Preface

Leaders and managers are popular conversation topics when people meet. Especially bad leaders. And that is not that strange. We spend a great part of our lives in the workplace. How we feel at work is dictated to a great extent by our leaders and managers. They have the power to assign us our tasks and responsibilities, while deciding over benefits such as salaries and bonuses.

Scientifically, negative leadership has also gained more attention in recent years. It is well documented what behaviors are considered destructive and what the consequences of such behaviors are for the leader, the subordinates, and the organization. More focus has also been directed at the fact that the leader is a part of a context that influences the leader's be‐ haviors and how the subordinates perceive the leader. The organizational culture and struc‐ tures all play a part in this process.

In this book we have nine chapters, all addressing the issue of the dark side of organization‐ al behavior and leadership. We gain knowledge and reflections from different contexts such as the military, the public sector, architectural design offices, and educational settings. Indi‐ vidual and organizational barriers are described as well as the social context in which nega‐ tive leadership occurs. Negative leadership is also connected to people-centric approaches to management and service leadership theory.

> **Maria Fors Brandebo and Aida Alvinius** Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership Swedish Defence University Karlstad, Sweden

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Introductory Chapter: Dark Sides of Organizations and**

**Introductory Chapter: Dark Sides of Organizations and** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.81550

**Leadership - An Integrative Approach and Definitions**

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to define and integrate previous research on negative organizational structures and destructive leadership in order to understand how negative organizational features can be framing factors for negative leadership behavior. This is a necessary theoretical grip in order to fully understand the dark sides of organizational and

Negative aspects of organizational structures have been previously studied in the area of management and organizational behavior and slightly within the area of destructive leadership [1–5]. However, the focus has primarily been either on the individual level or on the structures within the organization. For example, there are studies of the impact of adverse working conditions in terms of health [6] and job satisfaction [7]. Other studies focusing on individual organizational members suggest that organizational dysfunction is the result of dysfunctional individual behavior as shown in organizational settings [8]. Besides the impact of the individual on organizational challenges, the other widely studied aspect in relation to dysfunctional organizational aspects is organizational culture [9]. This is essentially an endogenous explanation. Researchers draw similarities between dysfunctional organizations and dysfunctional individuals arguing that culture is a pivotal factor in how organizations function internally. Similarly, organizational culture is seen in many studies as that which creates or destroys an organization [8]. Despite such interest and attempts to understand organizational culture and its role in managing organizational challenges, we still know little about the processes that spur dysfunctional organizational behavior—the exogenous factors—and

**Leadership - An Integrative Approach and Definitions**

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Maria Fors Brandebo and Aida Alvinius

individual behavior at the workplace in general.

how it affects individuals within the organization.

Maria Fors Brandebo and Aida Alvinius

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81550

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

#### **Introductory Chapter: Dark Sides of Organizations and Leadership - An Integrative Approach and Definitions Introductory Chapter: Dark Sides of Organizations and Leadership - An Integrative Approach and Definitions**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.81550

Maria Fors Brandebo and Aida Alvinius Maria Fors Brandebo and Aida Alvinius

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81550
