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Introduction
Psychologists are increasingly recognising the relevance of psychopathy to organisational outcomes (Johnson et al., 2015). Further, the topic of psychopaths in public and corporate leadership positions has gained some prominence in the popular press. Documentaries concerning such “corporate” or “successful” psychopaths have become frequently viewed on television and on-line (e.g. Torrie, 2014). Similarly, popular magazines like Psychology Today, in dealing with workplace issues and psychology, discuss the links between leadership and psychopathy (Lipman, 2013).
Commentators ponder the question of why there are more psychopaths in the boardroom and in leadership positions, reporting that this may be because they are good at ingratiating themselves with people of higher position in order to successfully gain promotion themselves (Williams, 2013). Psychopaths in the workplace are said to be able to acquire career advancement because of their aptitude for impressing superiors with their charisma, charm, claimed competencies and apparent confidence.
This brings the current paper to the importance of situational factors in fully understanding leadership behaviour (Alban-Metcalfe and Alimo-Metcalfe, 2009). There are reported to be situational factors at work in the emergence of corporate psychopaths in leadership positions (Boddy, 2011a). Specifically the increasingly rapid turnover of senior managers and the associated speed with which they are replaced using “shallow” recruitment processes (Furnham, 2014), means that the charismatic tend to outshine the less charismatic in interview selection processes. Those with “dark charisma” impress the most because they are happy to lie about their past achievements and so appear to have the competencies, values and employee engagement abilities that characterise effective leadership (Alban-Metcalfe and Alimo-Metcalfe, 2009). They appear to be the type of leader who can ruthlessly deliver the increasingly ambitious targets (Brookes, 2011) demanded in public sector management. In actuality corporate psychopaths have none of these competencies, values or abilities; they are incompetent, selfish rather than selfless (Brookes, 2014) and do not value other employees who therefore subsequently disengage from the organisation or even undermine it (Boddy, 2014, 2015b).
Psychopaths have been characterised as unethical, destructive and toxic leaders. In 2004 Kellerman reminded us that such high-handed, corrupt and evil leaders are widespread in business and society but that nonetheless the leadership literature has largely ignored these dark leaders (Kellerman, 2004b). More recently, McCleskey and others have...