**Author details**

means that the individual woman becomes a representative for all women, a token [18]. SAF heightens the visualization on female employees in the marketing campaigns both externally and internally. Questions on what grounds the female employees are being highlighted for fertilize the spreading of myths and rumors on gender quotas and special treatment where personal achievements and competence are set in the background. The image of SAF and its operations as a work reserved for men only will be further established if the focus of marketing campaigns is perceived as showing off women just because they are women. The visibility effect is identified in the implementation plan for SAF from 2015 as a negative aspect of gender mainstreaming [5], but there is no suggestion of how to overcome this dilemma. A sentiment shared by the informants is that the visibility consolidates the idea that women are seen as the abnormality, a norm further reconstituted by the equality work. At the same time,

It is our conclusion that all three factors are the result of destructive leadership patterns that are forming at the strategic levels of leadership in SAF, and that this particular type of destructive leadership has its origin in what appears to be a benign wish to take proactive steps to improve the situation of women in SAF. The ambition of SAF to increase the number of female employees partly through implementing a new set of values at the very heart of the organization has indeed run into a few problems. One dilemma is how the new values appear to have been practically put to use where the informants of this study feel that there is a great discrepancy with what is said in writing and what the reality actually looks like. Instead of being a common goal for employees to strive for together, the work on gender mainstreaming has become a symbol of the void between management and administration and the remaining organization where the activities are of more operative nature [4]. One important part in the definition on destructive leadership is that what makes leadership destructive has less to do with the leader's intentions than with the outcomes of the leaders' behavior [1]. A leader can have the best of intentions, but if his or her actions have a negative result, it is still considered a destructive behavior. Considering the experiences of the female cadets, it is evident that allthough the intention of the strategic leadership of promoting women is most benign, the result of, as well as how it has been carried out has had a negative impact on the working conditions of women in SAF. This fits well with the notion that destructive leadership is seldom absolutely or entirely destructive. Both constructive and destructive forms of leadership exist side by side, and can in fact be seen as two sides of the

Another feature that stands in the way for gender mainstreaming in SAF is the basic understanding on what the military profession in its essence signifies. This image construction is created around the notion that the military is a distinctive and particular organization with its own set of values and rules, an idea that hinders gender mainstreaming. However, this exclusivity is becoming less and less prominent as societal and political demands on transformation are increasing, while the gap between the civil and the military sphere at the same time is shrinking [26]. This conversion has been hard for SAF to adapt to, which in the case of the organizations highly held ambitions on gender mainstreaming appears to have led to some destructive outcomes for those achievements. In the lines of arguments put forth in this

however, this work needs to take place.

104 Dark Sides of Organizational Behavior and Leadership

same coin [25].

Irja Malmio<sup>1</sup> \* and Sofia Nilsson<sup>2</sup>

