Research on the Effect of Narcissistic Leadership on Employee Job Embeddedness

Abstract

Narcissistic leadership is the synthesis of narcissistic personality traits and leadership behaviors that are motivated mainly by self-interest needs and arrogant beliefs. Such leadership style has multiple effects on organizations and employees. The amplifying influence of narcissistic leadership on their subordinates has become a hot topic in the field of organizational behavior. Based on the social exchange theory and the resource conservation theory, the current study constructs a chain mediation model of narcissistic leadership affecting employees’ job embeddedness with 405 corporate employees as survey respondents. The results of data analysis show that narcissistic leadership is significantly and negatively related to employees’ job embeddedness; Leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived insider status not only play a mediating role between narcissistic leadership and job embeddedness but also play a chain mediating roles in the relationship between narcissistic leadership and job embeddedness. Our findings deepen the theoretical exploration of narcissistic leadership and help all types of organizations to improve their leadership practices.

Multifaceted leaders: the double-edged sword effect of narcissistic leadership on employees’ work behavior

“…Previous studies have mostly focused on exploring the negative effects of narcissistic leadership ( Carnevale et al, 2018 ; Badar et al, 2023 ). Although a few scholars have explored the positive effects of narcissistic leadership ( Owens et al, 2015 ), due to their single research perspective ( Wang et al, 2022 ), it is not conducive to a systematic understanding of the role played by narcissistic leadership. This paper chooses two opposing extra-role behaviors, counterproductive work behavior and organizational citizenship behavior, verifying narcissistic leadership’ double-edged sword effect on employees, and to some extent addressing the controversy of existing studies on the effectiveness of narcissistic leadership ( Nevicka et al, 2011b ), providing a theoretical foundation and empirical support for narcissistic leadership research.…”

“…At present, although research on narcissistic leadership has made some progress, the empirical results mainly focus on the negative effects of narcissistic leadership ( Nevicka et al, 2011a ; Badar et al, 2023 ). Although some studies have provided important clues for the positive effects of narcissistic leadership ( Owens et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2022 ), their single research perspective only produces a one-sided understanding of narcissistic leadership, lacking further confirmation from other perspectives that narcissistic leadership has a positive effect. In light of this, this paper intends to comprehensively reveal the double-edged sword effect of narcissistic leadership from a dialectical perspective.…”