Alan Goldman provides a behind-closed-doors account of troubled leaders and the effect they have on their organizations. Featuring clinical case studies, the text explores the damaging effects of destructive leadership on organizations and provides the tools necessary for early recognition, assessment, and treatment.
As the leadership field continues to evolve, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the various theoretical and empirical contributions in better understanding leadership from a scholarly and scientific perspective. The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations brings together a collection of comprehensive, state-of-the-science reviews and perspectives on the most pressing historical and contemporary leadership issues - with a particular focus on theory and research - and looks to the future of the field. It provides a broad picture of the leadership field as well as detailed reviews and perspectives within the respective areas. Each chapter, authored by leading international authorities in the various leadership sub-disciplines, explores the history and background of leadership in organizations, examines important research issues in leadership from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and forges new directions in leadership research, practice, and education.
Unlike other books written on "toxic leaders," this book takes issue with the predominant view that "toxic leaders are bad" and destructive to their companies. Rather, the author argues that even highly productive leaders have some toxic qualities central to their success story. The book redirects the conversation about toxicity in a more productive direction, as toxic leaders are not just viewed as villains and liabilities, but are also considered as potential assets, innovators, and rebels. Working on the premise that "toxicity is a fact of company life," the book provides organizations with a model and blueprint on the advantages to be gained from skillful anticipation, control, and handling of troubled and difficult leaders. In contrast to dysfunctional organizations that ignore toxicity or dwell on the perceived destructive impact of toxic leaders, successful companies come up with resourceful, innovative strategies for turning seeming deficits into opportunities.
Toxic leaders, both political, like Slobodan Milosevic, and corporate, like Enron's Ken Lay, have always been with us, and many books have been written to explain what makes them tick. Here leadership scholar Jean Lipman-Blumen explains what makes the followers tick, exploring why people will tolerate--and remain loyal to--leaders who are destructive to their organizations, their employees, or their nations. Why do we knowingly follow, seldom unseat, frequently prefer, and sometimes even create toxic leaders? Lipman-Blumen argues that these leaders appeal to our deepest needs, playing on our anxieties and fears, on our yearnings for security, high self-esteem, and significance, and on our desire for noble enterprises and immortality. She also explores how followers inadvertently keep themselves in line by a set of insidious control myths that they internalize. For example, the belief that the leader must necessarily be in a position to "know more" than the followers often stills their objections. In addition, outside forces--such as economic depressions, political upheavals, or a crisis in a company--can increase our anxiety and our longing for charismatic leaders. Lipman-Blumen shows how followers can learn critical lessons for the future and survive in the meantime. She discusses how to confront, reform, undermine, blow the whistle on, or oust a toxic leader. And she suggests how we can diminish our need for strong leaders, identify "reluctant leaders" among competent followers, and even nurture the leader within ourselves. Toxic leaders charm, manipulate, mistreat, weaken, and ultimately devastate their followers. The Allure of Toxic Leaders tells us how to recognize these leaders before it's too late.
Organizational behavior and leadership research has traditionally been deeply influenced by positive psychology and appreciative inquiry. Yet, in recent times, a wave of corporate scandals and spectacular organizational failures has forced management and organizational theorists to rethink this approach. Unethical CEO behavior, white collar crime, property deviance, employee grievances and lawsuits, organizational terrorism, and workplace violence have all provided the impetus for an examination of the darker side of leadership. In Destructive Leaders and Dysfunctional Organizations, Alan Goldman draws on his extensive experience as a management consultant and executive coach to provide a fascinating behind-closed-doors account of troubled leaders and the effect they have on their organizations. Featuring clinical case studies, ranging from the fashion industry to an aeronautical engineering corporation, the book explores the damaging effects of destructive leadership on organizations and provides the tools necessary for early recognition, assessment, and treatment.
In recent years, scholars have focused more on the "dark sides of leadership." Both the negative and positive aspects of the relationship between leaders and followers are considered. But the relationship between leaders and followers is also influenced by the context in which the relationship occurs. Organizational aspects such as culture and structures are studied in relation to how negative leadership develops. Organizations, just like humans, are able to develop justifications for their actions, to self-aggrandize by claiming their exclusivity. In this book, the dark sides of organizational behaviors and leadership are considered from different aspects and contexts. The book contributes knowledge of how negative leadership develops, what part organizational structures play, and what the consequences are for the leader, the subordinates and the organization.
Since the early twentieth century, scholars have researched leadership and it is one of the most researched topics of our time. Understanding how to be a strong leader and what makes a good leader is something that we continue to strive to understand. Research ponders various positive leadership models such as transformational, servant, authentic, charismatic, situational and ethical leadership to name a few. Yet, we find that a small number of our leaders are truly transformational. While scholars continue to provide examples of positive and influential leaders, we still struggle to understand what a dysfunctional leader is. Practitioners and followers are quick to identify a leader that is a nightmare, yet they can't name what type of dysfunction that leader possesses. Day in and day out, we struggle with these leaders and how to intervene when dysfunctional behavior arises. This is most evident with recent scandals that have plagued the media involving characters such as Bernie Madoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco, Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling. It is vital to understand the importance of dysfunctional leadership and its impact on organizations, followers and society. The recent literature focuses on the psychology of dysfunctional leadership and the destruction of organizations. Little has been written in relation to the characteristics, traits and behaviors of dysfunctional leaders. In addition, little has been included on how to deal with this types of behavior within organizations. Individual books have been written on each of these types of characteristics, but no one book has been written that focuses on all of these characteristics and studies the subtle differences of these behaviors, interventions that can be employed to address this type of behavior and how to recognize the impact on our organizations. Understanding and Recognizing Dysfunctional Leadership will be of interest to professionals and r
Overcoming Bad Leadership in Organizations brings together the foremost experts on the dark side of leadership to offer groundbreaking insights to leaders, talent management professionals, and psychologists. The goal is to confront reality head on, to shed the idea that leadership is always good, and in this space increase our understanding of the perils of dysfunctional leadership.
Libraries as Dysfunctional Organizations and Workplaces expands the "dysfunctional" concept in the professional and academic LIS discourse by exposing the internal problematics of libraries, especially at the social and organizational levels. Including contributions written by LIS professionals and scholars, the book demonstrates that although many libraries do well at attending to users and managing external information they often fail at taking care of their own employees and addressing internal workplace issues. Acadia and the contributing authors explore the problem of dysfunctional libraries so that the LIS profession can come to terms with the systemic dysfunction in their institutions and begin solution-oriented progress toward new and sustainable functionality. The book analyzes the dysfunctional nature of modern libraries, while simultaneously proposing solutions to reduce and alleviate dysfunction. Through theory and application, it takes an explicit practice-based approach with the intent to inform and explain dysfunction as experienced in the library workplace at individual and structural levels and perspectives. Libraries as Dysfunctional Organizations and Workplaces brings the dysfunction discourse to the attention of LIS academics and scholars so that further theoretical and empirical research can proceed from and subsequently be addressed in library and information schools. The book will also be essential reading for librarians and LIS students currently working or preparing to work in public, college, and university libraries.
