Psychopathy in the workplace

Psychopathy in the workplace is a serious issue as, although psychopaths typically represent only a small percentage of the staff, they are most common at higher levels of corporate organizations and their actions often cause a ripple effect throughout an organization, setting the tone for an entire corporate culture. Examples of detrimental effects are increased bullying, conflict, stress, staff turnover and absenteeism; reduction in productivity and social responsibility.[1] Ethical standards of entire organisations can be badly damaged if a corporate psychopath is in charge.[2]

Academics refer to psychopaths in the workplace individually variously as workplace psychopaths, executive psychopaths, corporate psychopaths, business psychopaths, successful psychopaths, office psychopaths, white collar psychopaths, industrial psychopaths, organizational psychopaths or occupational psychopaths.[3]

Robert D. Hare reports that about 1 per cent of the general population meets the clinical criteria for psychopathy.[4] Hare further claims that the prevalence of corporate psychopaths is higher in the business world than in the general population. Figures of around 3–4% have been cited for more senior positions in business.[5] However, even with this small percentage, corporate psychopaths can do enormous damage when they are positioned in senior management roles.[6]

General

Oliver James identifies psychopathy as one of the dark triadic personality traits in the workplace, the others being narcissism and Machiavellianism.[7]

Workplace psychopaths are often charming to staff above their level in the workplace hierarchy but abusive to staff below their level.[8]

Workplace psychopaths maintain multiple personas throughout the office, presenting each colleague with a different version of themselves.[9]

Hare considers newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell to have been a strong candidate as a corporate psychopath.[10]

Differentiation is made between:[1][11]

The organizational psychopath

The organizational psychopath craves a god-like feeling of power and control over other people. They prefer to work at the very highest levels of their organizations, allowing them to control the greatest number of people. Psychopaths who are political leaders, managers, and CEOs fall into this category.[3]

Organizational psychopaths generally appear to be intelligent, sincere, powerful, charming, witty, and entertaining communicators. They quickly assess what people want to hear and then create stories that fit those expectations. They will con people into doing their work for them, take credit for other people's work and even assign their work to junior staff members. They have low patience when dealing with others, display shallow emotions, are unpredictable, undependable and fail to take responsibility if something goes wrong that is their fault.[3]

Careers with highest proportion of psychopaths

According to Dutton, the ten careers that have the highest proportion of psychopaths are:[12]

  1. CEO
  2. Lawyer
  3. Media (TV/radio)
  4. Salesperson
  5. Surgeon
  6. Journalist
  7. Police officer
  8. Clergy
  9. Chef
  10. Civil servant

One study from Australia found that 21% of senior professionals studied were psychopaths.[13]

Behavioural patterns

The workplace psychopath may show a high number of the following behavioural patterns. The individual behaviours themselves are not exclusive to the workplace psychopath; though the higher number of patterns exhibited the more likely he or she will conform to the psychopath's characteristic profile:[14]

How a typical workplace psychopath climbs to and maintains power

The authors of the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work describe a five phase model of how a typical workplace psychopath climbs to and maintains power:[5]

  1. Entry – psychopaths may use highly developed social skills and charm to obtain employment into an organisation. At this stage it will be difficult to spot anything which is indicative of psychopathic behaviour, and as a new employee one might perceive the psychopath to be helpful and even benevolent.
  2. Assessment – psychopaths will weigh one up according to one's usefulness, and one could be recognised as either a pawn (who has some informal influence and will be easily manipulated) or a patron (who has formal power and will be used by the psychopath to protect against attacks)
  3. Manipulation – psychopath will create a scenario of “psychopathic fiction” where positive information about themselves and negative disinformation about others will be created, where one's role as a part of a network of pawns or patrons will be utilised and will be groomed into accepting the psychopath's agenda.
  4. Confrontation – the psychopath will use techniques of character assassination to maintain their agenda, and one will be either discarded as a pawn or used as a patron
  5. Ascension – one's role as a patron in the psychopath's quest for power will be discarded, and the psychopath will take for himself/herself a position of power and prestige from anyone who once supported them.

Why psychopaths readily get hired

Leading commentators on psychopathy have said that companies inadvertently attract employees who are psychopaths because of the wording of their job advertisements and their desire to engage people who are prepared to do whatever it takes to be successful in business.[3][5] However, in one case at least, an advert explicitly asked for a sales executive with psychopathic tendencies.[15] The advert title read "Psychopathic New Business Media Sales Executive Superstar! £50k - £110k".[16]

Corporate psychopaths are often recruited into organisations because they make a distinctly positive impression on first meeting.[17] They appear to be alert, friendly and easy to get along with and talk to. They look like they are of good ability, emotionally well adjusted and reasonable, and these traits make them attractive to those in charge of hiring staff within organisations. Other researchers confirm that psychopaths can present themselves as likeable and personally attractive.[18] Companies often rely on interview performance alone and do not conduct other checks such as taking references. Being accomplished liars helps psychopaths obtain the jobs they want.[19]

Why psychopaths readily get promoted

Corporate psychopaths within organizations may be singled out for rapid promotion because of their polish, charm, and cool decisiveness.[20] They are also helped by their manipulative and bullying skills. They create confusion around them (divide and rule etc.) using instrumental bullying to promote their own agenda.[21]

Bad consequences

Boddy identifies the following bad consequences of workplace psychopathy (with additional cites in some cases):[1]

Counterproductive work behavior

Boddy suggests that because of abusive supervision by corporate psychopaths, large amounts of anti-corporate feeling will be generated among the employees of the organisations that corporate psychopaths work in. This should result in high levels of counterproductive behaviour as employees give vent to their anger with the corporation, which they perceive to be acting through its corporate psychopathic managers in a way that is eminently unfair to them.[1]

Corporate psychopath theory of the global financial crisis

Boddy makes the case that corporate psychopaths were instrumental in causing the 2007–08 global financial crisis.[20] He claims that the same corporate psychopaths who probably caused the crisis by self-seeking greed and avarice are now advising government on how to get out of the crisis.[1]

Psychologist Oliver James has described the credit crunch as a “mass outbreak of corporate psychopathy which resulted in something that very nearly crashed the whole world economy.”[27]

Screening

From an organizational perspective, organizations can insulate themselves from the organizational psychopath by taking the following steps when recruiting:[14]

The following tests could be used to screen psychopaths:

There have been anecdotal reports that at least one UK bank was using a psychopathy measure to actively recruit psychopaths.[31]

Workplace bullying overlap

Main article: Workplace bullying

Narcissism, lack of self-regulation, lack of remorse and lack of conscience have been identified as traits displayed by bullies. These traits are shared with psychopaths, indicating that there is some theoretical cross-over between bullies and psychopaths.[23] Bullying is used by corporate psychopaths as a tactic to humiliate subordinates.[3] Bullying is also used as a tactic to scare, confuse and disorient those who may be a threat to the activities of the corporate psychopath.[3] Using meta data analysis on hundred of UK research papers, Boddy concluded that 36% of bullying incidents was caused by the presence of corporate psychopaths. According to Boddy there are two types of bullying:[1]

A corporate psychopath uses instrumental bullying to further his goals of promotion and power as the result of causing confusion and divide and rule.

People with high scores on a psychopathy rating scale are more likely to engage in bullying, crime and drug use than other people.[22] Hare and Babiak noted that about 29 per cent of corporate psychopaths are also bullies.[5] Other research has also shown that people with high scores on a psychopathy rating scale were more likely to engage in bullying, again indicating that psychopaths tend to be bullies in the workplace.[22]

A workplace bully or abuser will often have issues with social functioning. These types of people often have psychopathic traits that are difficult to identify in the hiring and promotion process. These individuals often lack anger management skills and have a distorted sense of reality. Consequently, when confronted with the accusation of abuse, the abuser is not aware that any harm was done.[32]

In fiction

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Boddy, CR (2011), Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational Destroyers.
  2. ↑ Boddy C, Ladyshewsky RK, Galvin PG Leaders without ethics in global business: corporate psychopaths Journal of Public Affairs Vol10 June 2010 P121-138
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clarke J Working with Monsters: How to Identify and Protect Yourself from the Workplace Psychopath (2012)
  4. ↑ Hare, RD (1994), "Predators: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us", Psychology Today, 27 (1): 54–61.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Baibak, P; Hare, RD (2007), Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.
  6. ↑ Walker, I (2005), Psychopaths in Suits, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  7. ↑ James O Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks (2013)
  8. ↑ Boddy. C. R (2005) “'The Implications for Business Performance and Corporate Social Responsibility of Corporate Psychopaths” in 2nd International Conference on Business Performance and Corporate Social Responsibility, ed. M. Hopkins, Middlesex University Business School, London
  9. ↑ Clifford C Why psychopaths are so good at getting ahead CNBC 18 Nov 2016
  10. ↑ Hare R D Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us 1993
  11. ↑ Board, Belinda Jane; Fritzon, Katarina (2005). "Disordered personalities at work". Psychology Crime and Law. 11: 17. doi:10.1080/10683160310001634304.
  12. ↑ Dutton K The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success (2012)
  13. ↑ Pearlman J 1 in 5 CEOs are psychopaths, Australian study finds The Daily Telegraph 13 Sep 2016
  14. 1 2 Faggioni M & White M (2009) Organizational Psychopaths – Who Are They and How to Protect Your Organization from Them
  15. ↑ Rodionova Z Company posts job advert for sales executive with psychopathic qualities The Independent 19 Oct 2016
  16. ↑ McKenzie L Media firm seeks ‘psychopath’ for sales role BT News 20 Oct 2016
  17. ↑ Cleckley H The Mask of Sanity (1988)
  18. ↑ Mahaffey, K. J. & Marcus, D. K. 2006, ‘Interpersonal Perception of Psychopathy:A Social Relations Analysis' Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 53–74.
  19. ↑ Kirkman, C. A. (2005). From soap opera to science: Towards gaining access to the psychopaths who live amongst us.Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 78(3), 379–396.
  20. 1 2 Boddy, C. R The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis Journal of Business Ethics August 2011, Volume 102, Issue 2, pp 255–259, DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-0810-4
  21. ↑ What Corporate Climbers Can Teach Us 'Dark' Personality Traits Can Help People Rise Through Ranks Wall Street Journal 14 Jul 2014
  22. 1 2 3 Nathanson, C., Williams, K. M. & Paulhus, D. L. 2006, "Predictors of a Behavioral Measure of Scholastic Cheating: Personality and Competence but Not Demographics", Contemporary Educational Psychology vol. 31, pp. 97–122.
  23. 1 2 Harvey, M. G., Buckley, M. R., Heames, J. T., Zinko, R., Brouer, R. L. & Ferris, G. R. 2007, ‘A Bully as an Archetypal Destructive Leader', Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 117–129.
  24. ↑ Babiak, P., Neumann, C. S., & Hare, R. D. (2010). Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 28(2), 174–193.
  25. 1 2 O'Boyle, E. H., Jr., Forsyth, D. R., Banks, G., & McDaniel, M. (2011). A meta-analysis of the dark triad and work outcomes: A social exchange perspective. The Journal of Applied Psychology 97, 557–579.
  26. ↑ Bruk-Lee, V., & Spector, P.E. (2006). The social stressors-counterproductive work behaviors link: Are conflicts with supervisors and coworkers the same? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 11, 145–156.
  27. ↑ Psychopath Night Channel 4 (2013).
  28. ↑ de Silva, P (2014) Tackling psychopathy: a necessary competency in leadership development? Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry Vol 18 Iss 5 September/October
  29. ↑ Babiak P. & Hare R. D.Business-Scan (B-SCAN) test
  30. ↑ Mathieu, C; Hare, R D.; Jones, D N.; Babiak, P; Neumann, C S. Factor structure of the B-Scan 360: A measure of corporate psychopathy. Psychological Assessment Vol 25(1), Mar 2013, 288–293.
  31. ↑ Corporate Psychopaths, Transcript of Interview with Clive Boddy, Author, part 1 July 28, 2013
  32. ↑ Ferris, P.A. (2009). The role of the consulting psychologist in the prevention, detection, and correction of bullying and mobbing in the workplace. Consulting Psychology Journal 61(3), 169–189.

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