Organisational sociopaths: rarely challenged, often promoted. Why?

Abstract

PurposeOrganisations sometimes select and promote the wrong individuals for managerial positions. These individuals may be incompetent, they may be manipulators and bullies. They are not the best people for the job and yet not only are they selected for positions of authority and responsibility, they are sometimes promoted repeatedly until their kind populate the highest levels of the organisational hierarchy. The purpose of this paper is to address this phenomenon by attempting to explain why it occurs and why organisational members tolerate such destructive practices. It concludes by proposing a cultural strategy to protect the organisation and its stakeholders from the ambitious machinations of the organisational sociopath.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop an explanatory framework by attempting to combine elements of the theory of memetics with structuration theory. Memetic theory helps to analyse culture and communication of beliefs, ideas, and thoughts. Structuration theory can be used to identify motives and drives. A combination of these theoretical approaches can be used to identify the motives of organisational sociopaths. Such a tool is also useful for exploring the high level of organisation tolerance for sociopathic managers.FindingsOrganisational tolerance and acceptance for sociopathic managerial behaviour appears to be a consequence of cultural and structural complexity. While this has been known for some time, few authors have posited an adequate range of explanations and solutions to protect stakeholders and prevent the sociopath from exploiting organisational weaknesses. Reduction of cultural and structural complexity may provide a partial solution. Transparency, communication of strong ethical values, promotion based on performance, directed cooperation, and rewards that reinforce high performing and acceptable behaviour are all necessary to protect against individuals with sociopathic tendencies.Originality/valueThe authors provide a new cultural diagnostic tool by combining elements of memetic theory with elements of structuration theory. The subsequent framework can be used to protect organisations from becoming the unwitting victims of sociopaths seeking to realise and fulfil their needs and ambitions through a managerial career path.

Audit Committee Effectiveness in Victorian Local Government

“…They stated that the fracturing of decision making processes 'often results in dysfunctional and impoverished senior management decision processes, which can in extreme cases lead to corrupt and cannibalistic practices on the part of the managerial elite' (Pech and Durden (2004 p. 73). Kets de Vries (2004a, 1984a, 1984b), Gettler (2005a and Pech and Slade (2007) This thesis was cognisant of the dark side of behaviours (Conger, 1990;Thomas and Slade, 2004), which can manifest within individuals, within groups and totally within organisations.…”

“…65, 73). Gettler (2005a; Kets de Vries (2004a, 1984a, 1984b and Pech and Slade (2007) considered that some of the explanations for nefarious behaviours by executive management in organisations can include greed, narcissism, manipulation, exploitation and the 'complex nature of the corporate world for reinforcing pathological behaviours in the organisational context' (Pech & Slade 2007, p. 254).…”

Successful Psychopaths: A Contemporary Phenomenon

“…Today it is also essential for companies to maintain high productivity levels, despite the decreasing of economic resources [13] and the proliferation of time constraints, which can often have a brutalizing efect by leading managers to allocate insuficient time for empathic interaction with others: these aspects may have caused vicious cycles between culture individuals and society; in fact some theories have atempted to explain how modern business has facilitated the rise of psychopathic managers, which has in turn inluenced capitalism [10,12,14,15]. Research has suggested that psychopathy can even confer beneit on persons seeking rewards within a corporate seting [16], which indicates they can rise to the top of corporations [3,17] coherently they have also been named as corporate psychopaths, industrial psychopaths, executive psychopaths, to diferentiate them from their more commonly known criminal peers [10,[18][19][20][21][22]. Research has also suggested that business has promoted psychopathic managers because of their ruthless willingness to "get the job done," and as they atain senior positions, executive psychopaths have become architects of ruthlessness as they create a "culture of extremes" [10] so corporate psychopathy lourishes perhaps as the most signiicant threat to ethical corporate behavior.…”

Theorizing and Researching the Dark Side of Organization

“…Without resolving this question, the issue of identifying and ascribing a capacity for pathological behaviour has received some attention at the personal and organizational levels from psychoanalytic and psychodynamic perspectives, and the psychology of 'dark side' dysfunctional personality traits (Furnham, 2007;Furnham et al, 2012b). The existence and impact of corporate psychopaths has absorbed a burgeoning number of researchers, especially since the ethical crisis of 2002-3 and the financial crisis of 2007-8 ( Babiak & Hare, 2006;Bakan, 2005;Boddy, 2010;Boddy, Galvin & Ladyshewsky, 2010;Clarke, 2005;Hare, 1999;Pech & Slade, 2007). Sims (2005) takes an alternative look at the work of organizational members' narratives.…”