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This paper aims to examine two underexplored topics in organizations, i.e. vulnerable narcissists in organizational settings and possible effects of territorial infringements among vulnerable narcissistic employees. The movie, Office Space, illustrates prototypical employee behavior mixed with comedically maladaptive personalities in a modern organizational context. However, the arson committed by character, Milton Waddams, suggests that some employees, especially those with disordered personalities, might violently respond to perceived territorial infringements.

This conceptual paper combines personality factors with territorial behavior to examine employee reactions to perceived injustices. Theoretical and practical implications are offered, as well as future research directions.

The argument presented suggests that the vulnerable narcissists may initiate destructive behavior in organizations with ego threats like territorial infringements. While anger is a natural defensive reaction, vulnerable narcissists are more likely to behave aggressively toward perceived territorial infringements due to their general negative affect.

Employees may react to infringement over seemingly subjective things; thus, managers must understand the nature of ownership by addressing territorial claims. Managers must remain cognizant that some disordered personalities are prone toward fulfilling threats, including organizational sabotage, deviance and white-collar crime. Environmental conditions can also compound the negative behavior of personalities like vulnerable narcissists in the workplace.

This conceptual paper adds to the organizational behavior literature and contributes to the fields of psychology and territoriality by exploring vulnerable narcissists in organizational settings and by considering the magnitude of defensive behavior toward perceived infringements.

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.

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

The authors provide a novel and unobtrusive measure of CEO narcissism based on LinkedIn profiling. The authors investigate the relationship between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking (stock return volatility) for a sample of 475 US manufacturing firms in the period 2010-2014.

The authors find an inverse U-shape relationship between CEO narcissism and stock return volatility. The inverse U-shape relationship (the “humpback”) is caused by the paradoxical nature of the narcissistic personality in which the self-esteem is high but at the same time fragile with a combination of self-admiration and a constant need of having this positive self-view confirmed. The results are robust to alternative specifications of CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking. The results are economically meaningful. Thus, a moderate degree of CEO narcissism – as compared to a very low or a very high level of CEO narcissism – is associated with an increase in corporate risk taking of approximately 12 percent.

Previous literature provides multiple analyses on the association between managerial overconfidence and corporate decisions. As opposed to overconfidence, narcissism is a personality trait having both cognitive and behavioral dimensions. This paper provides a novel contribution to the growing literature on the association between managerial biases/traits and corporate decision-making.

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.

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 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.

The primary purpose is to investigate the relationship between narcissism and managers' overconfidence in listed companies' risk-taking.

In this study, two criteria of signature and reward are used to measure manager's narcissism; manager's overconfidence, using multiple regression models and finally to measure companies' risk-taking by using companies' monthly returns. Multiple regression is employed to test the model using a sample of 890 firm-year participation on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2017 with panel data and model with fixed effects.

The findings indicate that the CEO's narcissism and the board of directors positively and significantly affect corporate risk-taking. Also, managers' overconfidence has a positive and significant relationship with corporate risk-taking.

The results of this study identified other factors affecting companies' risk-taking. This study also contributed to the development of the literature on narcissism, overconfidence and corporate risk-taking.

This study aims to investigate the interplay between brand and consumer personalities in shaping brand hate and its consequences. More specifically, it investigates the relationship between fallacious character of the brand, brand betrayal feelings and brand hate, and identifies two response routes leading to consumer avoidance and revenge. Furthermore, the study explores the moderating impact of narcissism on the relationships between brand hate and its outcomes.

Data are collected from an online survey of a French representative consumer panel where participants were asked to cite a particular brand they hate, and then assess the different constructs tested in the model. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

The study sheds light on the possible mediators and moderators of brand hate. Particularly, brand betrayal is hypothesized as a mediator between fallacious character of the brand and brand hate. Moreover, the study assesses the impact of narcissism on the relationship between brand hate and desire for avoidance and revenge. Findings show that active brand hate leads to a desire for revenge, whereas passive brand hate positively influences desire for avoidance. Finally, the current research suggests that consumer narcissism fuels desire for revenge on the brand.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to integrate brand personality (the fallacious character of the brand) and consumer personality (narcissism). The study describes the mechanism through which brand transgressions activate two response routes to brand hate associated with the desires for revenge and avoidance.

The role of dark side personality characteristics in the workplace has received increasing attention in the organizational sciences and from leadership researchers in particular. We provide a review of this area, mapping out the key frameworks for assessing the dark side. We pay particular attention to the roles that the dark side plays in leadership processes and career dynamics, with special attention given to destructive leadership. Further, we examine the role that stress plays in the emergence of leaders and how the dark side plays into that process. We additionally provide discussion of the possible roles that leaders can play in producing stress experiences for their followers. We finally illustrate a dynamic model of the interplay of dark leadership, social relationships, and stress in managerial derailment. Throughout, we emphasize a functionalist account of these personality characteristics, placing particular focus on the motives and emotional capabilities of the individuals under discussion.

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.