Despite Leaders' Good Intentions? The Role of Follower Attributions in Adverse Leadership - A Multilevel Model

This article introduces the concept of adverse leadership. Adverse leadership arises when followers (I) perceive their leader to violate leadership prototypes or to concur with antiprototypes, and (2) attribute this violation to internal stable conditions within the leader (i.e., actor-observer bias), even though (3) the leader had no intention to cause harm. Adverse leadership goes above and beyond earlier leadership concepts because it focuses on (a) the role of followers' implicit leadership theories and attributions in negative leadership, and on (b) leader behavior that is not intended to be harmful by the leader; it is conceptualized on (c) multiple levels of analysis, and posited to have (d) differential negative and positive effects on outcomes in organizations. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.