Date of Award
2025-05-18
Degree Name
PhD Leadership Studies
Dissertation Committee
Robert Donmoyer, PhD, Chair Fred J. Galloway, EdD, Member Katina Sawyer, PhD, Member
Keywords
destructive leadership, holistic approach, toxic triangle, command staff officers, law enforcement, machismo culture
Abstract
Recently, there has been an increased interest in destructive leadership or what is characterized as the dark side of leadership. There is, in fact, no consensus in the literature about the definition of destructive leadership, and this murkiness has led to two somewhat different approaches to understanding this phenomenon: 1) a leader-centric approach that emphasizes the bad behaviors and traits of so-called toxic leaders and 2) a much broader, holistic approach, often discussed as the toxic triangle (Padilla et al., 2007), that focuses on how destructive leadership is co-created by a toxic system of bad leaders and susceptible followers within conducive environments. The toxic leader’s role is relatively well documented, but the interactive system that makes destructive leadership possible is often overlooked. The aim of this qualitative study was to utilize Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore destructive leadership from the more integrative, holistic perspective, filling in the void that exists in current leader-centric discussions.
This research also differed from existing work about destructive leadership by focusing on 1) how destructive leadership manifests itself in law enforcement and 2) the experiences and perspectives of Latino officers. Specifically, this study involved interviewing five Latino command staff officers who shared their lived experiences and contributes to our understanding of how Latino command staff officers perceive and make sense of destructive leadership in law enforcement. The research found that the Latino identities of these five officers shaped their experiences with destructive leadership in ways that have not been reflected in the existing literature. For example, the participants discussed how machismo culture was embedded in the fabric of their organizations, and they described toxic leaders as having machismo traits. The police culture also influenced how they chose to express and, at times, suppress their Latino identities.
A novel conception of the toxic triangle emerged from this study, one that contains a taxonomy of destructive leadership that incorporates the Latino perspective in a law enforcement context. As a result, we know a little more about how holistic explorations attend to the complexities of destructive leadership phenomenon from perspectives that are missing in the literature.
Document Type
Dissertation: Open Access
Department
Leadership Studies
Digital USD Citation
Rivera, Carmelin, "Exploring a Holistic Conceptualization of Destructive Leadership: Perspectives from the Lived Experiences of Latino Law Enforcement Command Staff Officers" (2025). Dissertations. 1055.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/dissertations/1055
Copyright
Copyright held by the author
Included in
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commons, Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, Leadership Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, Organization Development Commons, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Social Justice Commons
