The goal of this research paper is to answer the question “is leader narcissism indirectly related to employee emotional exhaustion via exploitative leadership and does employee dependency moderate this indirect relationship?”. With confidence, we can conclude that the results from this research confirm with enough significance that the question asked above is true. Please find below a recap of the findings of this research.
The findings of this study show that there is no direct effect between leader narcissism and emotional exhaustion, no direct effect of leader narcissism on exploitative leadership, and no mediating effect of exploitative leadership behavior between leader narcissism and emotional exhaustion. This indicates that hypotheses 1a and 1c are rejected. The lack of results for the mediation on its own can be explained in that there is another aspect or characteristic that mediates the relationship between narcissism and emotional exhaustion (Sedikides &
Campbell, 2017). The possibility of another mediator can be further investigated in future research.
For the moderating effect of dependency between leader narcissism and exploitative leadership behavior, a significant result was found. While there was no direct relationship between narcissism and exploitative leadership as mentioned before, this lack of direct relationship means that when a leader is high on the narcissistic scale and has a dependent employee, that employee will experience more exploitative leadership behavior than if the employee was not dependent on the narcissistic leader. This is in line with previous research shown in the following two cases. First, the narcissistic leader can take more advantage of the dependent employee and therefore show more exploitative leadership behavior (Wee et al., 2017). Secondly, dependent employees might experience more exploitative leadership when working for narcissistic leaders. Dependent employees may be more attuned to potential
victimization (Aquino & Thau, 2019) and may experience narcissists’ egocentrism as exploitative.
The complete model, and thus hypothesis 3, has been accepted with significant results.
This indicates that when an employee is dependent on the narcissistic leader, the narcissistic leader shows more exploitative leadership traits, which in turn provides more emotional exhaustion for the employee. This is in line with the expectations and previous research stated in the theoretical framework. This research shows that exploitative leadership behavior is only a mediator between leader narcissism and emotional exhaustion when the relationship between leader narcissism and exploitative leadership behavior is moderated by dependency. Thus, when the employee is more dependent on the narcissistic leader, the employee experiences more exploitative leadership behavior which in turn strengthens the relationship with emotional exhaustion.
4.1 Theoretical implications
Multiple theoretical implications come with the achieved results mentioned above. The first theoretical implication is about narcissism. This research has expanded on the knowledge about narcissism and the effects of such leaders (Nevicka et al., 2018), showing that narcissists do not have a relationship with exploitative leadership unless it is moderated by a dependent employee. This reveals options on how to elevate or reduce exploitation within an organization.
The second theoretical implication is expanding the literature on exploitative leadership behavior. Since the leadership style is considerably new to the academic literature proposed by Schmid et al. (2019), new insights on what effects and when exploitative leadership is most prevalent are helpful. For instance, the relationship between exploitative leadership behavior and emotional exhaustion could be more extensively tested (Elsaied, 2021). Future research is still necessary to investigate how and when exploitative leadership is
Next, Bajaba et al. (2021) state that it is important to understand what effects destructive and abusive leadership has on the employee’s well-being. This research has expanded on that knowledge being able to give a clear answer that an exploitative leadership style can be detrimental to the mental health of the employee, resulting in emotional exhaustion. This relationship is even stronger when the employee is dependent, which is shown in the moderated mediation results.
Furthermore, this research also contributes to the knowledge of the dependence of employees in connection with a narcissistic leader, which was suggested to be future research by Nevicka et al. (2018) and a moderating effect that could cause exploitative leadership behavior proposed by Bajaba et al. (2021). The knowledge that comes from this research is in regard to the strengthening of the perception of exploitative leadership on such employees. For future research, it would be interesting to know if this perception is true and the dependent employees are actually exploited more or if the dependent employee only imagines this. A longitudinal study would be most suitable for that.
4.2 Limitations, and future research
Even though hypotheses 1a and 1c have been rejected, and all other hypotheses have been accepted, a few discussion points have risen that could have affected the end results and could be improved for future research. Overall, the results have shown this research to be a success due to its strength. In the next few paragraphs limitations are stated. These limitations were refuted or mitigated during the collection of the data and are advised to be handled differently in future research. These limitations do not mean that the research and results shown are invalid.
The selection of participants could have affected the results of this study for two reasons. Firstly, convenience sampling was used to collect all data. While collecting the data, numerous people refused to even participate in the questionnaire due to not having a good
relationship with their leader. This might have excluded leaders high in narcissism or exploitative leadership behavior which could have affected the results. Secondly, when the leader was asked first, the leader could appoint an employee that would complete the survey favorably. This could have affected the results of this research. To ensure the results from this study are correct, another similar study needs to be executed with a random sample of leader employee dyads that are selected by the researcher instead of the participants. Even though these limitations of participation selection could have affected the results of this study, possible fluctuations in the data would have less effect because of the substantial size of the collected data.
Another discussion point which could have limited the results of this study is the average time it took to complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire for the leader took about 10 minutes, where the questionnaire for the employee took about 15 minutes on average. This time-consuming questionnaire could result in less thoughtful answers and increased careless responses (Gibson & Bowling, 2020). However, the scales that were used were not placed at the very end of the survey to reduce this from happening. Although the scales were not at the end of the survey, for future research it would be more insightful to include attention checks.
When this is included, participants that do not answer this question correctly will be excluded from the rest of the survey with the assumption that they did not pay enough attention throughout the whole survey and could have given more careless responses. Another counterargument to the limitation of the time-consuming questionnaire is that the response rate was 77%, which could be considered high and sufficient and shows no sign of the questionnaire being too long or burdensome.
The last limitation that needs to be mentioned is the fear that participants could have had about their colleagues finding out what they had answered on the questionnaire. This fear could result in less honest answers during the questionnaire. This has been mitigated by
mentioning multiple times during the communication with the participants that their answers would be handled confidentially and anonymously. This has been stated again within the questionnaire just before questions the participant had to answer about their leader/employee.
No indication was given by the participants that they felt unsafe answering all questions honestly and truthfully.
For future research, the failed hypothesis of the direct relationship between leader narcissism and exploitative leadership behavior would be interesting to investigate further.
Since the theoretical framework shows a basis to believe the stated hypothesis, the lack of significant results was not expected. It would be insightful to find out why this did not come true. The investigation of other possible moderators for this relationship is also noteworthy to further investigate.
4.3 Practical implications
There are also practical implications of this research. The most important one is that organizations can help their employees prevent emotional exhaustion by offering them tools or workshops to become more independent from their leader. This research has shown that when there is a lower dependency on the narcissistic leader, the experience of exploitative leadership behavior and emotional exhaustion are also lower. This would have a great impact on the health of the employee as well as expected productivity.
Another practical implication of this research would be for organizations to only hire independent workers when they know they have a leader with narcissistic tendencies. This would reduce the experienced exploitative leadership behavior of the leader and reduce the possible emotional exhaustion of the employee.