Mehraein Vahid

mehraein.vahid@spes.uniud.it

tel. +39 0432 24-9332

(Supervisor Daniel Pittino. Co-supervisor Francesca Visintin)

The dark side of leadership, creativity, and innovation
Abstract:
Creativity and innovation are pivotal requirements for various organizations. Leadership is believed to play a fundamental role in promoting or hindering the two. A host of studies investigated the relationship between leadership, creativity, and innovation in the past decades. These studies generally found positive links for what is usually referred to as positive or constructive leadership concepts namely transformational, empowering and LMX. Ironically, the darker side of leadership was disregarded blindingly during most these years and proportionate attention was not devoted to development or exploration of the topic. This one-sided approach has left us with profound shortcomings surrounding the notorious destructive leadership. Fortunately, this trend is being corrected by an increasing number of scholars as they have recognized the grave importance of the topic and the voids in our understanding surrounding destructive leadership. It is perhaps less intuitive to expect anything other than negative results and mayhem from toxic or dark leaders. However, Surprisingly and contrary to this assertion several studies have found positive outcomes for such leader’s behaviors, suggesting there might be a bright side to the dark side. Considering such contradicting and confusing findings and lack of studies combined with scattered literature in need of integration the relationship between the dark side of leadership, creativity, and innovation has remained largely ambiguous, blurry and unexplored.