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Organizations are investing their resources to identify effective leaders; however, the most commonly utilized assessments of leadership potential do not cover the social cognitions of individuals. Trait assessments, which are explicit in nature, also have other problems, including faking and socially desirable responding. In this chapter, we highlight the importance of leaders' implicit reasoning processes, with a particular focus on cognitive biases, in an attempt to understand how destructive leaders frame the world, situations and people and how they justify their choice of behaviours and decisions. Empirical evidence in the literature supports the valid use of implicit reasoning measurements in organizational contexts. Thus, we first summarize and list the cognitive biases of destructive leaders as identified in the literature. We then turn our focus on Machiavellian leaders as they have been associated with destructive leadership. We present the most common six cognitive biases and justification mechanisms of Machiavellian leaders based on our qualitative analysis of interview responses from 72 employees. We aim to encourage researchers and practitioners to make use of the literature on implicit reasoning and to further contribute to developing measures assessing such implicit reasoning processes.

The common notion that leaders should be ethical, good, responsible and trustworthy has been strongly challenged in the fields of business and politics worldwide. Due to the high prevalence of unethical leadership by immediate supervisors and decline in trust in leaders (Cowart, Gilley, Avery, Barber, & Gilley, 2014), scholars started to pay closer attention to the dark sides and destructive aspects of leadership. Many different concepts are suggested to define the dark side of leadership, and each of them captures similar but distinct dimensions. In this vein, Einarsen and colleagues' (2007) constructive and destructive leadership model serves as an umbrella concept for different types of dark sides of leadership, covering concepts which have been studied separately such as abusive supervision, tyrannical leadership, petty tyranny, toxic leadership and leader derailment. The present chapter aims to provide a summary of the definitions of these interrelated constructs to acknowledge some other leadership (e.g., paternalistic leadership, pseudo-transformational leadership) and personality styles (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism) that have not been considered in this framework and to provide suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the foundations of (affective) organizational and career-oriented commitment. Using social exchange theory as a background, organizational commitment is proposed as a mediator between perceived organizational support (POS) and competence development activities and feedback-seeking behavior. Career-oriented commitment, defined as a self-interested orientation toward one’s career, is proposed to mediate a positive relationship between proactive personality and competence development but a negative relationship between proactive personality and feedback-seeking.

Data were collected from 126 employees using one-year time-lagged study in which POS and proactive personality were measured at Time 1, commitment variables at Time 2, and competence development and feedback-seeking at Time 3.

Organizational commitment mediated a positive relationship between POS and competence development but not feedback-seeking. Career-oriented commitment mediated a negative relationship between proactive personality and feedback-seeking but did not mediate the relationship to competence development. Proactive personality exerted direct and positive effects on competence development and feedback-seeking, but had a negative effect on feedback-seeking through career-oriented commitment.

An implication of these findings is that organizations need to reduce the detrimental effects that the proactivity trait exerts on feedback-seeking through career-oriented commitment. One way to do this is to increase the fit between organizational career opportunities and the career expectations of employees with high career-oriented commitment.

This study indicates that social exchange and self-interest motives act as distinct drivers of organizational and career-oriented commitment, respectively, and that these motives have implications for how individuals learn and socialize in the workplace.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationships of career commitment to turnover intention, internal networking, job embeddedness, and turnover, and whether proactive personality moderates these relationships.

Data were collected at two points in time, spaced by a six-month interval, from a sample of employees working in diverse organizations (n=312 at Time 1 and n=186 at Time 2). Hypotheses were tested using moderated multiple (linear and logistic) regression analyses.

Career commitment was positively related to Time 1 turnover intention, with this relationship being stronger at high levels of proactivity. Proactive personality also interacted with career commitment in predicting Time 2 internal networking and job embeddedness, such that these relationships were significantly positive only at low levels of proactivity. Finally, career commitment was positively related to Time 2 turnover, but this relationship was not moderated by proactive personality.

Findings suggest organizations should enhance the within-organization opportunities of people with high career commitment and proactivity. In contrast, they should work at maintaining the employability of people with high career commitment and low proactivity, as these individuals may become stuck in their organization.

This study contributes to the understanding of the relationships of career commitment and proactive personality to organization-relevant outcomes. It also breaks new ground by showing that career commitment may influence attitudes and behavior distinctively as a function of individuals' levels of dispositional proactivity.