While we already know a lot about the outcomes and boundary conditions of servant leadership, there is still a need for research on its antecedents. Building on the theory of purposeful work behavior and further theorizing by van Dierendonck and Patterson (2015), we examine if leaders’ propensity for compassionate love will evoke servant leadership behavior. At the same time, we contrast compassionate love to leaders’ narcissism as psychological counterpart to compassionate love, because narcissism is not associated with leader effectiveness, but with leader emergence instead. We collected data from 170 leader-follower-dyads in a field study in Germany, while measuring leaders’ compassionate love and narcissism, and followers’ perceptions of servant leadership. We found a positive association between leaders’ compassionate love and servant leadership behavior, while narcissism was negatively associated with servant leadership. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as pathways for future research are discussed.

In leadership research, the Dark Triad of personality has become a topic of great interest. This construct includes the personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and subclinical psychopathy and is associated with several negative outcomes for organizations and followers’ satisfaction. In contrast, the construct of psychological capital, which includes hope, resilience, self-efficacy, and optimism, is positively related to extra-role organizational citizenship behaviors and employee performance. Therefore, the question arises whether people can benefit from psychological capital when confronted with a manager that exhibits dark personality traits. Subsequently, the purpose of this study is to examine the potential impact of psychological capital on the relationship between the Dark Triad traits of managers and the work-related basic need satisfaction of employees. Thus, a dataset of 469 employees was analyzed. Regression analyses demonstrated that the Dark Triad of personality and psychological capital both work as predictors of work-related basic need satisfaction. When controlling for mediating effects, psychological capital appeared as a partial mediator of the relationship between the managers’ dark traits and the employees’ basic need satisfaction in the workplace. The theoretical and practical implications of the results, as well as suggestions for future research, are discussed.

La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) declaró a la enfermedad covid-19 una pandemia   global en marzo de 2020, y poco después advirtió de otra enfermedad derivada de esta primera, a la que calificó de «infodemia», que también le preocupó. La infodemia deriva en una patología expresada en una disfunción comportamental que consiste en la demanda y consumo “enfermizo”, desordenado y de alcance transfronterizo y global de informaciones, desinformación, rumores o filfas conspiranoides sobre el origen, la evolución y las consecuencias de la pandemia. Junto a este fenómeno de profusión de consumos informativos durante el periodo álgido de la pandemia, concomitante se ha registrado la proliferación torrencial de fake news, y la irrupción maliciosa de teorías conspirativas. Este texto da cuenta de estas aberraciones informativas taimadas y del intervencionismo regulatorio en la «infoesfera» —espacio por antonomasia anárquico, desregulado y libertario— de dos actores: las plataformas tecnológicas y los Estados. En este contexto fronterizo de espacios inexplorados inducidos por la pandemia, en los que se superponen una crisis sanitaria, bulimia social comunicativa, mentiras y conspiraciones, regulación privada y pública de los contenidos en red, control informativo, el periodismo de calidad se posiciona en el epicentro del ecosistema comunicativo como la garantía de información sensata y consumible por los ciudadanos, así como promotor de referencias colectivas integradoras en sistemas democráticos con sociedades abiertas. Palabras clave: infodemia, fake news, teorías conspirativas, plataformas tecnológicas, soberanía digital, infoesfera.