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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.

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.

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.

The findings of the study recommend that administrators in the healthcare industry ought to be sensitive in treating their subordinates, since it will result in positive organizational relationship, which, subsequently, will certainly reduce organizational deviance. Furthermore, they have to pay more focus on the buffering role of moral disengagement for all those subordinates with high distrust and displaying organizational deviance.

This paper contributes to the literature about workplace deviance by uncovering the relational mechanism between leader psychopathy and employee organizational deviance. Furthermore, it includes practical assistance to healthcare employees and their leaders interested in building trust, increasing leader–employee relationship and reducing organizational deviance.

The study of corporate psychopaths has gone from something which some academic peers found somewhat incredible, and even laughable, in 2005, to an area where an increasing amount of research is taking place across many disciplines. The paradigmatic view in 2005 was that psychopaths were criminal and, therefore, to be found in prisons and not in ‘respectable’ corporations. That chapters like this on corporate psychopaths and destructive leadership are now invited in 2020 for inclusion in academic management books that illustrates how relatively quickly the idea that psychopaths are found in corporations has gained acceptance. Nonetheless, destructive, unethical and psychopathic leadership is, by and large, still unexpected in the workplace, and this magnifies its impact as employees struggle to know how to deal with it. Such destructive leadership is also jarring and quite often traumatic for the employees concerned as well as being damaging to the organisations involved. This chapter examines psychopathic leadership and outlines its importance. This subject has been covered before in books and other chapters which describe psychopaths as organisational destroyers and producers of a climate of fear. Therefore, an aim of this chapter is to present some of the most up-to-date findings on corporate psychopaths and how they influence their environment via abusive supervision involving discrimination, ridicule and lowered job satisfaction. Abusiveness and unfairness lead to employees experiencing workplace stress and reduced mental health. The implications of corporate psychopathy for corporate legal responsibility are only just being considered as lawyers, ethicists and philosophers engage with this difficult subject.

This paper aims to examine the effects of the leaders’ dark triad (DT) personality traits, namely, Machiavellianism, Narcissism and Psychopathy, on the team performance variability. Furthermore, this work explores the role of team agreeableness in the above relationship.

The study is based on the longitudinal and archival data obtained from the sales team (team leaders: n = 190; team members: n = 832) of 19 firms dealing with fast-moving consumer goods in India.

From the finding of the study, it can be inferred that the presence of DT traits in the leaders causes high fluctuations in team performance. Besides, team agreeableness was found to moderate the relationship between the DT traits of the leaders and the team performance variability.

The theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.

The common notion that leaders should be ethical, good, responsible and trustworthy has been strongly challenged in the fields of business and politics worldwide. Due to the high prevalence of unethical leadership by immediate supervisors and decline in trust in leaders (Cowart, Gilley, Avery, Barber, & Gilley, 2014), scholars started to pay closer attention to the dark sides and destructive aspects of leadership. Many different concepts are suggested to define the dark side of leadership, and each of them captures similar but distinct dimensions. In this vein, Einarsen and colleagues' (2007) constructive and destructive leadership model serves as an umbrella concept for different types of dark sides of leadership, covering concepts which have been studied separately such as abusive supervision, tyrannical leadership, petty tyranny, toxic leadership and leader derailment. The present chapter aims to provide a summary of the definitions of these interrelated constructs to acknowledge some other leadership (e.g., paternalistic leadership, pseudo-transformational leadership) and personality styles (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism) that have not been considered in this framework and to provide suggestions for future research.

Integrating appraisal theories of discrete emotions with the emotion regulation literature, this study aims to explore the relationships between exploitative leadership and certain types of counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB). Besides, this study seeks to examine the mediating roles of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and fear) and the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal within the proposed relationships.

Based on time-lagged survey data from 440 Chinese employees, this study conducted hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping approach to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that exploitative leadership was positively related to approach-oriented CWB and avoidance-oriented CWB. In addition, this study found that anger mediated the relationship between exploitative leadership and approach-oriented CWB, whereas fear mediated the relationship between exploitative leadership and avoidance-oriented CWB. Further, cognitive reappraisal buffered the positive effects of exploitative leadership on anger and fear and the indirect effects of exploitative leadership on approach-oriented CWB (via anger) and avoidance-oriented CWB (via fear).

Managers should reduce leaders' exploitation and enhance employees' skills on emotional management and cognitive reappraisal.

First, by verifying the effects of exploitative leadership on both approach-oriented and avoidance-oriented CWB, this study adds to the literature on exploitive leadership and provides a more complete understating of the relationship between exploitative leadership and workplace deviance. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the process through which exploitative leadership affects employees by demonstrating the novel mediating roles of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and fear) through the lens of appraisal theories of discrete emotions. Third, by verifying the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal, this study provides insights into the boundary conditions of the influences of exploitive leadership.

Stress and the military go hand-in-hand, particularly in combat environments. While some personality traits or types weaken relationships between stress and performance, others, such as psychopathy, may strengthen them. In the present chapter, we consider the ramifications of individuals with high levels of psychopathy or psychopathic tendencies in the military with regard to both their own stress and performance and that of those around them. We discuss different reactions to psychological and physical stress, as well as the implications of psychopathic tendencies as they relate to current military issues, including gender, leadership, teamwork, turnover, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. By juxtaposing relevant research findings on stress and psychopathy, we conclude that psychopathic tendencies should have neither uniformly negative nor positive effects on stress and performance in the military. Rather, effects on such individuals and the peripheral others with whom they interact will likely vary greatly depending on numerous factors.

Increasingly, it is recognized that (larger) organizations have many employees who present with corporate psychopathy (i.e. a milder version of anti-social personality disorder). Importantly, such a disorder contributes to the presence of deviant workplace behavior. Organizations must therefore adapt its practices to both identify and manage employees who either present with, or have tendencies toward, corporate psychopathy. As a means of developing a guiding framework for organizational adaptation, this two part paper offers two reviews of relevant research. The first revolves around the body of knowledge regarding corporate psychopathy and the primary, established behavioral method of identifying its presence; the second is a brief review on physiological measures that can complement current gold standards. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A range of published empirical and practitioner research articles were reviewed to first, elaborate on anti-social personality disorder and corporate psychopathy; second, showcase the efficacy of the currently most accepted method of detecting psychopathic behavior – the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL); and third, highlight physiological methods of detecting psychopathic tendencies which may complement usage of the PCL – electroencephalography, measurement of galvanic skin responses, and electromyography.

First, deviant workplace behaviors cause losses of billions of dollars across all business organizations, and much of this behavior stems from corporate psychopaths in positions of leadership. Second, the PCL, while useful, can nonetheless yield sharp differences in the identification of psychopathy across different administrators of the test. Third, measures of physiological states show good reliability in discriminating psychopathic persons from non-psychopathic persons. Based on these findings, the authors propose guidelines for how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

The proposed guidelines must be tested in an empirical paper to measure their effectiveness.

The paper suggests an overall framework that may help leaders and organizational development practitioners identify the major factors which may be considered to safeguard against the potentially detrimental conduct of corporate psychopaths in their organizations.

This paper highlights the need to identify and ward against the presence of corporate psychopaths. There needs to be guidelines for organizations on how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

The suggestion of integrating physiological methods of detection with the PCL, as well as urging pro-active education of all employees as the symptoms and effects of corporate psychopathy, is the novel contribution of the paper.

Increasingly, it is recognized that (larger) organizations have many employees who present with corporate psychopathy (i.e. a milder version of antisocial personality disorder (APD)). Importantly, such a disorder contributes to the presence of deviant workplace behaviour. Organizations must therefore adapt its practices to both identify and manage employees who either present with, or have tendencies towards, corporate psychopathy. As a means of developing a guiding framework for organizational adaptation, the purpose of this two-part paper is to offer two reviews of relevant research. The first revolves around the body of knowledge regarding corporate psychopathy and the primary, established behavioural method of identifying its presence; the second is a brief review on physiological measures that can complement current gold standards.

A range of published empirical and practitioner research articles were reviewed to elaborate on APD and corporate psychopathy; showcase the efficacy of the currently most accepted method of detecting psychopathic behaviour – the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and; highlight physiological methods of detecting psychopathic tendencies which may complement usage of the PCL – electroencephalography, measurement of galvanic skin responses, and electromyography.

Deviant workplace behaviours cause losses of billions of dollars across all business organizations, and much of this behaviour stems from corporate psychopaths in positions of leadership; the PCL, while useful, can nonetheless yield sharp differences in the identification of psychopathy across different administrators of the test; measures of physiological states show good reliability in discriminating psychopathic persons from non-psychopathic persons. Based on these findings, the authors propose guidelines for how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

The proposed guidelines must be tested in an empirical paper to measure their effectiveness.

The paper suggests an overall framework that may help leaders and organizational development practitioners identify the major factors which may be considered to safeguard against the potentially detrimental conduct of corporate psychopaths in their organizations.

This paper highlights the need to identify and ward against the presence of corporate psychopaths. There needs to be guidelines for organizations on how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

The suggestion of integrating physiological methods of detection with the PCL, as well as urging proactive education of all employees as the symptoms and effects of corporate psychopathy, is the novel contribution of the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to re-open a debate as to whether candidates for public leadership should be screened for psychopathy.

This is a conceptual paper which examines the diffuse literature concerning psychopaths in public leadership positions.

Psychopathy researchers have been divided as to whether psychopathic individuals should be screened out of leadership positions in public and corporate life. Recent evidence from bullying research and historical research into psychopaths in politics sheds new light on this issue.

There is increasing evidence that psychopaths are detrimental to the organisations they work for, to other employees, to the environment and to society. Screening for psychopathy should therefore be considered. This may help to prevent governments entering into illegal wars and committing crimes against humanity. Screening in the corporate sector may also help prevent the worst excesses of greed and fraud that were evident in collapses like Enron and the Mirror Group as well as in the events leading up to the global financial crisis of 2008.

The paper makes a contribution to the literature on public leadership by bringing together the diverse reports on the effects of psychopaths in public organisations like the National Health Service, publicly listed corporations, academia and politics. The paper uses historical and corporate examples to illustrate the initially favourable impression that psychopathic leaders can make but the ultimately disastrous outcomes they engender.

Given that many subordinates work for leaders who mistreat them, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether leader–member exchange (LMX) influences the relationship between leaders’ dark triad (DT) traits and follower perceptions of abusive supervision. Drawing on theories of idiosyncratic and deviance credits, the authors posit that high LMX weakens the positive relationship between leaders’ DT traits and the perception of abusive supervision.

Data were collected from 326 full-time employees. A moderated regression was performed to determine whether high LMX weakened the relationships between each DT trait (Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy) and the perception of abusive supervision.

Results suggested that high LMX indeed weakened the positive relationships between two leader DT traits – narcissism and psychopathy – and the occurrence of abusive supervision. Hence, employees who perceived their LMX relationship to be high were less likely to report the occurrence of abusive supervision when their leader was also perceived to be high in narcissism or psychopathy. A post hoc analysis suggested different results for mixed-sex dyads.

The present study suggests a potential strategy for reducing the detrimental effects of a DT leader, namely, forming a high-quality relationship between leader and follower.

This study addresses the call for more research into the boundary conditions under which leader characteristics may affect followers. Drawing on past research that treats LMX as a boundary condition, the authors frame LMX as an important buffer between DT leader characteristics and the perception of abusive supervision. Results suggest a potential exchange of deviance credits in cases where LMX is high rather than low.