Abstract
Good leadership has so far been the focus of many research studies and topics of the 'how-to' books. This paper takes rather out of the mainstream of leadership study by looking at the dark side of the leadership which to some people may be taboo to even mention the word 'dark side of leadership'. Dark leadership has the negative connotation and consequences that result not only from the destructive nature of the leaders, but also their susceptible followers and conducive environments. This paper will start with the definition of dark leadership and then examine factors that can shape or build or become catalyst to dark leadership such as power, narcissism, and distrust culture. Further, the role of followers and the environment (from the perspective of contingency theory) may contribute to a great extent the existence of dark leadership. Finally, the paper makes an attempt to have an integrated conceptual framework of detecting symptoms of potentially destructive leadership as the dark side of any leadership.
