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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of CEO narcissism in corporate acquisitions with a focus on frequency and size and furthermore to examine the subsequent stock market reaction.

The authors investigate 751 acquisitions made by 158 UK nonfinancial firms and 202 CEOs in the 10-year period 2007–2016. The authors use the ratio of first-person singular pronouns to total first-person pronouns in CEO speech as the main proxy for CEO narcissism but the results are robust to the use of signature size and picture as alternative measures.

The authors find that increased CEO narcissism is associated with an increase in M&A expenditures, an increase in deal size and a decrease in deal frequency. Thus, the authors find that narcissistic CEOs favor size over frequency (“go big”). Furthermore, the authors find that the stock market reacts less favorably to acquisitions announced by firms run by narcissistic CEOs.

The paper contributes to upper echelon research by investigating the association between CEO narcissism and corporate decisions in a UK setting. More specifically, the paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating how CEO narcissism is associated with corporate acquisitions in terms of the size and frequency of deals and how such irrational behavior is penalized by the stock market. Previous literature has focused on the more broad association between CEO narcissism and M&A expenditures.

Based on the social information processing theory, the purpose of this study is to propose a conceptualized moderated mediation model for testing the linkage between leader narcissism and employees’ innovative behavior through the mediating effect of employees’ cognitive dependency and the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty between employees’ cognitive dependency and their innovative behavior.

In this study, multisource data from 266 employees and their supervisors in 11 large high-tech Chinese companies were collected through a field study and an online survey. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping.

The results of this study show that leader narcissism has a negative impact on employees’ innovative behavior and that employees’ cognitive dependency plays a mediating role between leader narcissism and employees’ innovative behavior. Cognitive dependency and environmental uncertainty play moderated mediation roles between leader narcissism and employees’ innovative behavior.

In the future, longitudinal research and experimental methods can be used to avoid common method bias. Further studies could allow leaders to evaluate environmental uncertainty and explore the emotional path by which leader narcissism has negative effects on followers’ innovation from social information processing theory. In addition, future studies can explore cognitive dependency more deeply from the perspectives of forced obedience and active worship.

Organizations should warn leaders to control the dark side of narcissism and minimize environmental uncertainty to reduce barriers to innovation.

This study constructs the path of the effect of leader narcissism on employees’ innovation through employees’ cognitive dependency in a specific context, which enriches theoretical research on the link between leaders’ traits and employees’ innovative behavior. Along with the finding of leader narcissism’s negative effect on employees’ innovative behavior, this study explores the dark side of leader narcissism in the context of China’s high-tech firms and environmental uncertainty.

This study aims to empirically test the proposition that high narcissistic consumers are more likely to perform donation-related behavior, such as the intention to donate and to share the donation link, compared to low narcissistic consumers when the organization’s reputation is high. Built upon the evolutionary psychology theory, this study proposes that narcissism activates the status motive, and the relationship between narcissism, organization reputation and donation-related behavior can be explained by status motive.

The current research comprises two between-subject experimental studies that use both measured and manipulated narcissism subsequently, whereas the organization’s reputation was manipulated in both studies.

The results demonstrate that narcissistic consumers are more likely to donate and to share the donation advertisement when the donation organization is perceived as having a high (vs low) prestige. Further, the status motive mediates the effect of narcissism on donation decisions only when the donation organization is perceived as having high (vs low) prestige.

This research’s main limitation is that it only examines two alternate ways to improve perceived organization’s reputation (e.g. highlight the organization’s reputational features and link to reputable entities such as celebrities), although organizational literature suggests that perceived organization reputation can be improved in many ways.

From a practical perspective, social marketers and donation organizations potentially benefit from this research because it demonstrates that high narcissistic consumers potentially involve in donation-related behaviors more than consumers with low narcissism when the organization is perceived as highly reputable.

The current research contributes to the narcissism literature and adds to the evolutionary psychology theory by providing empirical evidence that narcissism, whether manifesting as a trait or a state, can activate a status motive that leads to prosocial behavior, but only when the donation organization is perceived as prestigious.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of narcissistic supply for the association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking.

The authors investigate a sample of 281 non-financial S&P 1500 firms and a corresponding 457 CEOs in the 10-yr period 2006–2015.

The association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking depends on the admiration, attention, and affirmation of own superiority (“narcissistic supply”) that the CEO receives given her/his current position. Thus, a narcissistic CEO with an insufficient narcissistic supply (small firm/small compensation) will crave for more and take more risks (“rock the boat”) while a narcissistic CEO with a sufficient narcissistic supply (large firm/large compensation) will protect the status quo and be reluctant to take new risks. Specifically, the authors find that a change from a slightly narcissistic CEO to a strongly narcissistic CEO, for positions entailing limited (abundant) narcissistic supply, is associated with an increase (a decrease) in corporate risk of 6%–8% (11%–27%).

Previous research indicates a positive association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking in specific domains such as M&A and R&D activities. This paper provides a novel contribution to the existing literature by identifying and assessing the important role of narcissistic supply for the association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking in general.

We link counterproductive work behavior (CWB) (particularly workplace bullying) and organizational citizenship behavior to individual narcissism and organizational culture. We link counterproductive work culture in turn to organizations' leader(s), enumerating multiple roles an executive may play: actor, target, ignorer, enabler, rewarder, or, ultimately, champion of change. Both positive (citizenship) and negative (counterproductive) behaviors are associated with narcissism, a complex, multifaceted set of personality characteristics, primarily based on the individual's cognitive interpretation of self and the world. Theoretical interpretations of reactive CWB (stressor-emotion-control theory) and instrumental CWB (theory of planned behavior) support the development of coaching and counseling interventions. Cognitive behavioral theory (CBT)-based prescriptive executive coaching is proposed as a promising mechanism for redirecting narcissistic organizational players from counterproductive to citizenship schemas and behaviors.

The present study explored the direct as well as indirect relationships between narcissism personality trait and performance. Two leadership styles (task oriented and authoritarian styles) were identified as possible mediators.

Narcissism was measured by using Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Ames et al., 2006), performance was measured by performance scale (Greene-Shortridge, 2008). Sinha's leadership scale (Sinha, 2008) was used to measure task-oriented and authoritarian leadership styles. 273 senior-level managers of a big public sector Indian organization participated in the study. SPSS 22 and SmartPLS 2.0 were used to analyze the data.

Correlation result shows that narcissism personality trait was positively related to authoritarian leadership style and negatively to task-oriented leadership style, task performance and teamwork dimensions of performance. Task-oriented leadership style mediated the relationship between narcissism and task performance and teamwork more than the authoritarian leadership style.

The study attempts to empirically test the behavioral manifestation of narcissism personality trait as positive or negative and has considered the whole measure of performance which has not been previously explored. Practical implications were also highlighted beside the theoretical concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between CEO narcissism and strategic decision-making (SDM) processes (decision comprehensiveness and decision speed), and to explore the mediating role of top management team (TMT) members’ participation in decision making and the moderating role of TMT power distance.

Data were collected from a multisource, time-lagged survey of 103 CEOs and their corresponding TMT members in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results indicated that CEO narcissism was negatively related to decision comprehensiveness and positively related to decision speed. These relationships were mediated by TMT members’ participation in decision making, especially when TMT power distance was high.

The results show the potential negative effects of CEOs’ narcissistic personality and suggest ways to attenuate it by increasing TMT participation and decreasing TMT power distance.

This study is an initial attempt to empirically examine how and under what conditions CEOs’ narcissism is a barrier to more comprehensive and more deliberate (slower) SDM.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the level of narcissism and its individual traits in students who study business, in the particular context of a regional country such as Greece; and, second, to test how several demographic variables are related to narcissism levels.

The study consists of a theoretical part on narcissism in business education and an empirical part that was based on a survey conducted with the use of a questionnaire. The analysis includes hypothesis testing and basic statistical tests.

Findings suggest that sex, study levels, years of business experience and (personal/family) income do impact specific narcissistic dimensions, which may be a cause for concern both for employers and higher education providers.

The study was conducted in a regional country, the participants were students of public higher education institutions only and the questionnaire was self-reported, which could lead to likely social desirability effects.

The investigation of narcissism in the Greek business education might be of interest to business education providers (for providing curriculum that help future managers/leaders to deploy the positive characteristics of narcissism and avoid or not to develop the negative ones) and to future employers to apply more effective human resource practices, i.e. selection, training, rewarding.

The study at hand aimed to investigate the presence of narcissism and its individual (narcissistic) behavioral dimensions in students studying business in Greece.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) narcissism and firm performance. Further, it examined the moderation effects of CEO duality and top management team (TMT) and board member agreeableness on the CEO narcissism–firm performance relationship.

The study is based on survey data from 373 CEOs in the automobile industry in India. The paper used mixed method research where CEO narcissism and TMT agreeableness has been measured using survey instruments, other data such as firm performance has been captured using secondary sources.

The study confirms that the relationship between CEO narcissism and firm performance is curvilinear, meaning that narcissism can positively impact firm performance to a point, but may become counter-productive or ineffective beyond that. Further, CEO duality and TMT and board member agreeableness significantly impact this relationship.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how CEO behavior can affect variance in firm performance. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications and offer suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effect of information search effort on the relationship between leader narcissism and team creativity in China based on attention theory. The paper also explores participative decision making as a moderator in the relationship between team leader narcissism and information search effort.

Through a survey of 667 team members and their team leaders from 96 research and development teams at 23 high-tech enterprises in China with paired samples, cross-time data were collected. Confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical regression and path analysis were adopted to analyze the data.

This paper found that leader narcissism had a positive impact on team information search effort, thereby promoting team creativity, and the effect of leader narcissism on team information search effort is more positive in the context of high participation in decision making.

Narcissism should be a noteworthy trait in manager selection and promotion especially for the departments and teams which focus on innovation and creation. And companies should pay attention to the team work processes to ensure that team members have the opportunity to participate in decision making for promoting the team leader’s narcissistic “bright” side in the institutional environment and avoiding the “dark” side.

This paper discusses how and when leader narcissism influences team creativity in Chinese high-technology enterprises based on attention theory. This research expands the application of attention theory at the team level.