When Narcissists Take the Lead – Exploring their Grandiose and Vulnerable Sides.

Addressing the controversial debate about leader narcissism and its impact on organizations this talk provides an overview of current research and points to future directions. It includes an overview of the empirical status quo on the basis of a systematic literature review. We will then look further into conceptualizations of leader narcissism, and argue how integrating the vulnerable side of narcissism may enrich the current understanding of narcissistic leaders affect organizational functioning. Initial insights from an ongoing empirical project are also part of the talk. The project pursues three main purposes: First, to analyze the factorial structure of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory in a sample of 926 German-speaking managers, which pointed towards a bifactor model differentiating a general narcissism factor from grandiosity./vulnerability. Second, we sought to establish the relationships between narcissism and leaders' drive to aggress against followers. Above and beyond the general narcissism factor, narcissistic vulnerability predicted leaders' abusive supervision intent. Third experimental data indicated that vulnerable narcissists were prone to respond to failure with internal attributions/shame. These findings feed into the wider discussion of narcissism and narcissistic vulnerability as a risk-factor for organizational functioning.

Please register by email, if you want to attend the seminar