Toxic Leadership Leads to White-Collar Crimes in Autonomous Higher Education Institutions

In this 21st century, most of the world-class universities have excellent educational leaders who follow ethics, equity, integrity, and culture to develop excellent global universities. Unfortunately, many developing countries have recruited toxic leaders who indulge in white-collar crimes and destroy the outstanding faculty teams. This research focuses on the growth of toxic leaders and their discrete decisions in recruiting, fixing basic pay, not authorizing the outstanding faculty members to bid on global projects, not sharing the project gains, and facilitating the growth of coteries. Thirty cases have been considered from five autonomous institutions from one state. After analyzing the root causes, crimes were identified by using Toxic Leadership Theory, Routine Activity Theory, and Critical Race Theory. After conducting a SWOT analysis, appropriate inferences are drawn. Methods to eliminate white-collar crimes have been identified.