Destructive uncertainty: The toxic triangle, implicit theories and leadership identity during organizational change

The importance of leadership for effective and successful change management has long been recognized, particularly for the reduction of resistance of change (Coch & French, 1948; Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979, 2008), which has been identified as one of the main sources of failure (Szabla, 2007). In fact, behaviors such as involving members in decision-making processes or providing social and technical support have become increasingly central in the planning and enactment of change efforts. This is due to changes in the macroeconomic context itself, which made organizational change and adaptation more frequent, inevitable and unanticipated (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Shin, Taylor, & Seo, 2012). This led researchers to argue - and rightly so - that the current main task for management is precisely the leadership of organizational change, as managers have to develop a new skillset that moves away from the traditional top--down approach and builds on bottom-up, shared, flexible and agile strategies that foster collaboration and cooperative problem-solving (Graetz, 2000).