How Exploitative Leadership Emerges: The Activating Effect of Organizational Context on Individual Traits

Although the detrimental effects of exploitative leadership have been widely revealed, scholarly understanding of its formation mechanisms remains insufficient. Addressing this gap, the present study draws upon trait activation theory to investigate the antecedents and formation mechanisms of exploitative leadership through the dual lenses of personality traits and organizational contexts. Through an empirical examination of questionnaire data from 422 leader-subordinate dyads in Chinese organizations, the results of this study reveal that: three leader personality traits-self-interest, other-oriented perfectionism, and high power distance orientation-significantly and positively predict exploitative leadership behaviors; three organizational contexts-task challenge, flexible status conferral, and leader-subordinate goal misalignment-likewise serve as positive predictors of exploitative leadership behaviors; through trait activation effects, flexible status conferral significantly strengthens the positive relationships between all three personality traits and exploitative leadership, while task challenge and goal misalignment specifically amplify the positive relationships of exploitative leadership with high power distance orientation and self-interested personality, respectively. The research findings are of great value for improving the theoretical framework of exploitative leadership and guiding management practice.