The illusion of choice: Socio-economic barriers to leaving

We propose that leaving the organization due to toxic leadership is straightforward in principle but fails to consider the prohibitive context of economic dependency, such as job insecurity. Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt (Reference Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt1984) fundamentally defined job insecurity as a perceived threat to continuity in one’s job. Under toxic leadership, the risk of retaliation for speaking out can amplify this threat. Thus, for employees facing job insecurity, leaving one’s organization is a theoretical luxury rather than a practical reality. In our contemporary economy, employees are often tethered to their roles due to financial obligations and other responsibilities that limit one’s freedom to simply quit, no matter how destructive their leader is. For the employee, this creates a powerful drive for self-preservation that transcends their own feelings of dissatisfaction or even outrage with toxic leadership. When facing the choice between enduring a toxic supervisor or losing their primary source of income with no guarantee of employment after leaving, job-insecure employees are unlikely to quit. Employees are forced into a chronic state of job insecurity, where the fear of retaliation for speaking out against a toxic leader outweighs the desire for a healthy work environment.

Job insecurity explains “why employees become bystanders”

With the fear of not having a primary income or potentially losing their job as a consequence, employees often become a bystander. Ducheyne and De Fruyt describe the bystander as unintentionally contributing to the normalization of toxic leadership. Crucially, how an employee becomes a bystander depends heavily on the type of poor leadership present, and employees will often exhibit avoidance and silence behaviors in response to destructive leadership (Li et al., Reference Li, Yin, Shi, Damen and Taris2023). Although employees can ultimately become bystanders under either incompetent or toxic leaders, the underlying mechanism by which job insecurity produces this silent role manifests in distinct ways. Incompetent leaders may produce bystanders driven by acquiescent silence, a sense of futility or resignation with no hope for improvement (Pinder & Harlos, Reference Pinder and Harlos2001). For the job-insecure employee, the “option to leave” is still off the table; with no guarantee of employment after leaving, they are forced to endure incompetent leadership purely as a matter of economic necessity.

Conversely, toxic leaders engage in volitional behavior intended to harm others (Krasikova et al., Reference Krasikova, Green and LeBreton2013), often weaponizing an employee’s economic vulnerability. This targeted threat forces job-insecure employees into the bystander role out of fear and self-preservation. We propose that this is not because they lack moral clarity, but because they simply cannot risk the loss of income or professional stability required to sustain their livelihoods. As a result, compliance with a toxic leader functions as an economic survival strategy. This financial dependency effectively transforms victims of toxic leadership into silent witnesses; they are trapped in a position where speaking up or leaving is perceived as an equally high-risk option.

Therefore, as the focal article mentions, the organization will misinterpret an employees’ lack of resistance and silence as a sign that the leadership is effective. However, when considered through the job insecurity perspective, silence is not simply a neutral act of “bystanding.” We argue that for the economically dependent worker, the “choice” to resist or speak out against a toxic leader equals a choice to embrace financial ruin. Consequently, what the organization perceives as a cohesive culture or leadership efficacy is, in reality, a high-stakes performance of survival on behalf of the employees.

Beyond the reach of proactive detection

Acknowledging that job insecurity limits the ability of employees to leave their job highlights how detecting toxic leadership early on should be a prioritized strategy. Ducheyne and De Fruyt correctly note that toxic leadership is often detected too late, and they advocate for early-stage interventions with new leaders. However, we contend that this overlooks the reality of job-insecure employees who may already be trapped in a state of prioritizing their economic survival. As a result, organizations must adopt detection strategies that do not place the burden of potential exposure on the individuals who are most at risk for retaliation.

Rather than waiting for the employee to either leave or fall into the bystander role, organizations should prioritize interventions that detect toxic leadership in its early stages before it truly has the chance to permeate the organization’s culture and exacerbate employee vulnerability. The challenge here would be separating any feedback process from the organization’s internal hierarchy in order to protect employees operating under chronic job insecurity. Thus, we propose the structural safeguard of utilizing independent, third-party “organization culture” audits. Unlike internal HR-led surveys, which job-insecure employees could perceive as a sort of surveillance trap, an external audit shifts the reporting responsibility to a neutral entity. Thus, it is crucial that the third party establishes themselves as a separate unit that serves the employee, not their superior.

By ensuring that no identifiable testimony enters the organization’s internal network, the risk for job-insecure employees is structurally minimized (Abdelrahman et al., Reference Abdelrahman, Mohamed, Abdulqadir and Doaa2025). This would allow for a more authentic disclosure of leadership behavior as the employee would no longer be forced to choose between their professional honesty and their financial security. For employees, it creates a lower-risk avenue for providing feedback without the fear of retaliation. For organizations, it can help provide a warning system that preserves and protects the fundamental psychological safety of their employees. That being said, we do acknowledge the financial challenges related to outsourcing reliable assistance; subsequently though, we believe it may serve as the only viable intervention for an organization laden with job-insecure employees. It is our belief that internal interventions will prove futile if employees are already operating within a state of fear.

However, the focal article’s call for proactive detection assumes an organization is still healthy enough to perform this self-correction. As such, we argue that when a toxic leadership cycle has spun for an extended period, it entrenches the organization and renders detection methods, even a third-party audit, functionally moot. In these environments, job-insecure employees are not dealing with just one toxic leader; they may be trapped within a self-sustaining organizational culture where toxic behavior has been codified into “the way things are.” When an employee’s economic survival depends on remaining silent and invisible, forcing them into a long-term act of compliance under their toxic leader, the otherwise authentic data that an audit would seek to uncover may no longer exist.