Corporate Psychopathy

Journal of Organisation & Human Behaviour, 2020

Corporate life in India is getting increasingly lucrative and challenging, at the same time. Over the past couple of decades, in the wake of globalization, the collectivist country has gone through massive changes with respect to the organizational culture. This study aims to research some fresh and newly evolved concepts of personality and organizational psychology and their coherent effects. We conducted a study on 150 Indian corporate employees across various sectors. They filled out a survey, which essentially had two components: the first one denoting how much of corporate psychopathic tendencies do they observe in their immediate supervisors and the latter one gauging what type of psychological contract do they extend towards the organization. Results asserted that employees who rated their supervisors higher on corporate psychopathic tendencies showed significantly higher transactional contract with the organization as opposed to those who rated their managers lower and extended a relational contract. In addition, there was also no difference found with regard to gender in portraying corporate psychopathic tendencies.

Springer eBooks, 2019

Corporate psychopaths are herein defined as unconscionable, ruthless, predatory managers who are driven by self-interest and avarice. However, although encyclopedia definitions are supposed to be definitive, it is important to bear in mind that designations of personalities such as psychopaths, Machiavellians, and narcissists are man-made definitions which are emergent, contested, and have been subject to conceptual drift. They are not naturally occurring genera in the real world like mice and rats whose mammalian similarities and species-specific differences can be examined and reported on.

Psychological Assessment, 2013

Psychopathy is a clinical construct defined by a cluster of personality traits and behaviors, including grandiosity, egocentricity, deceptiveness, shallow emotions, lack of empathy or remorse, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a tendency to ignore or violate social norms. The majority of empirical research on psychopathy involves forensic populations most commonly assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), a 20-item rating scale that measures 4 related factors or dimensions (Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle, and Antisocial) that underpin the superordinate construct of psychopathy. Recently, researchers have turned their attention to the nature and implications of psychopathic features in the workplace. This research has been hampered by the lack of an assessment tool geared to the corporate/ organizational world. Here we describe the B-Scan 360, an instrument that uses ratings of others to measure psychopathic features in workplace settings. In this study, large samples of participants used an online survey system to rate their supervisors on the B-Scan 360. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a reliable 20-item, 4-factor model that is consistent with the PCL-R 4-factor model of psychopathy. Although more research is needed before the B-Scan 360 can be used in organizational settings, we believe that these results represent an important step forward in the study of corporate psychopathy.

Periodica Polytechnica Social and Management Sciences

Different personalities constitute modern workplaces. One of such personalities is the corporate psychopath, whose presence poses manifold threats to organizational existence. This study examines the personality of the corporate psychopath and specifically investigates the relationship between corporate psychopathy and employee burnout. A total of 104 respondents within a university setting in Nigeria completed measures of corporate psychopathy to establish the existence of the traits in their managers; a self-report measure of employee burnout was also completed. Corporate psychopathy correlates positively and significantly with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and decreased personal accomplishment. Results indicate that corporate psychopathy is an underlying factor of employee burnout. Enhanced whistleblowing structures and ethical regeneration are proffered to mitigate the consequences of corporate psychopathy in the face of cultural complexes that fan its flames.

International Journal of Human Sciences Research, 2023

In this article, we carry out a theoretical analysis on how the person with characteristics similar to those of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) has the social skills to thrive in an individualistic and greedy society. We show that the ability to adopt unethical behaviors can be crucial for these people to appear as assertive, capable, and accomplishing professionals. They are not only able to achieve individual results but, above all, to lead teams aimed at achieving the ambitious goals of their organizations. Such individuals are known as functional psychopaths. From a psychological point of view, a large part of the indicators related to functional psychopathy seems to be associated with changes in the regulatory function that emotions play a part in the human decisionmaking process. Functional psychopathy represents a challenge for organizational managers and staff in human resources sections. Furthermore, the evaluation processes, primarily based on organizational results, are not very sensitive to differentiate between (1) lack of empathy and courage; (2) selfishness and zeal; and (3) manipulation and leadership. It can be concluded that only more sophisticated, laborious, and costly processes could be sensitive enough to identify those people and their perverse work strategies during the selective and evaluative processes in the business environment. So, they are all around us, and, given the cultural orientation of companies toward individualism and greed, they are probably here to stay.

In this article I consider the impact that psychopaths had on the financial crisis of 2007-08. I argue that though these malevolent individuals undoubtedly bear a small part of the responsibility that by themselves they do not explain the intensity or length of the global crisis. Psychopaths, it argues have an impact on their immediate circle not on a global scale. David Koresh was dangerous to the people he had some form of direct or mediated contact with not to people who had never even heard his name, and certainly not to the world at large. In other words, though the article recognises that, in the context of the corporate culture the psychopath can have disastrous consequences for the workings of a corporation that can filter down through the organisation. And that his/her pathologies can, as a consequence come to identify the institution as a whole and show how the fluid nature of modern capitalism, particularly finance make these individuals difficult to identify and stop what it also seeks to explain is how a localised problem of corporate management could be linked to a global catastrophe whose impact is still being felt a decade later. It proposes a connection through which large numbers of the global population, particularly poor Americans were seduced into taking out loans they could barely afford dependent on increasing house prices and how the markets and the psychopaths who determined policy were complicit in encouraging this irrational behaviour by borrowers expressing no remorse for their action. However, it also asks if the influence of the corporate psychopath has been overstated somewhat and expresses concern over the liberal use of the term.

2016

This study examined the construct of psychopathy using

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate job satisfaction and workplace psychopathy. Design/methodology/approach -Job satisfaction has previously been seen as a function of various constructs. The authors take one step back from the literature to re-examine the relationship not just between job satisfaction, workplace conflict, organizational constraints, withdrawal from the workplace and perceived levels of corporate social responsibility, but also between all of these constructs and the presence of corporate psychopaths. Findings -The authors find that there is a direct link between corporate psychopaths and job satisfaction. There are also indirect links through variables such as conflict, since corporate psychopaths influence conflict and other variables. Originality/value -Importantly, the research establishes that psychopathy is the dominant predictor of job satisfaction.

This article examines the agency theory unit of analysis, which enjoys wide acceptance among academics and researchers. This theory holds that the agency problem materializes from signing the contract between the Principal and Agent. Here the contract is nothing more than a liturgy, a milestone, which will be bypassed by the parties' true intentions, leaving aside the legal relevance of the contract. In contrast, this article states that the drivers of the misalignment of interests between the two actors lie in the individual's personality influences. Methodologically, the discussion exposes and discusses the etiology of crime through the foundations of the theory of white-collar crime. Then, the biological aspects of personality and its influence on criminal behavior are presented to analyze evil's sources, namely, the corporate psychopath. This proposal's twist is essential for organizations facing managerial leadership dysfunction, corporate crime, and distortions in corporate governance. Its understanding will help improve the barriers to the management of conflict of interest.

International Journal of Workplace Health Management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between leader psychopathy and organizational deviance. In particular, the authors introduce employee’s psychological safety as the mediator. Furthermore, the moderating role of moral disengagement in the relationship between leader psychopathy and organizational deviance is also considered. Design/methodology/approach The data of this study include 611 certified nurses from 9 university hospitals in Turkey. The proposed model was tested by using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Findings The results of this study supported the positive effect of leader psychopathy on organizational deviance along with the mediating effect of employee’s psychological safety. Furthermore, when the level of moral disengagement is low, the relationship between leader psychopathy and organizational deviance is weak, whereas the effect is strong when the level of moral disengagement is high. Practical implications The findings of t...