Dark triad personality of leaders and perceived organizational justice: The moderating role of leader-member exchange

The importance of human resource management in securing and maintaining competitive advantage in organizations has led researchers to consider new concepts such as the leaders’ dark triad personality and its relationship with employee perceptions and behaviors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of employees' understanding of the leaders’ personality in terms of their dark triad personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy) on employees perceived organizational justice. The moderating effect of leader-member exchange variable was also tested in this relationship. The statistical population of the study were the staff and line employees of five private banks in Tehran who were selected on a random cluster sampling basis. We used standard questionnaires to collect data and structural equation modeling and Smart PLS3.2.6 software to analyze them. Findings show that the leader's Machiavellian approach had a significant effect on employees perceived organizational justice, but the effect of the leader's narcissism and psychopathy approach on the employees perceived organizational justice was not significant. In addition, the results show that the leader-member exchange, had a significant effect on the relationship between Machiavellianism and narcissism with perceived organizational justice. Finally, the theoretical findings of the research were presented.