The Influence of Toxic Leadership on Employees' Intention to Leave: Examining the Moderating Role of Gender

Workplace dynamics significantly influence employee well-being, productivity, and the overall success of an organisation. Negative leadership behaviours, especially abusive supervision, can cultivate a toxic environment that severely affects employees' psychological and emotional health. Leaders are responsible for setting the vision, providing guidance, and driving their teams towards achieving goals. Effective leadership has also been found to significantly influence employee engagement, job satisfaction, productivity, and overall organisational performance. The present study aims to ascertain how toxic leadership dimensions such as narcissism, abusive supervision, self-promotion, unpredictability, and authoritarian leadership affect turnover intentions in educational institutions. Additionally, it explores the potential moderating influence of gender on this relationship. A quantitative method was used, with 111 employees of Higher Educational institutions in Mumbai receiving an online questionnaire. The research hypotheses were assessed using structural equation modelling, which was made possible by IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 26) and Hayes' PROCESS Macro (Model 1). The findings demonstrate that toxic leadership is a significant organisational factor influencing employees' intention to leave. While all toxic leadership dimensions are correlated with turnover intentions, self-promotion is the strongest unique predictor. Gender does not change this relationship, indicating that the influence of toxic leadership on employees’ intention to leave is broadly consistent across male and female employees.