Relating dark leadership to counterproductive work behaviors: The roles of organizational justice and emotions

Employees, as an essential component of organizations, have the potential to make positive contributions or, conversely, to detrimentally impact the organization itself and fellow employees through their attitudes and behaviors. Two concepts which are at the forefront in studies of negative behaviors in workplaces are counterproductive work behaviors and dark leadership. This study proposes that counterproductive work behaviors of employees are significantly triggered by the dark leadership of their superiors, and questions the roles of both organizational justice and negative emotions in that relationship. Data from 435 public sector employees were obtained through an online questionnaire and regression analyses were performed on that data. The findings indicate that dark leadership significantly influences counterproductive work behaviors. Organizational justice moderates the relationship between the two variables, while negative emotions play a partial mediator role.