Understanding the effects of toxic leadership on expatriates' readiness for innovation: an Uzbekistan case

Abstract

Ever-growing business challenges emphasize the necessity for organizations to develop a competent workforce to achieve more stable and inclusive growth. Therefore, this study explored the ever-growing interest in expatriate workers to support organizational competitiveness. This study focuses on Uzbekistan, as its growing competitiveness is pressurizing leader-follower dyads and organizational innovation capabilities to improve productivity, reduce costs, and become more profitable. Workplace environments can be sensitive towards leadership behaviours that can adversely affect expatriates’ readiness for innovation. Therefore, this research study addressed the gap in empirical evidence within the leadership literature relevant to the interplay between toxic leadership and expatriates’ readiness for innovation. This qualitative descriptive study employed an explorative phenomenological cross-sectional design (n=10) into expatriates’ real-life experiences to understand the effects of toxic leadership on their readiness for innovation. The findings from the phenomenological study suggest that toxic leadership can adversely affect expatriate’s readiness for innovation.