Correlation of Managers’ Leadership and Organizational Inertia with the Mediating Role of Social loafing in the Employees of the Ministry of Sports and Youth

In today's competitive world, highly productive employees are the biggest competitive advantage for organizations. Leadership style is one of the factors that can be effective in the occurrence of this mental state. The aim of the current research is to determine the correlation of toxic leadership and organizational inertia with the mediating role of social loafing among the employees of the Ministry of Sports and Youth.

The current research is descriptive-correlational. The statistical population of this research is made up of 303 managers and experts of the Ministry of Sports and Youth, of which 181 people were selected as a statistical sample. Data collection instruments included demographic questionnaire, "Toxic Leadership Scale", "Organizational Inertia Questionnaire", and "Social Loafing Questionnaire". The validity of the instruments was measured by face validity (by qualitative method), convergent and divergent validity. Also, composite reliability and internal consistency reliability were checked and confirmed by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the instruments. Data analysis with Smart PLS software .3 and SPSS. 24 is done.

The model had a good and acceptable fit and all paths (hypotheses) were confirmed with high confidence. The analysis of fit indexes of the structural model indicated that the model has a good fit and therefore has a high ability to measure the main variable. The weakest correlation is between toxic leadership and social loafing.

With the presence of the mediating variable of social loafing in the relationship between toxic leadership and organizational inertia, it is significant for the direct path between toxic leadership and organizational inertia. The model has a good fit and a high ability to measure the main variable. Also, the weakest correlation is between toxic leadership and social loafing. It is suggested that the managers of the Ministry of Sports and Youth, by giving importance to the leadership style of the organization, can prevent the destructive behavior of the employees, such as loafing, and improve their performance and prevent them from leaving the organization.