It often seems that whether leaders who exhibit psychopathic characteristics are hated or loved depends less on their character than on their outcomes. Those who manage to avoid scandal are often commended for some of the same types of behaviours that are condemned in their discredited counterparts. In fact, there seems to be a widespread belief that one has to be fairly ruthless to climb the corporate ladder and be successful in business. Praise for leaders who display these attributes appears to reverse only when the drawbacks become too enormous to overlook. Our study will look, therefore, at whether psychopathic leaders are a better match to people's implicit beliefs about what good leadership is, especially when the leader appears to be achieving good financial results.
The idea for our second study can be credited, in part, to marketing professor June Cotte, who once raised the concern that my and Dante's approach assumed that psychopaths were all bad for organizations. As noted in my earlier post (LINK), their charisma may enable psychopaths to thrive in certain organizations, particularly those that are highly political and/or possess cultures that are accepting of behaviour that is morally fuzzy. In these organizations, a willingness to manipulate and break rules is treated as a strength.
Psychopaths may also be able to maintain their performance where others falter. For instance, because their ability to experience emotions is muted, psychopaths may not suffer the high levels of stress that most people experience when working in highly uncivil or demanding environments. They may be able to let harsh words from a manager roll off their backs. They also, most importantly, are not likely to feel trepidation about engaging in unethical behaviours. They don't struggle with decisions about whether to cross ethical lines, and they feel no guilt about having done so. Likewise, they can mistreat people and feel no remorse. If the job calls for driving people mercilessly, psychopaths fit the bill.
In the long run, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which having a psychopath in a leadership position could be positive for an organization or its stakeholders. But it is not hard to see that organizations may reap certain benefits from highly psychopathic employees and accord them power, particularly if the costs wrought by these individuals are more heavily borne by the government, consumers, and even shareholders, than by those who are drawing paychecks from the organization. So the focus of my second study will be a first step toward examining whether certain job conditions may differentially affect supervisor evaluations of the job performance of people high in psychopathy.
Psychopathy is difficult to study in business. This may be one reason why research has not proliferated in this area, in spite of the clear negative implications of psychopathy for businesses. The typical barriers that researchers face to gaining access to organizations for data collection can seem nearly insurmountable when one wants to ask questions of a sensitive nature. Nobody likes to be presented with the kinds of items one finds on psychopathy scales (e.g., "I often admire a really clever scam"), and what is an organization to do if I report that I have found that some of their managers are psychopaths; however, due to ethical concerns, I cannot reveal who? Thorny. But, at a time when the impact of business seems central to the survival and well-being of societies, the barriers to doing this research do not diminish the need to explore the prevalence and impact of psychopathy in organizations. I hope this research will build on and contribute to the work of the small cadre of other researchers who find this topic important enough to make the attempt.
Charlice Hurst, Assistant Professor, Organizational Behaviour (Ivey)
Related Blog - Are Psychopaths Responsible for the Financial Crisis?