THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOXIC LEADERSHIP TRAITS AND EMPLOYEE TURNOVER INTENTIONS AMONG FOUR CULTURAL TYPOLOGIES

The role of a leader is to be the conductor of an ensemble, an individual who sees the larger picture and puts the pieces of the puzzle together to obtain that picture. The positive leader finds the hidden talents of those they employ and provide the best footing for those talents to prosper and add to the overall value of the product being produced. When it comes to a negative or toxic leader, keeping employees engaged and in their roles long enough to achieve a final product becomes much of an effort and expense. In this dissertation, toxic leadership refers to a leader who displays traits such as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, narcissism, unpredictability, and self-promotion. This type of leader is associated with creating a hostile work environment that leads to employee dissatisfaction, disengagement, demotivation, and ultimately the intent to leave their role. This quantitative cross-sectional non-experimental study explored the relationship between the five toxic leadership traits, employee turnover intentions, and whether that relationship is affected by different cultural typologies. This study garnered a total of 613 survey respondents who were at least 18 years of age and in their role for more than one year. The study findings show a significant relationship between all five toxic leadership traits with turnover intention and that the relationship is so significant that it negates any influence by the cultural typologies on employees’ turnover intentions. The study results are of interest to human resource managers, organizational managers, and future leaders when developing training, policies, and recruiting leaders and managers.