Assignment: Read the article and write down the summary of introduction and literature review by highlighting the objective/gap, theory and justification of the relationship between variables. Article: When the victim becomes vicious: Combined effects of pseudo Transformational Leadership and Epistemic Motivation on Contempt and deviant behaviors

Abstract: Utilizing affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), the current study unravels how and when pseudo-transformational leaders promote contempt, avoidance, and aggression. Specifically, we examined whether pseudo-transformational leadership enforces feelings of contempt, which, in turn, fosters interaction avoidance and covert aggression in followers. We hypothesized that contempt also has an indirect effect that is contingent on levels of epistemic motivation of followers. By adopting a multi-wave research design, we gathered data from 277 employees of the service sector of Pakistan. The results signified that followers of pseudo-transformational leaders feel contemptuous of them and respond with interaction avoidance and indirect aggression. Further, we found that the impact of pseudo-transformational leadership on contempt was more pronounced in individuals with higher levels of epistemic motivation. We believe that this study opens up a new avenue in the pseudo-transformational leadership literature by highlighting the mechanism and conditions under which such leaders are deleterious for organizations.

Introduction:

Leadership phenomenon has been glamorized since its beginning and focused primarily on the beneficial effects for followers and organizations (Schilling, 2009). The new millennium has brought critical challenges to the workplace and dark leadership has emerged as one of the most prevalent employee concerns (Krasikova, Green, & LeBreton, 2013; Schyns & Shillings, 2013). The presence of bad bosses is thus a pertinent reality of the corporate world since a bundle of corporate scandals is ascribed to organizational leaders dysfunctional behaviors and tendencies (Brown, Trevino, & Harrison, 2005; Huang & Paterson, 2017). Extant research ascertained the self-interest and egotistic motives of leaders as strong driving forces behind their deleterious behaviors (Einarsen, Aasland, & Skogstad, 2007; Schyns & Schilling, 2013). However, how such leaders influence followers and bring harm to employees and organizations is not yet given due attention. Specifically, one such self-interested leadership named pseudo-transformational leadership is a relatively unheeded area (Lin, Huang, Chen, & Huang, 2017; Naber & Moffett, 2017; Schmid, Pircher Verdorfer, & Peus, 2018). Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) asserted that there are two opposing types of transformational leaders in an organization, i.e. authentic transformational and pseudo-transformational leadership. Authentic transformational leaders are presented as heroic figures with altruistic behaviors whose ultimate focus is always on the greater good, resulting in employee well-being and organizational success (Braun, Peus, Weisweiler, & Frey, 2013; Crane & Hartwell, 2018; Frieder, Wang, & Oh, 2018). Pseudo- transformational leaders, however, are labeled as unethical and inauthentic transformational leaders. Such leaders who bring enormous harm to followers and organizations are characterized by egotistic motives (House & Howell, 1992; Howell & Avolio, 1992). Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) took a behavioral approach in conceptualizing pseudo-transformational leadership and defined such leaders as the ones who fail to uphold ethical values and moral principles which are essential for transformational leaders. Pseudo-transformational leaders exhibit self-interested behaviors, whereby they may exploit transformational behaviors to promote their hidden agendas by demanding unconditional loyalty and complete submission from their followers (Barling, Christie, & Turner, 2008; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Conger & Kanungo, 1998). In contrast to authentic transformational leaders, less attention has been paid to pseudo-transformational leadership and its impact on followers and organizations (Hughes & Harris, 2017; Naber & Moffett, 2017), thus we know very little how such leaders harm employees and the organizations. Specifically, literature is sparse that under what conditions and how employees respond to such leaders (Hoption, Barling, & Turner, 2013; Lin et al., 2017; Schuh, Zhang, & Tian, 2013). Moreover, mainly leadership research has focuse on deviant behaviors such as leader directed aggression, hostility, and retaliation, which are ultimately self-defeating for followers selves (Decoster, Stouten, & Tripp, 2019) and less attention is given to deviant behaviors that are covert and concealed (Lian et al., 2014). Particularly in the context of self-serving (Decoster et al., 2019) and inauthentic or pseudo-transformational leadership, the past research has mostly focused on negative outcomes such as deviant behaviors (e.g. Bass & Riggio, 2006; Barling et al., 2008; Christie, Barling, & Turner, 2011; Schuh et al., 2013) and lower proactive behaviors (Eisenbeib & Boerner, 2013; Lin et al., 2017). This stream of research depicts that followers of pseudo-transformational leaders tend to develop the fear, apparently comply with the orders of leaders, are less likely to indulge in explicit retaliation, and are more likely to adopt covert aggression and retaliation strategies. Hence, given the untapped nature of this research field, the primary motivation for this study stems from the need to explore the processes and conditions through which pseudo-transformational leadership is associated with deviance (avoidance and aggressive behaviors). While establishing the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions associated with pseudo-transformational leadership and outcomes, we focus on two types of deviance: (a) interaction avoidance and (b) indirect aggression. interaction avoidance is ones deliberate attempt to evade interaction with another person, which is an important stress coping strategy (Lazarus & Folkman, 1991), whereas employee aggression is an important and costly phenomenon in organizations (Fida et al., 2018; Hassard, Teoh, Visockaite, Dewe, & Cox, 2018). Covert aggression has long-term devastating effects on or ganizations than direct aggression, yet empirical evidence linking dark leadership and employee covert aggression is scarce (Lian et al., 2014). Past research has linked pseudo-transformational leadership to contextual performance and organizational deviance (Christie et al., 2011; Schuh et al., 2013), neglecting the role that such leaders play in instigating indirect aggression. This signifies a missing link of pseudo-transformational leadership with covert aggression including indirect aggression and interaction avoidance, which needs to be examined. Existing research claims that how dark leaders influence followers is not a simple process and is likely to flow through some mediational mechanism (Eissa, Chinchanachokchai, & Wyland, 2017). Dark leaders can trigger affective responses in employees, which might influence their behaviors (Glaso, Skogstad, Notelaers & Einarsen, 2018; Lian et al., 2014). Although leadership and affect relationship is established, it is still surrounded by ambiguities and holds ample scope for further investigation (Ashkanasy, Humpherey & Huy, 2017; Glaso et al., 2018; Oh & Farh, 2017). More specifically, existing studies have shown that the impact of pseudo-transformational leadership on outcomes is not simple and passes through certain underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions (Christie et al., 2011; Lin et al., 2017). Moreover, only a handful of studies have investigated the impact of pseudo-transformational leadership on emotions and outcomes of followers (Lin et al., 2017; Schuh et al., 2013). In line with the same reasoning, emotions such as fear (Barling et al., 2008; Bass & Riggio,2006; Christie et al., 2011) have been studied in the context of pseudo-transformational leadership, where individuals develop fear from their leaders due to his/her self-serving behaviors. Also, there is an outcry of recent calls for more research on the link of dark leadership with negative emotions and destructive outcomes (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010; Lebel, 2017). Specifically, researchers called for more research to unveil the impact of dark, egotistic and manipulative leaders on followers discrete emotions and their distinct behavioral reactions (Schmid et al., 2018; Oh & Farh, 2017). Contempt has also been studied as an underlying mechanism between culturally (in)congruent leadership and follower outcomes (Sund & Lines, 2017). This stream of research explicitly signifies the relevance and use of emotion of contempt between other leadership styles and outcomes. Based on these recent calls, the current study thus unfolds state contempt, a powerful, prevalent yet theoretically discounted discrete emotion (Fischer & Sorolla, 2016) as an underlying mechanism to explain employee reactions and behaviors under pseudo-transformational leaders.

Followers play a crucial role in success or failure of any leadership; thus, it is imperative to know how followers perceive and assess their leaders actions (Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Clapp-Smith, Vogelgesang, & Avey, 2009; Van Gils, Van Quaquebeke, Van Knippenberg, Van Dijke, & De Cremer, 2015). Ignoring the dispositional aspects of understanding pseudo-transformational leaders (Christie et al., 2011; Lin et al., 2017; Nifadkar, Tsui, & Ashforth, 2012) and developing contempt will lead to an incomplete picture of the whole process. Employees due to differences in their personalities respond differently to environmental and organizational provocations including leadership (Bies & Tripp, 2005). Much of the literature on pseudo-transformational leadership has focused on examining the leaders dark-side personality traits (House & Howell, 1992) and egoistic values (Price, 2003). However, this research has ignored the role of the followers personality and characteristics that can play in evaluating and responding to pseudo-transformational leadership. Hence, the current study identifies followers epistemic motivation e a tendency associated with deep information processing would help individuals to unleash self-serving intentions behind apparent transformational leadership.

In this inquiry, we mainly build on the underpinnings of affective events theory (AET; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). AET asserts that arousal of affect or discrete emotions can be ascribed to certain events at the workplace and these affective responses then trigger distinct behavioral and attitudinal reactions. Along with this, it substantiates the role of individual dispositions and motivations in arousal of affective responses and behavioral reactions (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Our study setting provides an ideal context for examining the unique mechanisms and boundary conditions of pseudo-transformational leadership behaviors. An eastern cultural context of Pakistan, which scores high on power distance, collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance along with masculine and short-term orientation (Hofstede, 1991), can add fruitful insights into the dynamics of dark leadership. Past research has already corroborated that dark leadership is more prevalent in power distant, collectivist, masculine, and uncertainty avoidance cultures (Luthans, Peterson, & Ibrayeva, 1998). House (1995) asserted that the majority of research on leadership comes from Western cultures that are more individualistic and there is a pressing need to explicate the way in which leadership, specifically dark leadership, influences follower outcomes across a variety of samples and cultures. By utilizing a sample of employees belonging to the eastern context of Pakistan, our study offers new prospects to examine pseudo-transformational leaders effects in an ideal cultural setting.

Our research makes four important contributions. First, the current study aims to answer the recent calls for more research on the potentially dark side of transformational leaders (Lin et al., 2017; Naber & Moffett, 2017); thus, it adds to the nascent literature on pseudo-transformational leadership by studying employee interaction avoidance and indirect aggression as probable out-comes of such leadership. Second, by treating contempt as an intervening mechanism between pseudo-transformational leadership and outcomes (Lin et al., 2017), current research adds to the limited research on underlying mechanisms in the realm of pseudo-transformational leadership (Lin et al., 2017), thus adding to the domain of dark leadership and outcomes relationship through the lens of affect/emotions such as contempt. Third, recent studies highlight the need to examine different dispositional variables that may strengthen or weaken the relationship between negative leadership-affect/emotions relationships (Ferris, Yan, Lim, Chen, & Fatimah, 2016). Therefore, the current study not only adds to the literature on emotions (contempt) but also accentuates an important and unexplored boundary condition of pseudo- transformational leadership, namely, epistemic motivation. Fourth, integration of AET to the literature of self-serving leadership, i.e. pseudo-transformational leadership is unique to this study, prior studies in this domain have not utilized the underpinnings of AET as a theoretical framework to extend the literature. Finally, instead of adopting a leader-centric approach as widely applied in transformational leadership literature (Hunter, Bedell-Avers, & Mumford, 2007; Naber & Moffett, 2017), the current study proposed and tested the follower centric approach of assessing leaders integrity and intentions, which subsequently influences their affective responses and behaviors.