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Many of the characteristics embodied by successful psychopaths, such as superficial charm, cool decisiveness and a grandiose self-worth, are often treated synonymously with corporate leadership qualities. Consequently, it is possible that successful psychopaths are actively being selected for corporate positions as they exemplify the perfect candidate. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether or not the recruitment for positions of higher social status are inadvertently seeking out individuals with psychopathic tendencies to run their companies using similar characteristics in their job advertisements.

The current study will provide a deeper understanding of successful psychopaths whilst exploring the role of the “Westernized” corporation in recruiting successful psychopaths into their businesses through character descriptions in 25 executive career advertisements using Wexler’s (2008) psychopathic Personality Dimensions And Positively Reinforced Corporate Labels.

The results demonstrated that corporations are seeking out characteristics that are synonymous to Factor 1 psychopathic personality traits, which could increase the propensity of successful psychopaths in the workplace.

Although the sample was representative for the current study, the sample size is minimal. Further, most companies in the sample were taken from the public sector. Given the implicit sample bias, the results and conclusions must be interpreted with caution. Future research should expand the relationship between psychopathic personality traits and corporate labels in a broader context.

The results also allude to potential protective factors that could be put in place by corporations during their hiring process. These factors include measures for empathy and emotional IQ. Beyond the hiring process, it is suggested that incentive-based promotions should be lessened and replaced with incentives that promote care and respect for one another.

Whilst the inability for the public to conceptualize white-collar crime as a true form of crime conducted by powerful individuals is apparent, it is suggested that change should begin with public awareness and academia. With additional research on psychopathy in the field of criminology and organizational psychology, public awareness can be amplified.

The current study allows for an interdisciplinary perspective towards the concept of successful psychopathy by highlighting the increased potential for corporate scams and white-collar criminality. Specifically, the current study introduces a psycho-social criminological perspective.

This paper aims to explore how and why the emerging literature in clinical psychology on the “successful psychopath” precedes the escalating middle class framing of the contemporary corporation as a monster and points towards an increasingly credible version of systemic psychopathy.

Discourse analysis is used to isolate three distinct but interrelated argument forms in which the basic assertion is that “the corporation is a psychopath”. All three argument forms insist that the corporation lacks a conscience and point to a toxic schism on the boundary between the organization and its stakeholders or publics.

In Argument Form I, successful psychopaths enter and rise to prominence in the flexible, hypercompetitive context of the contemporary corporation. Once ensconced within the corporation, in Argument Form II, the psychopath creates the conditions for a scam which, when detected, gives rise to a flurry of breathless and very public corporate scandals. Argument Form III follows from II. In it the rogues and scoundrels – those increasingly caught in the high beams of a corporate scandal – once in positions of power and authority seek out allies, stifle those who would oppose them and begin to legitimize their scams as “business as usual.” Systemic psychopathy emerges when the appeal to “business as usual” conceals scams and supports conscienceless behavior.

This paper explains why increasingly, members of the middle class, those who in the past stood behind the corporation, are less than shocked to hear it characterized as a psychopath. The paper concludes with the implications of the intensifying portrayal of the dark side of the corporation for researchers studying the changing relationship between society and business.

Influential 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.

Leading 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.

Findings 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.

Although there is an inconsistent nomenclature, white-collar, industrial, successful, organisational, workplace or corporate psychopaths do exist and are found in white-collar workplaces.

Their 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.

To 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.

The purpose of this paper is to adapt the research conducted on subclinical psychopaths in the private sector and applies it to the public sector to build a conceptual frame for further research on subclinical psychopaths in public organisations. General characteristics of entrepreneurs often run counter to democratic values, and are more often aligned with private sector values. Public managers who display one of the dark-triad personalities, i.e., psychopathy, can pose a greater threat to democratic values and the state.

The approach of this paper is theoretical with the aim of proposing a conceptual framework that utilises Downs’ five types of officials governing bureaucracies, to illustrate a relationship between public entrepreneurs and subclinical psychopaths.

The conceptual framework presented in this paper suggests that psychopathic entrepreneurs can be identified within Downs’ bureaucratic framework specifically as climbers (due to inherent personality traits) and as zealots (heroic and altruistic behaviour for organisational causes, yet motivated by power, domination, and self-interest). The implications of psychopathic public managers who engage in entrepreneurial activities may be escalating public distrust, hostility, and dissatisfaction in government.

This theoretical paper adds to the growing body of criticism for public entrepreneurship by conceptualising how psychopaths, as climbers and zealots, affect public trust in terms of accountability and democratic values.

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 look at some of the implications of organisational psychopaths for organisations and corporations.

This paper defines organisational psychopaths as being those psychopaths who exist at an incidence of about 1 percent of the general population and who work in organisations. The paper describes how these organisational psychopaths are able to present themselves as desirable employees and are easily able to obtain positions in organisations. Without the inhibiting effect of a conscience they are then able to ruthlessly charm, lie, cajole and manipulate their way up an organisational hierarchy in pursuit of their main aims of power, wealth and status and at the expense of anyone who gets in their way.

The paper suggests that, just as criminal psychopaths are responsible for a greater share of crimes than their numbers would suggest, so too organisational psychopaths may be responsible for more than their fair share of organisational misbehaviour including accounting fraud, stock manipulation, unnecessarily high job losses and corporately induced environmental damage.

The paper suggests that having organisational psychopaths running corporations that are themselves, at best, amoral is a recipe for negative consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to present and provide a critical review of most recent studies inquiring into brain abnormalities in psychopathy.

The authors provide an overview of the findings of neurobiological studies conducted in the last five years. Publications chosen for review were found using Web of Science, PsycINFO and Scopus search engines.

Data in the literature reveal that psychopathy is associated with brain abnormalities in frontal and temporo-limbic regions, i.e. regions responsible for moral decision making, emotional processing and learning. Additionally, interactions between the brain areas have been identified as crucial for the development of psychopathic personality traits. Research findings suggest that the flow of impulses between the frontal cortex and temporo-limbic structures in psychopaths is significantly hindered.

The current paper provides an in-depth review of most recent neurobiological studies inquiring into brain abnormalities associated with psychopathic personality traits. Moreover, a particular attention has been paid to identifying abnormalities in brain structures not previously studied in relation to psychopathy (e.g. mirror neuron system, white matter connections).

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how first-time offenders and habitual criminals, while displaying wide differences in offense frequency, appear to follow a similar pattern in committing crime.

A conceptual approach is adopted in this paper.

It is argued that criminal thinking is the common denominator in both patterns, the difference being that habitual criminals have a higher resting level of proactive and reactive criminal thinking than first-time offenders. With an earlier age of onset, the habitual criminal may be more impulsive and reactive than first-time offenders, which partially explains why most low-rate offenders are not identified until adulthood.

Because actual and perceived deterrents to crime correlate weakly, if at all, it is recommended that perceived environmental events and criminal thinking be the primary targets of prevention and intervention programs.

Environmental stimuli, such as events that produce general strain, increase opportunities for crime, reinforce criminal associations, irritate the individual and interfere with the deterrent effect of perceived certainty, can both augment and interact with criminal thinking to increase the likelihood of a criminal act in both first-time offenders and habitual criminals.

The unique aspect of this paper is that it illustrates that certain features of crime and criminality are found across offending levels, whereas other features are more specific to a particular level.

Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits are often viewed as negative or undesirable personality traits. However, recent research demonstrates that individuals with these traits possess qualities that may be personally beneficial within the business contexts. In this chapter, we conceptualize a balanced perspective of these traits throughout the entrepreneurial process (opportunity recognition, opportunity evaluation, and opportunity exploitation) and discuss human resources management strategies that can be employed to enhance the benefits, or minimize the challenges, associated with Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits. Specifically, we propose that Machiavellian qualities are most beneficial in the evaluation stage of entrepreneurship, and Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic qualities are beneficial in the exploitation stage of entrepreneurship.