Followers’ Comply to Toxic Leaders: the Context of Engineering Academicians in Research University in Malaysia

Followership benefits a lot in an organization. A good and skilled follower can support the organization by helping a leader upright and on a track. However, in a certain situation, followers choose to follow a toxic leader. Although researchers have examined the followers susceptible to bad leaders, the types of follower are yet to be investigate using Toxic Leadership Theory. Thus, the objectives of this research are to determine the extent to which follower’s personality comply with toxic leaders. Besides that, this study attempts to show that age as a moderating variable in the relationship between followers and toxic leaders. Few studies have investigated the influence of follower’s personality on toxic leadership growth. Therefore, this study provided new insights into follower personality on toxic leadership process specifically in higher education context. A total of 350 academicians from engineering field were involved and the data were analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM) via SmartPLS 3.0. The findings indicate that ambitious have a positive impact on toxic leaders, core self-evaluation have negative impact on toxic leaders, congruent values have positive impact on toxic leaders, self-concept has negative impact on toxic leaders and congruent values has positive impact on toxic leaders through age. Finally, a theoretical and practical implication have been discussed for future directions.