Business Commons^™

An Empirical Investigation Of The Antecedents, Behaviors, And Outcomes Of Bad Leadership, Anthony Erickson, James Shaw, Zha Agabe

James B Shaw

This exploratory study identifies actions and behaviours which subordinates attribute to ‘bad leadership’ and explores the implications these factors have for organizations. Data was obtained through a web-based survey that generated 335 respondents who completed at least some of the questions. Results identified the prevalence of bad leaders; behaviours causing a leader to be perceived as bad; the impact of bad leaders on the employee and organisation; whether these bad leaders had always been bad; and what happened to the bad leader. An interesting discovery was that the majority of bad leaders were either promoted or rewarded by the organization.