The word toxic is far too subjective to be meaningful. To a toxic boss, the employee who says "no I won't work 80 hours a week and lie on the reports" is being

The word toxic is far too subjective to be meaningful. To a toxic boss, the employee who says "no I won't work 80 hours a week and lie on the reports" is being toxic (insubordination). If that employee tells other workers to stand up for themselves or act ethically, well know he's undermining his boss and sabotaging the company, and is considered really toxic. When person A calls person B toxic, the only thing we can really conclude is that A really dislikes B. The study gets around this subjectivity by defining toxic to mean "harmful to an organization," but this definition make the study's conclusion a tautology: firing people who harm an organization is beneficial the organization.