Exploring toxic leadership in organizations through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis

Toxic leadership has emerged as a pressing concern in contemporary organizational discourse, gaining significant traction across diverse sectors and academic disciplines. Despite its severe implications, the scholarly landscape of toxic leadership remains fragmented, with overlapping terminologies and disciplinary silos obscuring conceptual clarity and cumulative knowledge development. This study addresses a critical gap in the literature by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of toxic leadership research spanning 2010–2025. Drawing on 230 documents retrieved from the Scopus database and employing VOSviewer for data visualization, the analysis maps the intellectual structure, author networks, and thematic evolution of the field. Key findings reveal a multidisciplinary character, with dominant contributions from business, psychology, nursing, and social sciences. The Journal of Nursing Management emerges as the most prolific outlet, reflecting heightened concerns regarding toxic leadership in healthcare settings. Prominent scholars such as Boddy, Labrague, and Padilla shape the field, contributing foundational theories and empirical insights. Thematic mapping indicates a shift in scholarly focus, from early depictions of toxic leadership as an individual pathology to later recognition of its relational and strategic organizational consequences. Co-authorship networks reveal strong collaboration clusters, particularly in the United States, fostering sustained intellectual exchange and cross-institutional synergy. Moreover, co-occurrence and temporal analyses underscore the deepening integration of toxic leadership with constructs such as corporate psychopathy, emotional exhaustion, organizational cynicism, and workplace bullying. These insights provide actionable guidance for organizations to develop early detection mechanisms, strengthen ethical climates, and design leadership development programs that prioritize empathy, accountability, and psychological safety. Such measures can mitigate the systemic risks posed by toxic leaders.