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Destructive Leadership and the Penn State Scandal: A Toxic Triangle Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2015

Christian N. Thoroughgood  and
Art Padilla
Christian N. Thoroughgood*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
Art Padilla
Affiliation:
The University of Arizona
*
E-mail: [email protected], Address: Department of Psychology, 115C Bruce V. Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802
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Extract

Alderfer's (2013) piece on the Sandusky/Penn State tragedy reminds us that leader-centric analyses, the norm in leadership studies, often miss the mark. Alderfer joins a growing list of writers who increasingly recognize that leadership consists of three key elements in a triangle: leaders, followers, and environments. The Penn State scandal highlights how a conducive environment, typified by centralized power and an absence of checks and balances, coupled with flawed leaders and the actual assistance or quiet submission of certain followers, can lead to disastrous outcomes. As Alderfer observes, leadership is a social, or group, process. Leadership success or failure depends on group results, and group results involve more than just leaders and their characteristics and actions. Yet, over three-quarters of articles in scholarly journals consistently overlook the role of organizational environments and followers (Porter & McLaughlin, 2006), focusing instead on leader traits and behaviors (Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008; Thoroughgood, Padilla, Hunter, & Tate, 2012).

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 144 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2013

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References

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