The relationship between toxic leadership, intention to leave and ethical climate perception in the public: A field study

The increase in the number of studies examining the effects of leadership types on employee behaviors has accelerated the emergence of new models in leader-follower interaction. Contrary to expectations, dark leadership types, which are considered as the backyard of leadership, emphasize that leaders do not always have positive behaviors, and that destructive, abrasive and toxic behaviors create negative effects on the organization and employees. As a result of toxic leader behaviors, employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment decrease, and situations such as organizational alienation and intention to leave start to appear. In addition, the climate, which determines the working conditions in the organization and is effective in the way of doing business and interpersonal relations, also plays a major role on the power of interaction between the leader and the follower. In this thesis, it is aimed to reveal whether the toxic leadership is effective on the intention to leave and to determine the moderator role of the ethical climate in this interaction. Within the scope of the research, the data obtained from different units of a public institution were subjected to statistical analysis and the research model was tested. It has been determined that employees with high ethical climate perception will tend to quit their job less in the face of toxic leadership than employees with low ethical climate perception. The increase in ethical climate perception decreases the positive effect coefficient of toxic leadership on turnover intention