Investigating the Impact of Toxic Leadership on Work Engagement in Governmental Organizations

The goal of this research is investigating the impact of toxic leadership on work engagement in governmental organizations in Kerman city. This study is a descriptive- correlation research that has been conducted through the survey method. Community statistical is includes employee of governmental organizations of Kerman city (seven organizations) that were selected 301 people as the sample size. Also sampling in this study is class proportional to the size of the community. Tools used to collect the data are toxic leadership questionnaire of Schmidt (2008) and work engagement questionnaire of Yakin and Erdil (2012) that content validity structures and reliability of their approval reached. For data analysis is used of structural equation modeling and software used are the SPSS and Amos. According to the final model can be said that toxic leadership and its sub variables as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, narcissistic leadership, petty tyranny and unpredictable have negative impact on employees’ work engagement. According to the results suggest that measures and mechanism is necessary in order to prevent the coming toxic leadership style virulent in governmental organizations.

In governments especially the bureaucratic ones, it is the government which plays the most important role in the society. In our country, 80% of the organizations are public. Considering the saliency of the role of government and public organizations in managing the society, it could be explicated that if the executive officers/directors of these organizations lack the required competence and merit, the organization shall be faced with dangerous and unwanted consequences due to behaviors such as leadership inefficiency, mischief, corruption, immoral behavior (even if legal) and organized crime (Hamidizadeh et al., 2017: 3). One form of extremely harmful leadership is called toxic leadership. Such leaders tend to decrease the sense of motivation and enthusiasm for team work among the subordinates and would eventually push them towards self-centeredness in the organization(Roter, 2011). In general, the most notorious consequences of toxic leadership and its negative outcomes in the organization could be lob change, stress, emotional boredom and a feeling of organizational injustice among the employees which would lead to weaken the sense of belonging and commitment by them (Spranger, 2014: 12).
Taking the above into consideration, the present survey aims to indicate the impact of toxic leadership on employees’ work engagement in public sector.

The present survey is a kind of descriptive- correlational research that was conducted using a survey. Also, this study is in terms of the objective of the development-applied research. Statistical population of the survey consists of all public sector employees of Kerman governmental organizations out of which 301 persons were chosen as sample volume based on stratified proportionate with the volume.
Data gathering was carried out using 2 questionnaires. Schmidt questionnaire (2008) consisting of 29 questions was used to measure toxic leadership. Schaufeli and Bakker (2003) questionnaire containing 17 statements was used to measure work engagement.
Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data using SPSS and AMOS softwares.

The results of the survey showed that toxic leadership has a negative impact on employees’ work engagement in Kerman governmental organizations. Other results manifested negative impact the dimensions of toxic leadership such as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, narcissistic leadership, petty tyranny and unpredictable on employees’ work engagement in Kerman governmental organizations. Among dimensions of toxic leadership, abusive supervision shows the most negative impact, while the dimension of petty tyranny has the least negative impact on employees’ work engagement.
Discussion and

In this research, the relationship between toxic leadership and employees’ work engagement was theoretically explicated before being exposed to testing. Indeed, the goal of this survey was to investigate the impact of toxic leadership on work engagement in governmental organizations of Kerman city. The findings of the survey showed that toxic leadership and its sub variables as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, narcissistic leadership, petty tyranny and unpredictable have negative impact on employees’ work engagement in Kerman governmental organizations.