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The Influence of Despotic Leadership on Counterproductive Work Behavior Among Police Personnel: Role of Emotional Exhaustion and Organizational Cynicism

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Abstract

This article aimed to investigate the dark side of leadership behavior on counterproductive work behavior with the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and moderating effect of organizational cynicism. This study applied a PLS-SEM partial least square structural equation modeling technique to test the hypotheses on a sample of 345 police personnel of Pakistan. The results of this study indicate a positive and strong association between the despotic leadership and counterproductive work behavior. The findings show a positive and significant influence of despotic leadership on emotional exhaustion. Moreover, the results show an important and significant influence of the despotic leadership and counterproductive work behavior when the mediation role of emotional exhaustion is included. Furthermore, this study found an insignificant moderating influence of organizational cynicism in the relationship between despotic leadership and emotional exhaustion. Implications and limitations are also discussed in this article.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thanks the police personnel’s who gave us data in a very effective manner and higher officers of police department who gave us permission to collect data.

Funding

This study was funded by X (grant number X). (Optional—could be left out in case no funding was received).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

    Majid Murad

  2. College of International Business, Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages, Shaoxing, China

    Wang Jiatong

  3. Department of Business Administration, ILMA University, Karachi, Pakistan

    Fakhar Shahzad

  4. Department of Business Administration, Government College Women University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Nausheen Syed

Authors
  1. Majid Murad
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  2. Wang Jiatong
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  3. Fakhar Shahzad
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  4. Nausheen Syed
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Contributions

Majid Murad and Wang Jiatong conceived the idea of the study and contributed to constructing the model, performing the analysis, interpretation of model results. Fakhar Shahzad supervised the project, and Nausheen Syed intensively edited the language of the manuscript. All the authors approved and read the final manuscript and participated in the critical appraisal of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Majid Murad.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Murad, M., Jiatong, W., Shahzad, F. et al. The Influence of Despotic Leadership on Counterproductive Work Behavior Among Police Personnel: Role of Emotional Exhaustion and Organizational Cynicism. J Police Crim Psych 36, 603–615 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09470-x

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