Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How “Win or Die” Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an increase in scholarly and practitioner interest in the effects of toxic forms of leadership and “win or die” organizational cultures in which employees seek to maintain their own status at all costs, yet there is little research examining the interaction of this type of leadership style and organizational culture. In this survey study of working adults, we demonstrate an association between perceptions of toxic leadership and “masculinity contest cultures” (Berdahl, Cooper, Glick, Livingston, & Williams, 2018).norms, rituals, and belief systems valorizing social dominance, work above other parts of life, physical strength, and the avoidance of weakness. Independently, masculinity contest cultures were associated with higher stress, work/life conflict, intention to job search, work engagement and job meaning, while toxic leadership was associated with lower work engagement and job meaning and higher intention to job search. However, results show a slight increase in work engagement and meaningfulness among men (but not women) who viewed their workplace as a masculinity contest and who reported having a toxic leader. These surprising results provide important insights into how toxic cultures retain employees despite their largely detrimental effects on job attitudes and well‐being.

Development and Validation of the Masculinity Contest Culture Scale

“…As expected, masculinity contest norms tended to be strongly correlated with other organizational‐level measures (other culture measures and dominance behaviors from coworkers), moderately correlated with measures of individuals’ relationship to work, and weakly correlated with personal outcome measures such as general psychological or physical health. Similar results (with the MCC relating to negative workplace culture and outcomes) have been obtained by Rawski and Workman‐Stark () within a police organization and Matos, O'Neill, and Lei () in a general worker sample (we review unanticipated effects found by Matos et al. in detail below).…”

“…Although Matos et al. () similarly showed that masculinity contest norms correlate with greater stress, higher turnover intentions, and more work–life conflict, they also found some paradoxical relationships. Specifically, masculinity contest norms correlated (weakly) with greater job engagement and job meaning—constructs we did not assess.…”

‘Competent’ or ‘Considerate’? The Persistence of Gender Bias in Evaluation of Leaders

“…While men gave low ratings to abusive female leaders and women gave low ratings to both male and female abusive leaders, men seemed to tolerate abusive behaviors from a male leader to a somewhat higher extent. It is possible this may be partly explained by cultural notions of masculinity or masculinity contest cultures (Matos et al 2018), prescribing socially dominant and even abusive behavior as acceptable or even desirable among men.…”

Moving from a compliance‐based to an integrity‐based organizational climate in the food supply chain

“…2013), conversely such climates can also become toxic. Toxic forms of leadership include the masculinity dynamics of “win or die” and while toxic leadership is associated with lower work engagement and job meaningfulness, with men who report having a toxic leader, there is a slight increase in work engagement and work meaningfulness (Matos, O'Neill, & Lei, 2018). Toxic leaders can focus on gaining control through rudeness, coercion, arrogance, and inflexibility and rationalize their behavior as necessary to get the job done (Pelletier, 2010; Reed, 2004).…”