Organizational inaction sustains destructive leadership in healthcare

Destructive leadership is increasingly recognized as a distinct and harmful form of influence, yet the response of organizations to such leadership remains theoretically underdeveloped. Objective: This article develops a theory of organizational inaction in the face of destructive leadership and explains why organizations differ in their capacity to recognize and confront such conduct. Using a theory-driven, integrative conceptual-development approach, this Hypothesis and Theory article synthesizes research on destructive leadership, organizational silence, psychological safety, institutional theory, normalization of deviance, and useful illegality to develop an explanatory framework of organizational inaction. Organizational inaction is defined as the systematic failure of an organization to recognize, process, escalate, or intervene against destructive leadership despite the availability of signals, experiences, or structural indicators that harmful leadership is occurring. The article differentiates this construct from organizational silence, psychological safety, institutional inertia, and the organizational bystander effect. Building on the healthcare sector as a particularly revealing organizational field, the article proposes that organizational response depends on two capacities: recognition and intervention. Crossing both dimensions results in four heuristic ideal types on continuous dimensions—functional, blind, paralyzed, and incapable organizations. The article further develops formal propositions that specify the antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences of these types and integrates organizational silence, psychological safety, institutional theory, and normalization of deviance into the proposed model. The article argues that destructive leadership persists not only because of leader pathology or follower susceptibility, but also because organizations vary systematically in the structures, interpretations, and informal practices that shape whether harmful leadership is seen and whether action becomes possible.