Toxic leadership and collective organizational engagement: Does employee voice mediate the effect?

Abstract

Drawing upon the theory of planned behavior, this study aims to observe the role of employee voice in abating the impact of toxic leadership on collective organizational engagement. The performance of the firm is highly dependent on employee engagement and leadership plays a vital role in engaging employees towards collective goals. This study used the snowball sampling technique to collect data from the Pakistan service sector. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from the said sector, the sample size was 223 employees working in telecommunication, banks, and insurance companies. Thus, literature proposes that the phenomenon of toxic leadership exists at every workplace and has negative effects on the organization. Previously toxic leadership has been studied only as a predictor of negative outcomes only. Therefore current study argues that even though toxic leadership decreases the collective organizational engagement, however, this relationship can be transformed via employee proactive voice behavior. Results obtained through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) show that although leaders’ toxicity disengages employees at the workplace they look engaged. Structural relation of toxic leadership with employee voice has proved significant which indicates that employee raises voice against the leader’s bad behavior; it keeps them engaged as they perceive organization cares their voice. Thus, this study recommends that employee voice behavior should be promoted at the organization to neutralize the toxic leadership effect on collective organizational engagement. Present study where advances the literature on toxic leadership has practical implications for the managers as well. As toxic leadership overshadows the effects of positive leadership thus to avoid the negative effects of toxic leadership; top management should promote collective engagement through employee voice behavior to accomplish firm performance. Presently this study attempts to enrich the literature by empirically testing the proposed relationship and also provided future insights on toxic leadership to the researchers.