The Great Resignation and the stresses of the pandemic have highlighted the importance of a healthy work culture, but one business school dean says poor leadership can create "rifts" in organizations.

On a recent episode of "Influencers with Andy Serwer," Erika James, the dean at Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania’s business school, explained how bad bosses hurt company culture.

“There are people in the world who pay more or less attention to the people that make up an organization,” James told Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief. “And when there is inadequate attention on the human capital, then I think you'll start to see rifts in the culture and you'll start to see some problems that make it difficult to achieve your ultimate goal, which is profitability, success and sustainability.”

James, who last week published a book called “The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before,” co-written with Lynn Perry Wooten, president of Simmons College in Boston, says problems in workplace culture often emerge when a new boss replaces an old one.

“If a new leader comes with something else and completely uproots what the prior leadership was focused on, then you're going to start to see sort of a challenge with stability in the culture,” James remarked.

Evidence suggests that leadership plays a critical role in workers’ happiness. Goodhire, a provider of employment and background screening services, recently surveyed 3,000 US workers across 10 industries and found that over 80% of those surveyed said they might quit their job if they had a bad manager. Meanwhile, nearly 90% of health care workers surveyed said they would quit their jobs because of a poor manager.

Despite looming fears of a recession, managers are still likely wary of losing workers. A record-breaking 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs just last March.

“While every new leader does have the right to put in place his or her own new ideas and initiatives, it really is about finding out what is core to the employee base in terms of how they will work together and what they value as an organization,” James affirmed.