Abstract
Leadership that is both ethical and effective is needed in the world more than ever.
This is especially true in an organisational context, with CEO’s reporting that
leadership remains the most pressing issue, particularly in relation to good
organisational citizenship by employees. The question of what constitutes good
leadership, and therefore how to identify and cultivate good leaders, has led to a
proliferation of academic research. Recent leadership theories intimate that good
leadership requires something more essential than innate personality traits or
outward behaviours. This essential element could be explained as a ‘withinperson’
criterion. Consideration of the construct of intent as a possible descriptor
for this ‘within-person’ criterion may be helpful. Intent is defined as the deeper
motive of the leader, and the purpose of this study was to explore and describe
the implications of intent on leadership and employee contextual performance.
This study was conducted within the paradigm of the Personal and Professional
Leadership (PPL) model against the backdrop of toxic and servant leadership theories.
A qualitative research design, underpinned by a social constructionist ontological
methodology was followed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine
purposively selected senior managers who described their subjective experiences
within an organisational context. The data analysis considered four co-creators of
meaning; the researcher, the participants, an independant coder, and the literature.
The researcher and the independent coder used an adaption of Tesch’s eight steps of
open-coding to code the data. A consensus discussion compared the two analyses
and confirmed the findings. A review of prevailing literature followed and was used to
check the findings from the analysis and answer the research questions.
The study identified descriptors for the bad leader as malevolent and the good leader
as benevolent. The malevolent leader was characterised by a self-serving intent
leading to unhappy, disengaged employees who focused on complying. Conversely,
the benevolent leader was characterised by an intent to serve, leading to positive and
accountable employees who exceeded expectations and emulated the leader.
Employee contextual performance was therefore only evident where the leader’s...
M.Phil.