Investigating the Impact of Toxic Leadership on Work Engagement in Governmental Organizations

Abstract The goal of this research is investigating the impact of toxic leadership on work engagement in governmental organizations in Kerman city. This study is a descriptive- correlation research that has been conducted through the survey method. Community statistical is includes employee of governmental organizations of Kerman city (seven organizations) that were selected 301 people as the sample size. Also sampling in this study is class proportional to the size of the community. Tools used to collect the data are toxic leadership questionnaire of Schmidt (2008) and work engagement questionnaire of Yakin and Erdil (2012) that content validity structures and reliability of their approval reached. For data analysis is used of structural equation modeling and software used are the SPSS and Amos. According to the final model can be said that toxic leadership and its sub variables as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, narcissistic leadership, petty tyranny and unpredictable have negative impact on employees’ work engagement. According to the results suggest that measures and mechanism is necessary in order to prevent the coming toxic leadership style virulent in governmental organizations. Introduction In governments especially the bureaucratic ones, it is the government which plays the most important role in the society. In our country, 80% of the organizations are public. Considering the saliency of the role of government and public organizations in managing the society, it could be explicated that if the executive officers/directors of these organizations lack the required competence and merit, the organization shall be faced with dangerous and unwanted consequences due to behaviors such as leadership inefficiency, mischief, corruption, immoral behavior (even if legal) and organized crime (Hamidizadeh et al., 2017: 3). One form of extremely harmful leadership is called toxic leadership. Such leaders tend to decrease the sense of motivation and enthusiasm for team work among the subordinates and would eventually push them towards self-centeredness in the organization(Roter, 2011). In general, the most notorious consequences of toxic leadership and its negative outcomes in the organization could be lob change, stress, emotional boredom and a feeling of organizational injustice among the employees which would lead to weaken the sense of belonging and commitment by them (Spranger, 2014: 12). Taking the above into consideration, the present survey