Deciphering The Perils Of Working With A Psychopath Leader: A Dual Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

This study aims to examine the relationship between psychopathic leadership and subordinates' work alienation through a serial mediation and moderation mechanism. The study suggests that malicious envy and anger rumination sequentially mediate the relationship between psychopathic leadership and employee work alienation. Hostile Attribution Bias is proposed as a moderator both between leader psychopathy and malicious envy relationship along with malicious envy and anger rumination relationship. The study takes its theoretical foundation from Affective Events Theory (AET) as an overarching theory. We suggest that psychopathic leadership causes malicious envy, an emotional reaction that further leads to an employee’s cognitive appraisal of such a situation in the form of anger rumination, which further manifests into work alienation. The study employs a time-lagged survey method to quantify the 417 responses from service sector organizations at three-different time lags. Results indicate psychopathic leadership is positively associated with work alienation; this relationship is further sequentially mediated by malicious envy and anger rumination. Moreover, Hostile Attribution Bias, a dual moderator, strengthens psychopathic leadership’s impact on malicious envy and malicious envy’s impact on anger rumination for employees with high levels of hostile attribution bias.