Understanding the Followers of Toxic Leaders: Toxic Illusio and Personal Uncertainty

• Author: Mustafa F. Ozbilgin,Aybike Mergen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12240
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 23, 45–63 (2021)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12240

Understanding the Followers of Toxic

Leaders: Toxic Illusio and Personal

Uncertainty

Aybike Mergen 1and Mustafa F. Ozbilgin 2

1Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Istanbul 34450, Turkey 2Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge UB8 3PH,

UK

Corresponding author email: aybikemergen@gmail.com

Toxicleaders are one of the main threats to the wellbeing of people in the workplace and

in society in general, and followers play a critical role in constructing and maintaining

toxic leaders. In this narrative review, we draw on Bourdieu’s concept of illusio and in-

corporate it with the social and cognitive psychologyapproaches in an attempt to frame

the dynamic system that sustains toxic leadershipthrough continued support of the fol-

lowers. More specif‌ically, as we introduce the illusio perspective in a process-relational

context to the toxic leadership discussion, we(i) address the allure of toxic leaders as an

incentive for followers to join the toxic illusio as a way to cope with their high personal

uncertainty and (ii) illustrate the mechanisms and processes that motivate followers of

toxic leaders to remain in the toxicillusio once they join. In this context, we also brief‌ly

discuss and differentiate between the ethical and moral dimensions of toxicleadership.

Introduction

Toxic leaders are fundamentally detrimental to the

welfare of humanity (Krasikova et al. 2013). In al-

most every aspect of our lives, toxic leaders ‘by dint

of their destructive behaviors and dysfunctional per-

sonal qualities generate a serious and enduring poi-

sonous effect on the individuals, families, organiza-

tions, communities, and even entire societies they

lead’ (Lipman-Blumen 2005c, p. 29). Moreover, this

pernicious impact of toxic leaders remains high in

both work and social environments thanks to the

ardent support of their followers (Lipman-Blumen

2005a,b; Padilla et al. 2007). As there could be no

leaders nor any leadership phenomena without fol-

lowers (Bastardoz and Van Vugt 2018), we need to

better understand the followers of toxic leaders in

order to combat the negative consequences of toxic

leadership (Thoroughgood et al. 2016).

As there is no universally accepted def‌inition of

toxic leadership in the literature, we draw on the

approach of Lipman-Blumen (e.g. Lipman-Blumen

2005b) and accept the axiom that violating the fun-

damental human rights of anyone, eroding the rule

of law, corr uption, discrimination and destroying

the environment are all toxic behaviours that cre-

ate lasting damage in the societies in which they

occur. Consequently, we suggest that a leadership

phenomenon is toxic to the degree that it normal-

izes and sustains such toxic behaviour.Unfortunately,

there are a great number of examples of crises, in

part due to toxic leadership, such as the recent cri-

sis of moral entrepreneurship at the Cochrane Foun-

dation (Greenhalgh et al. 2019), major fraud and

toxic envy at Theranos (Hartmans and Leskin 2020),

abuse of employees at Amazon (Kantor and Streit-

feld 2015), mishandling and monetization of private

user data by Facebook (Graham-Harrison and Cad-

walladr 2018) and the unapologetic discrimination

at Uber (Mancini 2017). Examples of toxic leader-

ship are ample in the political domain as well, such

as in the Lava Jato (Car Wash) corr uption scandal

of Rouseff (Watts 2016), the often-stated electoral

authoritarianism of Putin (Snyder 2018) and Viktor

© 2020 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington

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46 A. Mergen and M.F. Ozbilgin

Orbán (Lendvai 2018) and the outright dictatorship

of Kim Jong-Un (Frank 2012). There is also an un-

fortunate number of toxic leadership phenomena at

the societal level, ranging from the Women’s Na-

tional Anti-Suffrage League movement (Bush 2007)

to more marginal and tragic incidents such as the

mass suicides of Jonestown Massacre (Barker 1986)

and the Heaven’s Gate suicides (Balch and Tay-

lor 2002). Nevertheless, the toxic leadership phe-

nomenon is not limited to extreme and infamous

cases, and most people experience the consequences

of varying degrees of toxic leadership in their work,

family and society on a daily basis.

There is scant but increasing attention regarding

why and how individuals become followers of toxic

leaders (e.g. Pelletier et al. 2018). The literature has

yet to fully uncover the dynamics of the relationship

between toxic leaders and their followers. Further-

more, the literature treats followers mostly as mir-

rors that ref‌lect the leader on outcomes (May et al.

2014; Uhl-Bien et al. 2014). As such, there is a risk

of framing followers of toxic leaders as innocent vic-

tims or ignorant bystanders who drift with the allure

of these leaders. In this narrative review, we main-

tain that being a follower is volitional and that fol-

lowers are the individuals whoidentify themselves as

followers of a specif‌ic leader (DeRue and Ashford

2010). We draw on the Bourdieusian construct of il-

lusio, together with a narrative review of the social

and cognitive psychological approaches. As such, we

illustrate the utility of treating followers as agents and

co-creators of the toxic phenomenon in terms of un-

derstanding why individuals become and remain fol-

lowers of toxic leaders.

Illusio is ‘the tendency of participants to engage

in the game and to believe in its signif‌icance, that

is, believe that the benef‌its promised by the f‌ield are

desirable’ (Heidegren and Lundberg 2010, p. 12).

Therefore, conceptualizing toxic leadership as an il-

lusio explains not only why individuals are allured

by toxic leaders, but also why they do not seek a

way out of the toxic game, even when there are al-

ternative games with better yield. We argue that the

toxic illusio draws individuals into the game and

entices them to stay, because the toxic illusio it-

self performs a critical function and fulf‌ils a strong

need for the individual to have certainty in their

life.

The literature on the habits and practices of toxic

leaders suggest that one of the most common and

effective offerings of toxic leaders is the worldview

(i.e. the conception of the world) and the self-concept

(i.e. ‘an extensive knowledge structure containing

many pieces of information relevant to the self’; Lord

and Brown 2004, p. 33) attached to their follower-

ship (e.g. Arendt 1951; Snyder 2017). We argue that

toxic leaders’ proposed worldview and self-concept

appeal to individuals with high levels of personal un-

certainty. Personaluncertainty (or self-uncer tainty) is

uncertainty about the individual’s own self-concept,

values, identity and overall concept of ‘who one

is and how one should behave’ (Rast et al. 2013,

p. 637). Such an aversive state might be induced

by both unstable external contexts and a lack of re-

sources and capitals to overcome uncertainties, and

adopting a strong worldview and self-concept is an

effective way to curb personal uncertainty (Hogg and

Adelman 2013; van den Bos 2009).

Toxic illusio’s pull and promise of a stable self-

concept is especially strong, since individuals are

particularly motivated to reduce their uncertainty

about their selves. Moreover, while individuals join

and remain in the toxic illusio for their personal ben-

ef‌it (i.e. accruing different forms of capital and power

in their specif‌ic f‌ield of relations), their participation

collectively shapes and sustains the toxic illusio. The

illusio, in return, colours the perceptions, expecta-

tions and future choices of its players and shapes the

logic of their f‌ield of relations due to the vested inter-

ests and illusory promises involved in the vision set

forth by a toxic leader.

Drawing on the conceptual universe of Bourdieu,

we construe toxic leadership as an illusio (Bourdieu

and Wacquant 1992) and followers as players who

join the habitus of the toxic game in order to re-

duce their personal uncertainty induced by their low

endowment of varied forms of capital in their spe-

cif‌ic f‌ield of relations (Bourdieu 1986). Accordingly,

the present paper contributes to the scholarly discus-

sions on two points. First, the conceptualization of

the toxic leadership phenomenon as an illusio allows

us to formalize the followers as self-interested play-

ers of a toxic game with its own habitus, that is in-

tersubjective rules and dynamics. In other words, the

construct of illusio (i) emphasizes the agency of its

players, as they have varied forms of capital – such

agency is ‘the capacity and intention to control their

own behavior and outcomes by assessing the situa-

tion and determining how best to reach their goals

while remaining faithful to their beliefs and disposi-

tions’ (Swann and Jetten 2017, p. 382) and (ii) fa-

cilitates further investigation of the internal dynam-

ics of the toxic leadership as a Bourdieusian f‌ield by

organizing the literature from diverse f‌ields. Second,

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