The lived experience of toxic leadership in Irish higher education

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reveal the lived experience of toxic leadership for a cohort of 11 individuals who work, or have worked, in the field of higher education in Ireland. Drawing on national and international literature, as well as the testimonies of a cohort of academic and administrative staff, the study considers the impact of this negative management style on these individuals as well as upon the organisation itself. Design/methodology/approach A total of 11 self-selected individuals (four males and seven females) were interviewed for this pilot study. Data from the semi-structured interviews were organised thematically and analysed with the support of the computer software package MAXQDA®. Findings The results show that the experience of toxic leadership was profound for the interviewees across a number of contexts. They reported adverse physical and psychological impacts as well as detailing the repercussions for their respective career trajectories as they endeavoured to safely navigate their often-hostile work environment. Human resources departments within their respective institutions were the focus of considerable criticism by the interviewees who highlighted, what they saw as, the inherent contradiction/tension between the perceived roles and responsibilities of such departments in addressing or resolving interpersonal work-related disputes. Originality/value The findings expand on the extant scholarly literature on toxic leadership in higher education and, for the first time, offer a revealing insight on this phenomenon within the Irish context.

An Exploration of Leadership in Post-Primary Schools: The Emergence of Toxic Leadership

“…Although there is a growing body of research into the dark side of leadership practices, such as destructive leadership [12], negative leadership within the context of educational administration and leadership has been largely marginalised [4,10]. Furthermore, there has been little research on how toxic leadership develops and maintains negative workplace dynamics and/or the impact of this behaviour on employees [1]. Toxic leadership can be defined as the "combination of self-centred attitudes, motivations, and behaviours" [13] (p. 2) that "causes, either abruptly or gradually, systemic harm to the health of an organisation" [2] (p. 18) and its people [14].…”

“…While the extant literature on toxic leadership within educational settings is limited, its presence within schools, colleges, and universities has been noted [1][2][3][4]. The presence of unethical leadership can have adverse impacts on the school environment, including absenteeism [5] and increased levels of teacher attrition [6].…”

The Role of Toxic Leadership and Perceived Organizational Support on Academic Staff’s Psychological Distress

“…Very little attention was paid to understand toxic leadership beyond the scope of administrative employees. For examples, most of the earlier work investigated this topic within the university administrative (Fahie, 2019), nurse (Labrague et al, 2020), human resource, banker and IT employees. Focusing exclusively on administrative employees potentially limits the perception of these toxic leadership behaviour.…”

“…Leadership affects the dyadic, team, and personal relationships within the organization and impact on psychological well-being (Fahie, 2019). According to Asha and Snigdha (2019), psychological distress has been recognized as a result of toxic leadership (Asha and Snigdha,2019).…”

The Neoliberal University in Ireland: Institutional Bullying by Another Name?

“…Poor experiences of leadership in Irish HEIs have been cited as leading to profoundly damaging experiences, including adverse physical and psychological impacts, repercussions for career trajectory, and fear. Accumulated research has led to an understanding that bullying flourishes and becomes pervasive in environments that create the antecedents for it, with consistent findings indicating role conflict, or role ambiguity, where employees perceive contradictory or unclear demands predicting bullying, and work intensification [15,22,23] as particularly salient. Bullying is associated with an organisational culture that does not have appropriate avenues of redress and therefore 'blind-eyes' bullying; where managers feel that they have support, at least implicitly, to mistreat their staff [24]; where the personal 'costs' of doing so are low, or worse, even rewarded [15]; and where there is a high level of competition within the workforce [25].…”