The moderating effect of employee dark personality on the relationship between leader's Machiavellian behaviors and perceived effectiveness of leader

Leadership has been studied extensively from the lens of various disciplines and through a variety of theoretical perspectives. Several theories of leadership investigate the selection of leaders, perceptions of effectiveness, and characteristics of leaders for a long time. Some of the theories focused on personality traits while others investigated the specific behaviors of leaders. Most of the efforts to study leadership concentrated on positive traits or behaviors demonstrated by leaders. However, real life examples of leaders in politics, business world, and sports shows that negative or dark behaviors of leaders could intensify their perceptions of effectiveness. One of the dark personality traits, namely Machiavellianism is studied through leadership viewpoint in the current study. The main aim of the current study is to examine the role of different level of leader's Machiavellian behaviors on the perceived leadership effectiveness, and to investigate the moderating role of the employee's Machiavellianism level. In line with this purpose, two studies were conducted. In the first study, one-to-one interviews were conducted with the 36 participants by using critical incident technique. With the cases obtained from interviews, a scale named Machiavellian Leadership Behavior List (MLDL) was developed. In the second study, perceived leadership effectiveness according to the level of leader's Machiavellian behavior and employee's Machiavellianism were measured. Findings of the research revealed that there is a negative linear relationship between leaders' Machiavellian behaviors and perceived leadership effectiveness. In addition, as a result of the analysis conducted with the decision tree method, employee's Machiavellianism moderated the relationship between leader's Machiavellian behaviors and perceptions of effectiveness. In other words, when the participants' level of Machiavellianism was high, participant found leader's Machiavellian behavior more effective and vice versa. The research findings were discussed on the basis of the relevant literature.