Leaders without ethics in global business: Corporate psychopaths

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of Corporate Psychopaths as ruthless employees who can successfully gain entry to organizations and can then get promoted within those organizations to reach senior managerial and leadership positions. What little empirical research currently exists supports the view that Corporate Psychopaths are more commonly found at senior levels of organizations. This paper presents further empirical evidence that supports this view. It discusses how, in a quantitative sample of 346 white‐collar workers, in 2008, research using a psychopathy scale identified greater levels of psychopathy at more senior levels of corporations than at more junior levels. The paper goes on to propose that this is a universal issue that can pose various ethical problems for corporations because of the ruthless, selfish and conscience‐free approach to life that Corporate Psychopaths have. Other ethical issues are to do with their moral accountability and with the problems associated with the possibility of screening employees for psychopathy. The paper reviews the literature on psychopathy and concludes that while psychopaths appear to be universal in occurrence, they may well be environmentally limited in their possible actions in more collectivist societies. However, the global spread of western, individualistically oriented corporations may pose a threat to any collectivist societies in which they operate. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Extreme managers, extreme workplaces: Capitalism, organizations and corporate psychopaths

“…Similarly Clarke and other psychologists describe Corporate Psychopaths as typically being recognized as being toxic leaders by their followers but not by their superiors (Babiak, 1995;Babiak et al, 2006;Boddy, 2011c;Boddy, Ladyshewsky, & Galvin, 2010b;Clarke, 2005Clarke, , 2007, which is exactly how the Corporate Psychopath managers were regarded in this research among HR Directors.…”

“…Their characteristics of being ultra-rational, financially oriented managers with no emotional concern for or empathy with other employees or their welfare (Boddy, Galvin, & Ladyshewsky, 2009), marks them as apparently useful to the style of "Chicago School" capitalism (Friedman, 1970) that is merely profit oriented. This role as agents of capitalism without a conscience marks Corporate Psychopaths as worthy of further investigation.…”

Psychopathic traits of business and psychology students and their relationship to academic success

“…These findings may, however, be explained by the low prevalence of individuals with notably high psychopathy levels among the general population (estimated to be about 1%; Boddy, Ladyshewsky, & Galvin, 2010), thus relationships between psychopathy and ‗life success' may be less visible at population level. Furthermore, factors such as age and gender, PSYCHOPATHY DISCIPLINE CHOICE SUCCESS 5 potentially important confounding factors of the psychopathy-life-success relationship were not controlled for.…”

Of Predators and Preys: Corporate Psychopathy and Employee Burnout as Parallels

“…The manipulative nature of corporate psychopaths is a least obvious trait that allows them to gain the confidence of other people, expedites their progression in corporate ranks and provides ample leverage to harm their organizations (Mahaffey and Marcus, 2006). Studies by Boddy (2011a), Boddy et al (2010), found that most corporate psychopaths belong to senior management positions of organizations and their actions at this level can be extremely damaging, especially when organizational culture is weak.…”