Insights into the Criterion Validity of the Toxic Leadership Scale: A Bayesian Comparative Analysis Between Good and Poor Managers
Keywords:
toxic leadership, criterion validity, managers, military organizations, high-stake settingAbstract
This paper presents data about the use of the Toxic Leadership Scale - TLS (Schmidt, 2008; Popa et al., 2013) in Romanian military organizations and analyzes its criterion validity. The study involved 243 participants from two military units with different organizational climate (normal vs. tense) who rated their leaders (Head and First Deputy) using the TLS (which consists in 30 items with five subscales and a global score). According to a Bayesian t-test for independent samples, we found compelling evidence that leaders of the high conflict unit received higher scores on the TLS than leaders of the low conflict unit, a fact that supports the criterion validity of the scale. The study provides additional evidence regarding the psychometric characteristics of the scale and indicates that it can be used in real organizational contexts for assessing senior management, even in high-stakes situations.
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References
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Doty, J. & Fenlason, J. (2013). Narcissism and Toxic Leaders, Military Review, 93(1), 55–60.
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Steele, J. P. (2011). Antecedents and Consequences of Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Army: A Two Year Review and Recommended Solutions, Fort Leavenworth: Center for Army Leadership.
Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of Abusive Supervision. The Academy of Management Journal 43(2), 178–190.
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Ulmer, Jr.W.F. (2012). Toxic Leadership: What Are We Talking About? Army, 47–52.
Wagenmakers, E.-J., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Ly, A., Verhagen, A. J., Love, J., Selker, R., Gronau, Q. F., ˇSm´ıra, M., Epskamp, S., Matzke, D., Rouder, J. N., & Morey, R. D. (2017). Bayesian statistical inference for psychological science. Part I: Theoretical advantages and practical ramifications, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 35–57.
Walter, F. U. (2012). Toxic Leadership: What Are We Talking About? Army, 47–52.
Williams, D. F. (2005). Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Army, Master’s thesis, U.S. Army War College.
Doty, J. & Fenlason, J. (2013). Narcissism and Toxic Leaders, Military Review, 93(1), 55–60.
Einarsen, S., Aasland, M. S., Skogstad A. (2007). Destructive Leadership Behavior: A Definition and Conceptual Model, The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 207–216.
Kellerman, B. (2004). Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Gallus J. A., Walsh, B. M., van Driel, M, Gouge, M. C., & Antolic, E. (2013). Intolerable Cruelty: A Multilevel Examination of the Impact of Toxic Leadership on U. S. Military Units and Members, Military Psychology, 25(6), 588–601.
Jeffreys, H. (1961). Theory of Probability (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University.
Kass, R. E. & Raftery, A. E. (1995). Bayes factors. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, 773–795.
Lindsay, D., Watola, D. J., Lovelace, J. (2016). Why Negative Leadership Matters: Implications for Leader Development in the Military. In D. Watola, & D. Woycheshin (eds.). Negative Leadership: International Perspective, Canadian Defence Academy Press. Liţă, Ş. (2014a). Factors which affect the perception of managerial effectiveness in military units. Romanian Police National Symposium of Psychology, Bucureşti [In Romanian]. Liţă, Ş. (2014b). Organizational diagnosis of interpersonal deviance: development and validation of an assessment tool. Post-Doctoral and Early Career Scholars Workshop organized by European Group for Organizational Studies, Rotterdam, 2014.
Liţă, Ş. (2016). Essential competencies of managers from Romanian Gendarmerie. In V. Mărineanu (ed.).
50 Stefan Liță
Mental and occupational health in military settings, Ministry of Defence Publishing House, Bucharest, 69-79 [In Romanian].
Liţă, Ş., & Grigoraş, M. (2007). The role of personality traits in police leaders’ behavior. Polish Journal of Applied Psychology, 5(1), Wroclaw University Publishing. Liţă, Ş., & Rusan, A. (2017). Developing an Early Warning System for detecting personnel maladaptive behavior. National Conference of Organizational Psychology, Bucureşti. [In Romanian]. Liţă, Ş., Scrieciu, D., & Ţintea, G. (2018). Validation of a Psychosocial Climate Assessment Questionnaire in military units. Journal of Psychology, Romanian Academy Publishing House 64(2), 87–101, [In Romanian]. Liţă, Ş., Scrieciu, D., Ţoi, M. (2014). Measuring organizational climate in military units, National Conference of Organizational Psychology, Iaşi [In Romanian].
Lipman-Blumen, J. (2005). The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians – and How We Can Survive Them, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Padilla, A., Hogan, R., Kaiser, R. B. (2007). The Toxic Triangle: Destructive Leaders, Susceptible Followers, and Conductive Environments, The Leadership Quarterly, 18, 176–194.
Paulhus, D. L. & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy, Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556–563. Popa, M. (2012). Psihologie militară. Iași: Polirom.
Popa, M., Rotărescu, V., Sulea, C., & Albulescu, P. (2013). Scala de evaluare a conducerii toxice – adaptare românească, Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 11(2), 57-70.
Price, T. (2006). Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Razali, Nornadiah; Wah, Yap Bee (2011). Power comparisons of Shapiro–Wilk, Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Lilliefors and Anderson-Darling tests, Journal of Statistical Modeling and Analytics. 2(1), 21–33.
Reed, G. E. (2004). Toxic Leadership, Military Review, 84(4) 67–71.
Reed, G., & Bullis, R. C. (2009). The Impact of Destructive Leadership on Senior Military Officers and Civilians, Armed Forces & Society, 36(1), 5–18.
Riley, R. Hatfield, J. Paddock, A.& Fallesen, J. J. (2013) The 2012 Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL): Main Findings, Leavenworth, KS: Center for Army Leadership.
Rosenthal, S.A., & Pittinsky, T. L. (2006). Narcissistic Leadership, The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 617–633. Shapiro, S. S,. & Wilk, M. B. (1965). An analysis of variance test for normality (complete samples). Biometrika, 52(3–4), 591–611.
Schmidt, A. A. (2008). Development and validation of the Toxic Leadership Scale, Master’s thesis, University of Maryland, College Park. (http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/8176/1/umi-umd-5358.pdf).
Schmidt, A. A. (2014). An Examination of Toxic Leadership, Job Outcomes, and Military Deployment. Doctoral thesis. University of Maryland.
Steele, J. P. (2011). Antecedents and Consequences of Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Army: A Two Year Review and Recommended Solutions, Fort Leavenworth: Center for Army Leadership.
Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of Abusive Supervision. The Academy of Management Journal 43(2), 178–190.
Truhon, S. A. & McDonald, D. P. (2013). Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Military, Presentation, Annual Convention of the International Military Testing Association, Seoul, October 28-31.
Ulmer, Jr.W.F. (2012). Toxic Leadership: What Are We Talking About? Army, 47–52.
Wagenmakers, E.-J., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Ly, A., Verhagen, A. J., Love, J., Selker, R., Gronau, Q. F., ˇSm´ıra, M., Epskamp, S., Matzke, D., Rouder, J. N., & Morey, R. D. (2017). Bayesian statistical inference for psychological science. Part I: Theoretical advantages and practical ramifications, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 35–57.
Walter, F. U. (2012). Toxic Leadership: What Are We Talking About? Army, 47–52.
Williams, D. F. (2005). Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Army, Master’s thesis, U.S. Army War College.
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Published
2020-02-02
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Liță, Ștefan. (2020). Insights into the Criterion Validity of the Toxic Leadership Scale: A Bayesian Comparative Analysis Between Good and Poor Managers. Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 16(1), 40–50. Retrieved from https://www.hrp-journal.com/index.php/pru/article/view/451
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