Suchergebnisse

Psychopaths are little understood outside of the criminal image. However, as the recent global financial crisis highlighted, the behavior of a small group of managers can potentially bring down the entire western system of business. This book investigates who they are, why they do what they do and what the consequences of their presence are.

AbstractMoving sustainability towards flourishing for all implies a care for all and for the future. However, in this commentary I note that many corporate and political leaders do not care for others or the future because, embodying egotistical, ruthless, remorseless, and dishonest (psychopathic) characteristics, their concern is only for themselves. This commentary argues that toxic leadership and governance, in the form of corporate psychopathy and corporate psychopaths, are important barriers to achieving sustainability. Notably, and of relevance to this argument, the embodiment of psychopathic traits can give people the ability to brazenly push themselves to the top, unimpeded by emotional distractions and thereby attain leadership. However, due to their deep indifference to corporate social responsibility and a readiness to falsify environmental impact reports, engage in faking corporate social responsibility and illegally dump toxic waste materials; the influence of such psychopathic leadership may be detrimental to sustainability and to flourishing for all. Leaders high in psychopathy will ignore or dismiss scientific evidence of unsustainable practices because they do not care about the future or about dismissing scientific evidence of detriments to the prospects for humanity. Accordingly toxic leadership and governance are arguably the critical factors in achieving a flourishing sustainability. The future of all life thus depends on who we choose as our leaders.

Purpose– This current paper reviews the theoretical speculations concerning psychopaths in the workplace that were originally presented in a paper published in this journal in 2006. The 2006 paper was called: "The Dark Side of Management Decisions: Organisational Psychopaths".Design/methodology/approach– This is a review of the literature on workplace psychopaths since 2006.Findings– This current paper determines that while many of these prior speculations about workplace psychopaths have since been supported by evidence, several others remain unexplored. This finding suggests that several important avenues for further research remain in this important area. In particular, links between corporate psychopaths, bullying and lowered corporate social responsibility have been established. On the other hand, links between corporate psychopaths, career advancement, fraud, and corporate failure as exemplified in the 2007 global financial crisis, have been under-explored.Social implications– Corporate psychopaths are worthy of further research because of their impact on society, for example on corporate social responsibility and their willingness to dump toxic waste material illegally.Originality/value– The paper provides an extensive review of research into corporate psychopaths to date and highlights areas where further investigation would be potentially rewarding.

This article reports on qualitative research carried out in England in 2013. Participants were five organizational directors and two senior managers who had worked with six corporate psychopaths, as determined by a management psychopathy measure. The corporate psychopaths reported on displayed consistency in their approach to management. This approach was marked by high levels of abusive control. The corporate psychopaths were seen as being organizational stars and as deserving of awards by those above them, while they simultaneously subjected those below them to extreme behaviour, including bullying, intimidation and coercion. The corporate psychopaths also engaged in extreme forms of mismanagement characterized by poor personnel management, directionless leadership, mismanagement of resources and fraud.

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of Corporate Psychopaths as ruthless employees who can successfully gain entry to organizations and can then get promoted within those organizations to reach senior managerial and leadership positions. What little empirical research currently exists supports the view that Corporate Psychopaths are more commonly found at senior levels of organizations. This paper presents further empirical evidence that supports this view. It discusses how, in a quantitative sample of 346 white‐collar workers, in 2008, research using a psychopathy scale identified greater levels of psychopathy at more senior levels of corporations than at more junior levels. The paper goes on to propose that this is a universal issue that can pose various ethical problems for corporations because of the ruthless, selfish and conscience‐free approach to life that Corporate Psychopaths have. Other ethical issues are to do with their moral accountability and with the problems associated with the possibility of screening employees for psychopathy. The paper reviews the literature on psychopathy and concludes that while psychopaths appear to be universal in occurrence, they may well be environmentally limited in their possible actions in more collectivist societies. However, the global spread of western, individualistically oriented corporations may pose a threat to any collectivist societies in which they operate.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PurposeInfluential research has posited that empirical investigation provides no evidence for the existence of white-collar/successful psychopaths. The purpose of this current paper is to review evidence for their existence and report on new, primary research that examines ethical outcomes associated with their presence.Design/methodology/approachLeading psychopathy researchers called for research using samples of white-collar workers to explore workplace psychopathy. Therefore, the authors undertook a two-stage research process to examine this. Firstly, a structured literature review sought evidence for "corporate psychopaths", "white-collar psychopaths" and "successful psychopaths" in existing literature. Secondly, original research was undertaken among 261 Australian workers to examine this further.FindingsFindings indicate that white-collar psychopaths exist. Where they have been found not to exist, investigation reveals that the samples used were inadequate for the purpose of attempting to find them.Practical implicationsAlthough there is an inconsistent nomenclature, white-collar, industrial, successful, organisational, workplace or corporate psychopaths do exist and are found in white-collar workplaces.Social implicationsTheir existence is important because findings indicate that they have a significant, ethically malign and long-lasting impact on employee well-being and organisational ethical outcomes.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is perhaps the first paper to specifically examine the literature for evidence of whether white-collar psychopaths exist. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is also the first paper to determine that corporate psychopaths are linked with aggressive humour, gender discrimination, fake corporate social responsibility and reduced communications integration.