research foundation and hypotheses
2.1 Theoretical research foundation
This is a theory regarding how power is acquired or lost. In this context this theory focuses on leaders and managers in organizations. A review of the vast literature base on leadership, management and power reveals that though the term power is used prolifically, definitions moderately vary. McClelland and Burnham?s simply define power as “influencing others” [116]. In a similar vein, Miner defines power as “the ability to induce a person to do something he or she would not have otherwise done.” Yet he makes a distinction between power and influence. “Influence is a broader concept, referring to anything a person does to alter the behavior, attitudes, values, feelings and such of another person.” Thus, according to Miner, power is one of many other forms of influence [117]. Others are intentional about emphasizing the belief that power is intimately connected to potential or capacity. In his textbook, Abdul-Rahman at al. [118] says that power “refers to a capacity that A has to influence the capacity of B, so that B does something that he or she would not otherwise do. This definition implies a potential that need not be actualized to be effective, a dependence relationship, and that B has some discretion over his or her own behavior”[118]. Yukl agrees with his definition: “power involves the capacity of one party (the agent) to influence another party (the target)” [119]. Hillman states that power is “the agency to act, to do, to be, coming from the Latin word “potere”. He concludes that power should be defined as “sheer potency or potentiality, not the doing, but the capacity to do” [120]. Likewise, Rose [121] simply defines power as “the potential for influence”. Hersey, Blanchard and Johnson concur: “Power is influence potential – the resource that enables a leader to gain compliance or commitment from others” [122].
2.2 Hypotheses of the study
Many empirical studies have investigated and analyzed the impact of destructive leadership on subordinate behavior mechanism [1-7, 13, 171- 173]. The results of these studies revealed that destructive leadership is negatively associated with subordinate employee behavior mechanism because the subordinates are likely to experience a low level of mediation by organizational justice and psychological contract violation. Comparatively, more research has investigated constructive, effective or successful leadership [174]. Traditionally, leadership research focuses on factors associated with effective leadership, often with an implicit assumption that ineffective leadership simply reflects the absence of leadership [4]. However, research on destructive aspects of leadership clearly documented that this phenomenon includes a variety of different behaviors that are not limited to the mere absence of effective leadership behavior [3, 4, 19, 175, 176]. Recent prior study on bullying at work in the U.S has documented that some 5%–10% of employees are subjected to bullying at any one time, where as much as 80% of the cases involve a superior in the role as an alleged bully [3]. In an English study some 40% of the participants reported that they had experienced bullying from a leader during their working career [177]. Namie et al. (2010) [5] found that 89% of those experiencing bullying at work perceived leaders as the main bully. These studies clearly documented that leaders may actively behave in a destructive manner towards subordinates. In addition, sabotage, theft, and corruption among managers have been documented [13, 22, 175] although existing empirical research in this domain is limited. Researchers on economic management have therefore recently called for a closer examination of the characteristics and outcomes associated with destructive leadership [13, 167]. Burke et al. (2006) [167] pointed out that by exploring the dark side of leadership, a more accurate view of leadership may emerge, which again may contribute to the general understanding of leadership effectiveness and leadership development. Based on results findings, Zapf, Einarsen, Hoel (2011) [178] concluded that there is overwhelming support to the notion that negative events in social interactions have a stronger effect than do positive events. Hence, understanding and preventing destructive leadership may be as important, or even more important, than understanding and enhancing positive aspects of leadership.
Chapter 3 Research methodology .............................75
3.1 The research sample ..................................... 75
3.2 Demographics ................................. 75
3.3 The research setting ..................................77
Chapter 4 Empirical results and hypotheses testing .................... 97
4.1 Main impact of destructive leadership on subordinate behavior .........97
4.2 Mediating influence between destructive leadership behavior and subordinate................110
Chapter 5 Discussion ....................... 113
5.1 Impact of destructive leadership behavior .............................. 113
Chapter 5 Discussion
5.1 Impact of destructive leadership behavior
The pivotal characteristic of destructive leadership behavior is interpersonal mistreatment towards employees (example, bullying, yelling and screaming, humiliating, corruption, blame, moral loss) that results in diminished employee well-being. However, perceived mistreatment by managers will lead victimized employees to experience feelings of anger and frustration, which may involve interpersonal injustice and threat to self/social identity. This in turn may produce unfavorable employee attitudes, including poor job satisfaction, reduced organizational commitment, and increased subordinates? turnover. Consequently, in some cases, retaliation will result as a predominant response to abusive supervisory acts. Retaliation can take the form of any aggressive behavior, ranging from homicide, heated verbal confrontations, and acting rudely toward others or gossiping about the supervisor in the workplace. These may confirm a tit-for-tat argument that suggests spiral or vicious cycle of revenge and counter-revenge. In addition to retaliatory reactions, targets of destructive leadership behavior may engage in offensive and hostile behavior towards their coworkers or subordinates which may lead to elevated levels of bad behaviors in the organization. For example, a displaced aggression that occurs when victimized employees cannot retaliate directly against the source of provocation (example, supervisor) or when they are fearful of the consequences of revenge and express their hostility against less powerful or more available individuals. Destructive leaders should communicate in a way that elevates people instead of tearing others down. They should seek to solve problems and create long term solutions. When their focus is on improvement they will speak openly, honestly, and consistently. They will always have their eye on progress and success. Constructive communication drives performance. Its foundation is that the employee is capable and driven but has run into a snag. Working with them on that snag with a goal of removing it leads to greater results. When someone is guided to identifying why something has happened and how they can change, they are likely to embrace the lessons and grow as an impactful member of the team. People who communicate destructively have changed the goal. Whether they realize it or not, their focus is on making someone else feel small. When people feel small – they don?t perform to the height of their ability. They are not motivated to succeed.
5.2 The role of leaders in influencing unethical behavior in the workplace
Leaders should, and do, influence organizational ethics. Executive leaders should set the ethical tone at the top of organization since they have been found to play an important role in communicating ethical standards and using rewards and punishments to reinforce normatively appropriate conduct. In addition, senior management?s concern for ethics has been shown to influence an organization?s values or compliance-oriented approach to ethics management and its integration of ethics into everyday activities such as performance appraisals. Leaders have also been found to influence employees? ethical conduct. For example, employees? perception that executives and supervisors sincerely care about ethics has been associated with the amount of unethical conduct observed in the organization. However, despite this evidence suggesting that leaders “matter” when it comes to organizational ethics, the specific role of leadership in influencing unethical behavior in the workplace has yet to be fully explicated. Leaders are important in understanding ethical and unethical behavior in organizations focusing on how individuals reason through ethical dilemmas and how they decide what is right. People reason at six stages that can be understood in terms of three broad levels: pre-conventional, conventional, and principled. Pre-conventional individuals (the lowest level) are concerned with avoiding punishment and a “one hand washes the other” kind of reciprocation. Principled individuals (the highest level) make decisions autonomously by looking inside themselves and are guided by principles of justice and rights. But a large majority of leaders reason at the conventional level of cognitive moral development. Such conventional-level individuals look outside themselves to rules and laws and to the expectations of significant others in their environments for guidance when determining the ethically right thing to do. Because these conventional-level individuals represent the large majority of workers, immediate supervisors should be among the most important sources of moral guidance for these employees, and whose followers are expected to look for cues about what behavior is appropriate and inappropriate.
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Conclusions
The results of the analyzed data showed that drawing from the leadership, social learning, and empirical evidence, destructive leadership and subordinate behavior mechanism have differential relationships with incidents of voice behavior and neglect in Hano is enterprises. Subordinates reported their immediate managers as showing some kind of consistent and frequent destructive leadership during the last five years. Subordinatesperceptions regarding organizational justice and psychological contract breach in the organization mediated the relationships between destructive leadership and voice behavior, and between destructive leadership and neglect. In addition, subordinates turnover moderated the relationships between destructive leadership and voice behavior, and between destructive leadership and neglect. Therefore:
(1). A unique contribution provided in this dissertation was the research model developed on destructive leadership behavior. Destructive leadership was found to be negatively correlated to subordinate voice behavior and neglect. Therefore, one of the most important findings in the study was the high impact of the increased level of contact with destructive leadership behaviors that negatively affect subordinate employees? behavior mechanism. Majority of the employees indicated some experiences with destructive leadership behaviors. The model depicts: a localized destructive leadership model which will examine the destructive work of leaders and how it affects subordinates attitudes, behaviors and psychological response relationship in Hanoi, Vietnam.
(2). Destructive leadership on subordinate working attitude, behavior and psychological reactions are rendering negative impacts in organizations. For example, blame subordinates, moral loss, and abusive behaviors by supervisors are negatively related to targeted employees? subsequent hostile responses against others. Therefore, employees would prefer not to remain in the job because the relationship of their experiences with destructive leadership was a significant predictor of high turnover level and job dissatisfaction. The results also suggested that organizational justice (interpersonal justice, distributive justice and procedural justice) mediated significantly the relationships of destructive leadership.
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