What are the practices of unethical leaders? Exploring how teachers experience the “dark side” of administrative leadership

Ethics-oriented leadership theories

There are several dominant ethics-oriented leadership theories with their respective studies: authentic, servant, transformational, and ethical leadership, to name a few. In this section, I use the term “ethics-oriented” because implicit within each of these ethics-oriented theories is a prevailing ethic or “conduct that is considered as right or wrong, good or bad” (Dewey, 1908 as cited by Shapiro and Stefkovitch, 1996). For example, Avolio et al. (2009) include in their definition of authentic leadership, “a pattern of transparent and ethical leader behaviors…” (423). Servant leadership emphasizes virtues such as trust and altruism (Greenleaf, 2002). Meanwhile, Burns (1998) highlights ethical values such as justice, democracy, and equity as core to transformational leadership; and Shields (2010) emphasizes social justice in her theory. I also use the term because it helps separate Brown and Treviño’s (2006) theory titled “ethical leadership” from the other ethical leadership theories. Like the other theories with an ethics focus, Brown and Treviño’s ethical leadership theory specifically looks at how leaders promote and model ethical behavior amongst their followers (2006). Though, unlike the other models, the foundation of their model is normative ethics—principles to determine right or wrong actions such as utilitarianism or deontology (Lemoine et al., 2019).

These theories provide valuable insight into aspirational forms of leadership—ways to understand good leaders and how to be better. More challenging is using them to understand bad leadership, since few explore their respective diametric opposite. Rather, ethics-oriented leadership tends to focus more on the positive while understating the negative. For example, constructions of authentic leadership range from authentic to less authentic (Walumbwa et al., 2008), but less authentic leadership is not the same as inauthentic leadership. Similarly, being less of a servant leader is not the same as being a narcissistic leader, and both are treated as separate construction of leadership (e.g. Kets de Vries and Miller, 1997; Higgs, 2009), rather than being along the same scale. However, with the literature’s emphasis on ethics-oriented leadership, there is an implicit message that leaders fall on a spectrum ranging from less ethical to ethical—underemphasizing that leaders can also be unethical.

The dark side of leadership

Similar to ethical leadership studies, the majority of studies that examine the dark side of leadership treat the concept as separate from ethical leadership, rather than polar opposites along the same spectrum. The literature on the dark side of leadership in organizations focuses on dysfunctional or maladaptive leaders and leadership practices that harm either the organization or those within the organization (Tepper, 2007; Blasé and Blasé, 2002, 2003; Treviño and Brown, 2005). Among the more well-known ideas is Machiavellian leadership, given its historicity (Rego et al., 2017). From there are several types of leadership described in the literature that include: abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000, 2007); petty tyranny (Ashforth, 1994); toxic leadership (Watt et al., 2015); narcissistic leadership (Kets de Vries and Miller, 1997; Higgs, 2009; Rosenthal and Pittinsky, 2006); destructive leadership (Einarsen et al., 2007; Padilla et al., 2007); and extreme careerism (Whitaker, 2011), to name a few. In some literature spaces, unethical educational leadership can also be found in studies of maladministration (Milley, 2017). Though not always defined or described as unethical leadership, these examples of the dark side literature contain an ethical component in the practice (Brown and Mitchell, 2010).

There are two commonalities found within the dark side literature. First, these negative types of leadership tend to be subjective—relying on the followers’ or others’ perception of what is considered abusive or toxic (Mackey et al., 2017). Understanding the negative aspects of leadership from a follower’s perspective makes sense since people tend to overestimate their own goodness (Chugh et al., 2005) and leaders especially seem to have ethical blind-spots regarding their own behaviors. (De Cremer et al., 2009; Heffernan, 2011). The second commonality found within the dark side literature is that unethical leadership, in whatever form it may take, has a negative impact on the organization and the people within the organization. In a meta-analysis of abusive supervision/leadership, Mackey et al. (2017) found that outcomes from experiencing this type of leadership trends towards the negative. In terms of work, negative leadership can lead to the following: decreased productivity (Brown and Treviño, 2006); decreased creativity (Liu et al., 2012); decrease in collaboration and increase in workplace incivility (Onorato, 2013); increase in workplace ethical violations (Sims and Brinkman, 2002); and increase in employee turnover (Meisler, 2013). Negative types of leadership can also have a personal toll on the individual with increased stress and anxiety, poorer health, burnout, and, in extreme, cases even people experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (Mackey et al., 2017).

Depending on the organizational context, unethical leaders can make a situation worse. Watt et al. (2015, 2017) argue that having an organization situated within an environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) can result in a lot of challenges for the organization. In their study of toxic leadership, they found that having toxic leaders in a VUCA environment only heightens the challenges and problems in the organization (Watt et al., 2015, 2017). Their impact includes a loss of the better employees, higher employee turnover, an increase in harassment, and decrease in job satisfaction (Watt et al., 2015). Though Watt et al. (2015) focus more on organizations such as the military and police departments, VUCA could be used to describe a large number of school environments. It could follow that toxic school leaders can also exacerbate the challenges that exist in this environment.

The dark side of school leadership

In 2002, Blasé and Blasé published one of the first empirical studies on principal mistreatment of teachers. Stemming from a larger qualitative study, they focused on the experiences of 50 teachers from around the United States who experienced “long-term and significant abuse” by their principal (Blasé and Blasé, 2002: 681). Their study produced a model of ascending principal mistreatment starting with level 1 that included indirect behaviors that were moderately aggressive (e.g. ignoring teachers or withholding resources) to level 3 that were direct, severely aggressive behaviors (e.g. sexual harassment and lying) (Blasé and Blasé, 2002). This study and its subsequent articles (Blasé and Blasé, 2002, 2003, 2004) found that such abuse and misbehavior had a negative impact on teachers both personally and professionally. From this study stemmed a different vein of empirical research on school administrators (Blasé and Blasé, 2007; Normore and Brooks, 2017).

Subsequent empirical studies to Blasé and Blasé’s 2002 study have focused on school administrators’ dark side leadership. Building off their previous study, Blasé et al. (2007) conducted a survey exploring further the principal abuse and misbehavior as it relates to unethical leadership and the teacher experience. Amongst the findings, they found that principal abuse resulted in more stress that carried over into their personal lives, and it affected their work performance. De Wet (2010) uses ecology theory to explore principal bullying behavior and the effect it had on teachers. Arar (2014) conducted a study of the unethical decision-making of school administrators in an Arab school system in Israel. He found that there were social context and cultural aspects that played a role in their decision-making such as upholding the values of collective harmony and social cohesion over professional ethics, and the adherence to organizational rules and regulations (Arar, 2014). Milley (2017) looked at principal maladministration through public records in Canada, and organized transgressions as “sad, mad, or bad” leadership.

There are some studies on how less ethical school environments and climate impact teachers. For example, Shapira-Lishchinsky and Rosenblatt (2010) examined teacher withdrawal behaviors and ethical climate, finding a relationship between the extent to which a teacher feels the environment is ethical and teacher absenteeism and lateness. In these studies, researchers argue that leadership is connected to shaping ethical environments, but they are usually framed as certain types of leadership (e.g. transformational or authentic versus transactional leadership) may lead to more ethical climates (Rosenblatt et al., 2010; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2016).

This study adds to the empirical literature on the dark side of leadership by examining unethical leadership and the teacher experience broadly, including principal misbehavior and abuse, but not limiting unethical leadership to only those actions.

Method

Using a semi-structured interview protocol (Merriam, 1998) my broader study explored three broad foci: (a) defining what it means to be an ethical or unethical administrative leader, (b) giving examples of ethical and unethical leadership in their own work experience, and (c) how ethical and unethical leaders have influenced their work experience. For this article, I focused on the subset of questions on unethical leadership.

Examples of questions include: How do you define “unethical leadership?” Have you recently worked for someone you’d consider an unethical administrative leader? In what ways was this person(s) an unethical leader?

Data source

I interviewed a total of 40 teachers in various locations in the United States. I first began by recruitment of participants through email and social media asking for teachers willing to discuss their ideas and experiences of ethical leadership. Participants met two specific criteria: they had to be state-certified K-12 teachers and be currently employed as a teacher in a classroom setting (e.g. not aides or student teachers). After the first set of 18 interviews, I later employed snowball sampling (Noy, 2008), asking participants share the invitation to other teachers who may be interested in participating, resulting in the final total. The majority of participants were from New Jersey, while others came from California, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Of the total number of participants, 33 were in the public school sector (15 grade K-5, 7 grade 6–8, and 8 high school), and 7 were in K-8 private schools. The work experience for the participants ranged from 2 years to 19 years, with most of the participants teaching between 7 years and 10 years. Of the 40 teachers, only two people reported having no direct experience of unethical administrative leaders; that data was not included for this analysis. However, it does speak to the idea that experiences with unethical leadership may not be uncommon.

Analysis

Qualitative data for the study was recorded and transcribed for analysis. The data analysis occurred iteratively between stages of data collection, and followed a thematic analysis process (Braun and Clarke, 2006). First, I familiarized myself with the data through descriptive coding (Saldana, 2014): I coded for ways teachers defined unethical leadership, evidence of unethical leadership (i.e. communication and unethical conduct), and the influence unethical leaders had on teachers’ work. The second level utilized deductive theory-based coding (Braun and Clark, 2006) using the five components of IRL: perspectives on the role of education; perspectives on teacher role; Narcissist and egocentric view; self-centered decision-making; and a lack of emotional intelligence (Oplatka, 2017). The third level of coding was a matrix that examined the different traits (e.g. mercurial or dishonest), motivations (e.g. transparency), or actions (e.g. lying) that teachers used to describe an unethical administrative leader. I then analyzed the data by reorganizing the codes within the matrix and aligning them with the original theoretical framework, and creating categories for those that did not fit within the framework. Themes resulting from my coding both related to the IRL framework. All participants’ data were coded and included in analysis.

The findings reflect the major themes that emerged from the above data analysis.

Limitations

This qualitative study only reflects the ideas of a small number of teachers from a much larger population—though the saturation of the data indicates that this study captured a broad range of conceptualizations. This study only focuses on teachers’ experiences of unethical leadership—this study does not explore the motivations that their own leaders may have had since they may be flawed assumptions. Instead, the teachers described their interpretation of the events, and with their limited perspective they may not be privy to information that could change their interpretation. Also, of the demographic information that was collected, no data was collected regarding the reported gender or race/ethnicity of the participants and so no analysis could be done incorporating those factors; this could be a rich area for future research.

Absent administration

Many of the participants in this study mentioned an administrator who was absent during their tenure at the school. This absenteeism took different forms. It included being physically unavailable during the school day—teacher Nathalie described her principal as “hiding” behind a closed office door all day. Another teacher, Quinn, explained that her administrator “wasn’t very present in the building.” Other teachers described absenteeism as a more mental practice indicated by behaviors like having one’s “face glued to his phone all the time” (Aaron) or not knowing the names of students or faculty and staff. This type of behavior could also be termed “presenteeism” (Johns, 2010). This is when a person is physically present, but is not meeting their responsibilities. This lack of presence, both physical and/or mental, signaled to teachers that their administrator was not invested in the school and its stakeholders.

Lack of communication was another way that teachers described an administrative absence. Kathy provided more examples and explained why she saw it as an unethical practice:

[It is] a complete lack of communication, limited response to emails, one-word answers when responding to emails. That would be something that I think is kind of like something to me that I feel like it’s very unfair as a leader, the person who you are supposed to go to when you have questions and need guidance to just totally ignore you and not get back to you. (Kathy)

Indiscreet information sharing

A little over a third of the participants in this study explicitly reported either breaches of confidentiality and/or gossiping as examples of unethical practices they have experienced. In terms of breaching confidentiality, teachers spoke about how they experienced administrative leaders sharing private information about students and teachers (e.g. evaluations) with others. For example, Kathy explained that she experienced administrators “talking about things that have gone on in the classrooms during observations, sharing the way that some teachers were rated, things about students, information in emails from parents, because information that I feel like should probably be confidential that was not confidential.”

In terms of gossiping, teachers reported that some of their leaders shared information that did not necessarily need to be shared with others. Fiona mentioned that her position in the school meant that she was privy to conversations with administrators and that “There’s a line between keeping it real and just salacious gossip that you have no business discussing, [and] I have no business hearing.” Sharing this type of information was not the only issue—Ursula reported that she felt her administrative leader was “trying to get information” on other teachers, while another teacher, Wilma, explained that her leader was “fostering gossip…instead of being direct.”

Legality of the issue of breaching confidentiality aside, teachers felt that these leaders were acting in an unethical manner. By not honoring confidentiality and practicing judicious information sharing, this practice could undermine any trust that teachers may have and prevent teachers from wanting to share pertinent information with their leaders.

Undermining the dignity of persons

The undermining the dignity of persons theme captures a broad set of behaviors and practices that teachers have described that reflect a lack of respect towards them as professionals or as people. Teacher Mandy noted that one of her administrators “wasn’t respectful of the teachers” and would display behaviors like being “…rude. Really making comments and faces at meetings, faculty meetings, like [that] would be so mean.” Several teachers reported that some of their administrators were condescending or demeaning in their interactions with them. Meanwhile, others reported either directly experiencing or witnessing administrators “yelling” at teachers. For example, Eva explained that an assistant principal felt that she undermined his authority by going to another administrator, so he “pulled me out of the class that I was teaching in order to like raise his voice at me and then sent me back to go finish the class.”

Even when there is a legitimate issue that needs to be addressed, one teacher, Harriet, described the need to for an administrator to “avoid public ridicule, pulling teachers aside, one-on-one conversation or mediation if there’s some kind of conflict as opposed to discouraging public statements or being…belligerent…I guess just being, keeping someone’s dignity intact while trying to mediate and rectify the situation.”

On a more egregious level, there were a small number of participants who reported that they had administrative leaders who exhibited sexist behaviors or sexually harassed others. For example, Aaron, described one administrator as “Somewhat of a sexist. Definitely someone who doesn’t respect their employers or their employees to the point of their personal boundaries.” Nathalie had an administrative leader who jokingly “made a lot of sexual comments to people,” and, even though she liked this leader, she recognized that he made others uncomfortable.

Abuses of power

Related to the previous themes, there were several teachers who reported that they experienced administrative leaders who abused their power. Though the other themes in this study could also be considered abuse of power, for this theme the focus is on how administrative leaders used their positions of authority as a means of control. Teachers described some of the practices as leaders trying to bully, coerce, or intimate them. For example, when asked to describe an example of bullying one teacher, Penny, said:

I mean personally what I felt from this principal is they kind of shove their power in your face. When I started there early on October one of my first meetings with him, he was already talking about how he could take me down the road of non-renewal of my contract.

Teachers who spoke of abuses of power also gave examples of leaders being retaliatory. For example, one example of a principal “holding grudges” meant that some teachers may be evaluated more harshly than others (Abigail; Zelda). Other teachers like Bea reported leaders “punishing” people. These punishments included teaching re-assignments, rehirings (or lack thereof), assigning additional tasks, re-scheduling, or withdrawing support for certain programs or initiatives. In these examples, teachers felt that administrative leaders leveraged their positions to change the working situation of others to express their displeasure.

Displays of favoritism

Another one of the more common unethical leadership practices was the preferential treatment that some teachers, students, and parents received. Related to abuses of power, this theme looks more at the unethical practices of rewarding some people over others. Over a third of participants reported that they had administrators who were unfair in their decisions and actions towards different groups of people. One teacher, Yolanda, explained “Favoritism in terms of giving people unfair advantages over another because there is a perceived, I guess, greater friendship on the part of the teacher to the administrator.” Ways that administrators showed favoritism included, but were not limited to, making allowances for tardiness or absences, holding others to different standards of teaching, prioritizing their projects or initiatives, or giving favored teachers less work or fewer duties.

This behavior was not limited to teachers; “the person who I am thinking of also seems to have favorites, favorite students and least-favorite students. Like I feel like this person will sometimes treat their [favorite] students in a way that they might not treat other students if the behavior exhibited was the same,” said Kathy. Teachers reported that some students would receive different levels of punishment for the same infractions. In terms of parents, it appeared to teachers that some parents were able to gain advantages for their child, “another example would be if a parent would call and…they wanted their child to be an Honors [class] even though they didn’t make Honors or if a teacher didn’t recommend that they go on there, then the principal would just move them into Honors,” reported Raquel. Related to favoring parents, teachers described one unethical leadership practice as “catering to donors”—giving preferential treatment to families who made contributions to the school (Owen). These displays of favoritism seem to go against established policy.

Prioritizing personal gain

Opposite much of the literature on ethical leadership prioritizing the well-being of the student (e.g. Noddings, 2003; Starratt, 2004; Shapiro and Stefkovitch, 2016) one of the themes found amongst the unethical practices of leadership is the prioritization of personal gain. These practices include making decisions and enacting policies that better serve the needs of the administrative leader rather than the school. Teachers described it as:

The most common trait of unethical behaviors are those that have a desire for the title and the monetary need that comes with titles and the fame, so to speak, the accolades that come with having a certain title, making that the priority over actually doing something authentically good for the school community. (Janelle)

In other cases, teachers mentioned having leaders using the budget to purchase items for themselves while the school needed other supplies. Adrian recalled her administrative leader buying a thousand-dollar chair while the teachers bought reams of paper for their classroom. Another teacher, Dan, explained that he knew of a school leader who was “looking for their own financial gain on the backs of the teachers” in terms of merit pay bonuses. In this case, the principal applied to the district to earn a bonus for accomplishing three goals. However, teachers were doing the work.