Understanding and Responding to Destructive Leadership in School-Related Contexts: An Autopoietic Perspective

Abstract

Leadership is integral to the health and wellbeing of individuals and organisations. Relevant literature typically assumes a conception of leadership as ethical influence for good purpose, yet it is not always so. When exercised destructively, leadership has the potential to cause personal distress, group dysfunction and cultural fracture. Although some theoretical literature discusses such leadership, there are few empirical studies. This study applies autopoietic theory to explore the existence and impact of destructive leadership in school-related contexts and suggest possible prevention and intervention strategies. The research methodology used is phenomenography, which seeks to understand a phenomenon by defining variation in collective experience. Fifteen interviews were undertaken with leaders in school-related settings who identified with having past experience of leadership practices they defined as destructive. The purposive sample population was cross-sectoral and cross–school phase. The study is framed by three research questions which aim to identify the qualitatively different ways by which the phenomenon can be understood. The findings suggest that destructive leadership causes significant, lasting and pervasive harm to individuals and organisations; that it is exercised as power and control without adequate checks and balances; derives from personality dispositions, professional inadequacy or aberrant values; and impacts in personal, interpersonal or intrapersonal cycles, mediated or mitigated through individual or social conditions. Five contributions emerge: a phenomenographically-derived framework to analyse a dysfunctional social system; an autopoietically-derived interpretation of individual, organisation and ethical impact; reinforcing vicious and virtuous circles of control and trust; a theory of ‘dysergy’, whereby the sum of the parts of a dysfunctional system constitute a diminished whole; and a whole system approach to intervention. The theoretical implication of the study is of the potential for personal and organisational learning, while the practical implication is for the application of a whole system model of leadership.