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The literature on destructive leadership has become quite complex over time, with many new concepts being defined and developed now that research on the darker side of leadership is gaining in popularity. As such, one of the relatively new concepts that has emerged is exploitative leadership, which is why it is important to gain a better understanding of the concept and what it entails for managers. It is therefore interesting to compare it with one of the most (if not the most) researched topic in the field of destructive leadership: abusive supervision. In the following section, the results from the conducted analyses on these concepts and their relationship with trust will be discussed, along with both the theoretical and practical implications this has for researchers and managers.

Finally, recommendations for future research will be given as well as the limitations of this research.

5.1 Abusive supervision and trust

First of all, while the variables of abusive supervision and trust were significantly correlated with each other, it was surprising to find that the direct relationship between them was not significant.

Previous research on this topic explains that abusive supervision tends to be related to negative outcomes (Krasikova et al., 2013), which is why it was expected that abusive supervision would have a negative relationship with trust. Furthermore, Bies et al. (1996), and Duffy and Ferrier (2003) actually found that followers trusted abusive leaders less. Therefore, it remains unclear why such a relationship was not found in this research, yet it means H1 had to be rejected.

However, once this relationship was mediated by interactional justice, the results became significant and showed that interactional justice actually positively predicts trust in an abusive leader.

This means that if people perceive a higher level of interactional injustice from an abusive supervisor, their trust in that leader will decrease, which is completely in line with previous research regarding abusive supervision and trust (Schyns & Schilling, 2013; Stouten & Tripp, 2009; Tepper et al., 2007).

This would suggest that the relationship between abusive supervision and trust is fully mediated by interactional justice. However, according to Hayes (2017), complete (and partial) mediation are too simplistic concepts that are too dependent on sample size. Because the sample size in this research is

40 relatively small, it is only correct to assume that these results do not provide any solid evidence of that interactional justice fully predicts trusts, however likely it may seem in this case.

These results also seem to be in line with the assumption that affective trust has a greater effect on abusive supervision than cognitive trust would. It means that the emotional ties to a leader play a greater role than the extent to which his or her followers consider him or her to be competent in their job (Webber, 2008). The findings of Webber (2008) were also the reason why interactional justice was chosen as a mediating variable, since it was more likely that the interaction between leader and follower would influence the relationship between the two to a greater degree. It also confirms that abusive supervision may be tolerated under certain circumstances (Fors Brandebo, 2020), in which case followers would attribute the leader’s behaviour to be a consequence of the context in which they operate, rather than an inherent characteristic of that leader. Again, this is in line with the differentiation between affective trust and cognitive trust, in which the personal bond with the leader is much stronger than their destructive behaviour (Yang & Mossholder, 2010). It is also proof that trust is not an inherent characteristic of an individual, but rather a relational aspect (Fairholm &

Fairholm, 2000; Schoorman et al., 2007). Since trust is generated on the basis of experience between leader and follower (Fairholm & Fairholm, 2000), it is especially important for a leader to show his or her good intentions towards a follower. Considering the fact that benevolence is one of the most important antecedents of trust (Burke et al., 2007), not showing benevolent acts thus creates more distrust.

5.2 Exploitative leadership and trust

Contrary to the finding that the relationship between abusive supervision and trust was not significant, the negative relationship between exploitative leadership and trust was statistically significant, which means that H2 can be confirmed. It is not surprising that exploitative leadership has a negative effect on trust. Earlier research focusing on narcissistic leaders found that over time, leaders behaving in a self-interested way could expect that the employee they had a high-quality relationship with would respond to that behaviour in kind (Liu et al., 2017). The idea stems from the reciprocity principle, in which behaviour in service of another person is expected to be returned by

41 similar behaviour as a show of gratitude (Blau, 1964, p. 4). Therefore, a leader who exploits his or her subordinates can expect a decrease in trust from their part over time. This is also in line with the significant negative correlation between trust and tenure, which suggests that the longer somebody works for a specific supervisor – not necessarily one demonstrating self-interested behaviour –, the less they trust that person.

Overall, the findings indicate that exploitative leadership is a more significant predictor of both distributive justice and interactional justice. While abusive supervision is a stronger predictor than exploitative leadership, this result was less statistically significant. Nevertheless, the effect size is more important than its statistical significance, as the latter is simply an indicator to what extent the results are attributable to chance (Privitera, 2015).

The mediation analysis of distributive justice on the relationship between exploitative leadership and trust did provide evidence that distributive justice predicts trust, however, the effect was found to be weak. This suggests that when leaders unjustly allocate resources to benefit

themselves, this does seem to predict whether his or her followers will deem them either more or less trustworthy, but it is not as impactful as the indirect effect of exploitative supervision on trust through interactional justice. This is somewhat surprising considering the findings of Schmid et al. (2019).

Their research found that followers feel betrayed by a leader who takes advantage of them. A possible explanation for this weak effect is that there exists information asymmetry between the leader and the follower that prevents the follower from knowing about the unjust allocation of resources. However, in such a situation, information could be considered a resource that has not been equally distributed in the case that a leader has more information about a follower than vice-versa, in which case the

follower would in fact trust the leader to a lesser degree (Schoorman et al. 2007). On the other hand, the feeling of betrayal does seem to be in line with the fact that interactional injustice plays a more significant role than distributive injustice.

Regardless of the relationship between exploitative leadership and trust, the direct

relationship between exploitative leadership and distributive justice was actually significant and much stronger, thus showing that exploitative leadership negatively predicts distributive justice. This means

42 that followers do in fact perceive resources to be unjustly allocated, which suggests there is no

evidence that followers are kept in the dark about the allocation of resources, or that they notice this nonetheless. This result is also seemingly opposed to Stouten and Tripp’s (2009) findings that the unjust allocation of resources might be condoned through the leader’s status, i.e., the fact that they are the leader means they put in more effort at work, ergo they deserve a larger share of the resources.

5.3 Abusive supervision and exploitative leadership

This research not only focused on abusive supervision and exploitative leadership in the context of organisational justice, but also on the development of the concept of exploitative leadership within the field of destructive leadership. While the general consensus is that destructive leadership predicts negative outcomes, it is important to distinguish between the different types of destructive behaviour that exist among leaders (Krasikova et al., 2013). Such distinctions allow for a better understanding of why leaders engage in destructive behaviour and, thereby, how it can be solved or even prevented.

As in the research of Schmid et al. (2019), the results showed a correlation between abusive supervision and exploitative leadership, thereby suggesting a certain degree of overlap between the two constructs. While abusive supervision did not have a significant effect on trust in this research, previous research has proven that it is usually the case that this leadership style is detrimental to the level of trust followers have in their leader (Bies et al., 1996; Duffy & Ferrier, 2003). Exploitative leadership shows similar effects, which supports the notion that the two concepts are similar to each other. This would again be in line with the findings of Schmid et al. (2019), who found both

exploitative leadership and abusive supervision to be detrimental to positive outcomes, with exploitative leadership having stronger effects.

5.3.1 Differential effects

Because trust is closely affiliated with interpersonal interaction (Fairholm & Fairholm, 2000;

Schoorman et al., 2007), it comes as no surprise that the results showed a significant relationship between exploitative leadership and trust when mediated through interactional justice. While the

43 effect was weaker for exploitative leadership than abusive supervision, it was still stronger than the mediating effects of distributive justice. Even though exploitative leadership seemed to be more about giving and taking between leaders and followers, and less about how they treat each other, it appears that exploitative leadership is also harmful in terms of interpersonal interaction. This might again be attributable to the fact that the behaviour of narcissistic leaders is reciprocated by their followers over time (Liu et al., 2017), suggesting that interaction plays a greater role in the relationship between an exploitative leader and his or her followers.

However, the relationship between abusive supervision and trust when mediated by distributive justice was not found to be significant. This comes as no surprise considering abusive supervision is usually associated with the interaction between leader and follower (Tepper, 2000). The results therefore suggest that a leader can be considered abusive without being unfair regarding the distribution of resources. Additionally, interactional justice predicted trust to a greater extent for abusive supervision than it did for exploitative leadership, which appears to suggest that exploitative leadership is not primarily embedded in the relationship between leader and follower.

Furthermore, because the relationship between abusive supervision and trust was not mediated by distributive justice, it could mean that exploitative leadership can have more far-reaching negative consequences than abusive supervision, at least in terms of organisational justice. It is therefore only more relevant to continue researching the underlying mechanisms of this leadership construct as it does appear to have important differences with abusive supervision that can have meaningful impact on leaders, followers, and organisations if they are not fully understood.

5.4 Practical implications

The finding that interactional justice mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and trust sheds light on potentially problematic situations. Essentially, the results suggest that abusive supervision might be endorsed by followers if they have a higher level of affective trust in their leader. By creating a strong bond between leader and follower, the follower might perceive the effects of abusive supervision to a lesser degree. As a consequence, the follower, instead of being the victim

44 of the leader’s behaviour, might become an accomplice. This is not unlikely considering the fact that people engage in abusive supervision through social learning (Tepper et al., 2017). If followers trust their leader enough for them to perceive their behaviour as being justified, it might cause the problem to expand and create victims of those followers who do not have a strong relationship with their leader. Priesemuth (2013) even found evidence of prosocial behaviour towards abusive leaders under certain conditions, which means the risk of creating an environment where abusive behaviour is being endorsed exists and should be taken seriously by managers.

The negative relationship between exploitative leadership and trust has several implications for managers: first and foremost, selfish behaviour does not promote trust, and if there is no trust between a leader and his or her followers, it lowers subordinates’ prosocial behaviour toward that leader (Liu et al., 2017). Nevertheless, Schmid et al. (2018) observed that, should the goals of exploitative leaders be aligned with the organisational goals, it is likely their behaviour might not be perceived as being negative. The situational factors therefore seem to determine whether exploitative leadership is harmful to subordinates, similar to the findings of Fors Brandebo (2020). She argued that the context in which leaders and followers might find themselves in justify the potentially destructive behaviour of leaders. Nevertheless, followers only tolerate such behaviour if they find there is good reason for this, which in the case of exploitative leadership might happen in the case of goal alignment.

5.5 Implications for future research

Since abusive supervision and interactional justice appear to be linked, further research should deal with the relational aspects of an abusive leader and his or her followers. Specifically, this would entail uncovering what role social learning might play in combination with interactional justice. Understanding this could prevent abusive supervision to be taught by example to future leaders. The outcomes of abusive supervision could therefore be analysed through leader-member exchange, since this is likely to be related to more positive outcomes and decreased negative perceptions of this type of leadership (Bies et al., 2016).

45 The fact that distributive injustice did not predict trust in an exploitative leader to a very large extent leads to the question whether there are other forms of organisational justice that might show a more significant relationship, as the fact that interactional justice predicted this relationship to a much larger extent did. As mentioned before, information asymmetry between a follower and an

exploitative leader also causes the follower to distrust their leader, while the same might not be said for the leader about the follower. In this case, it might be that their relationship suffers under the unfair distribution of information. Therefore, it would be interesting to analyse the relationship between an exploitative leader and his or her followers with interactional justice as a mediator.

In addition, research could focus on the situational elements that factor into predicting exploitative leadership. Considering Fors Brandebo’s (2020) argument for justifying abusive supervision in a context of crisis and Schmid et al.’s (2018) suggestion that exploitative leadership may even be beneficial for the organisation in some cases, it could add more complexity to exploitative leadership that helps understand and manage it more effectively.

5.6 Limitations

First of all, it must be said that the scale at which this research was conducted was too small to make any deductions that can be generalised to the entire population. That said, the population from which the sample was drawn was not diverse in terms of culture. Leadership in other cultures may be divergent because of other values held in certain countries, which means some aspects of leadership are held in higher regard than others (Dorfman et al., 2012). The results found in this research may therefore not hold for other cultures with different values, which would also make it interesting to conduct the same research in different countries.

Second, the data was collected by asking followers about their perceptions of their leader.

Subjective perceptions of leadership do not always match with the objective behaviour of a leader (Martinko et al., 2013). While it is important to keep in mind that followers act upon their own perceptions (Winkler, 2010) it does not mean that all leaders who are perceived as being destructive behave like this objectively, since subjective perceptions can actually account for a significant amount

46 of variance in abusive supervision (Martinko et al., 2013). The results of this research are therefore one perspective that may not account for reality of a situation because it does not take into account any other contextual elements.

Third, the quantitative nature of this research allowed for the possibility of collecting a large amount of data in a short time-period, which was suitable for the relatively limited timeframe of this research. Nevertheless, due to the non-probability convenience sampling and the relatively small sample size, bias was likely to occur (Acharya et al., 2013). It would also be wrong to draw any conclusions with regard to partial or complete mediation because of the small sample, considering there could be many other factors at play that have not been taken into account within this research (Hayes, 2017). This, in combination with the fact that the obtained data was cross-sectional, did not allow for it to be generalised to the entire population. Lastly, the possibility of common method bias exists because the survey is self-administered, as well as the risk for social desirability answers because of the more negative focus on leadership.

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