Are Bad Leaders Indeed Bad for Employees? A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies Between Destructive Leadership and Employee Outcomes

Abstract

Does having bad leaders have long-lasting adverse effects on employees? While previous studies have primarily viewed subordinate deviant behavior as a crucial consequence of destructive leadership, aggression theory suggests that subordinate deviant behavior could also be an antecedent of destructive leadership. To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis by focusing on longitudinal field studies (i.e., time-lagged and panel designs), and investigated the longitudinal associations as well as the reciprocal relationships between destructive leadership and employee outcomes. Results from 82 articles with 104 independent prospective and longitudinal studies (N = 30,314) showed that destructive leadership has a lagged detrimental impact on employee behavioral (e.g., OCB, workplace deviance, CWB, and avoidance) and attitudinal outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction and work commitment). There are no significant differences between destructive leadership and employee outcomes for the long-term and short-term effects. Surprisingly, after accounting for auto-regression effects, the cross-lagged analysis showed that destructive leadership did not significantly relate to employees’ negative behavior over time, whereas negative employee behavior did relate to destructive leadership across time. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.