The role of toxic leadership and perceived organizational support on academic staff’s psychological distress

Abstract

This study examines the impact of toxic leadership on academic staff’s psychological distress in the Malaysian context. Also, the moderating role of perceived organizational support is explored. A questionnaire was utilized to gather the data (n=450) for this research. The multi-stage sampling technique combines cluster sampling and a simple random sampling involving academic staff from a public university in Malaysia. The SMART PLS-SEM version 3.2.7. was used to analyze the data. Based on the structural model's standardized path coefficients from the PLS results, toxic leadership profoundly influenced employees' psychological distress. However, perceived organizational support was an insignificant moderator of the impact between toxic leadership and psychological distress. The empirical research findings address the gap in the overall body of literature regarding Toxic Leadership Theory, such as the psychological distress and perceived organizational support. Hence, it provides an insight into toxic leadership study that has a few examined in previous research. Toxic leadership phenomenon can be used by the organization to better understand the dark side of leadership style, improve employee knowledge about toxic leadership and emotional coping strategy. Successful preventing toxic leadership is seen as an advantage for organizations that can promote a healthy work environment and a quality leader.