Psychopathy in the Workplace

Coping Strategies for Employees
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-3-031-55213-7
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 221 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 433 g

The onset of the pandemic has placed a greater emphasis on mental health, with many organizations making it a business imperative to ensure that employees are fully supported. Research on mental health in the workplace continues to grow, though there is a dearth of scholarly writings taking a micro approach to understanding the impact of negative work environments. This three-book series explores issues related to personality disorders and work-related suicides and the effect on employees and leaders.

This volume focuses on the harmful effects of psychopathy in the workplace. The book is divided into three sections: defining psychopathy, identifying it through its effects on workplace productivity and performance, and understanding how that knowledge can limit its effect. With chapter contributions from authors around the world, this collection offers global perspectives on the harmful role that psychopathy can play in the workplace. Tackling topics such as abusive supervision and workplace bullying, this book will advance scholarship related to employee well-being, employee engagement, and counterproductive workplace behaviors.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Germain, Marie-Line

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Betriebliches Gesundheitsmanagement
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Wirtschafts-, Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Organisationstheorie, Organisationssoziologie, Organisationspsychologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Personalwesen, Human Resource Management
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Management

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction. (Marie-Line Germain)

This chapter provides an overview of the content of the book. It establishes the need for the book, presents its goals and its organization.

Part I - Defining Psychopathy

Chapter 2. Defining psychopathy. (Kelsey L. Lowman, Bridget M. Bertoldi, & Dr. Christopher J.

Patrick, Florida State University. [e-mail])

Psychopathy is a topic that has long been fascinating to the public at large as well as to scientists and clinical practitioners. However, it has also been subject to considerable confusion and scholarly debate over the years. This chapter will describe alternative conceptions of psychopathy that have been proposed historically, and review major instruments currently in use for the assessment of psychopathic features/traits in clinical and non-clinical samples. An integrative theoretical framework, the triarchic model, will be considered as a basis for reconciling differing historic conceptions and assessment approaches. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the utility of the triarchic model for addressing issues such as psychopathy subtypes, successful versus unsuccessful psychopathy, and causal factors contributing to different behavioral expressions of psychopathy.

Chapter 3. Assessing psychopathy in employees. (Dr. Russ Curtis, Western Carolina University)

Effectively screening potential employees for psychopathy is essential to building and

maintaining a healthy, ethical, and productive workplace. Psychopathy is a problematic psychological syndrome, most closely related to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s 5th edition diagnoses of Antisocial Personality and Narcissistic Personality Disorders. Common traits associated with psychopathy include, but are not limited to: lack of empathy, exaggerated sense of importance, manipulation, superficial charm, infidelity, theft, and violence. While it is apparent that these traits are counterproductive in the workplace, assessing for and potentially denying employment for people with these characteristics is controversial. In this chapter, we will discuss the subtle and overt signs of psychopathy, the assessment procedures and tests used to identify psychopathy, as well as the ethical issues with conducting such assessments.

Part II - Identifying Signs of Psychopathy in the Workplace

Chapter 4. Workplace indicators: Job satisfaction, turnover, and productivity. (Miriam Schilbach,

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany [e-mail], Iris

Kranefeld), Anja Baethge, & Prof. Dr. Thomas Rigotti).

This chapter reviews the current literature on how employee psychopathy relates to job satisfaction, turnover, and productivity, all of which represent central indicators and determinants of organizational welfare and employee well-being. In this chapter, we address inter- as well as intrapersonal perspectives. That is, we elaborate how psychopathy levels of one individual (e.g., a leader) may affect the relevant outcomes in other individuals (e.g., followers). Moreover, we summarize intrapersonal effects by describing how an individual’s expression of psychopathy relates to outcomes within that person (e.g., job satisfaction). Finally, we will look at both global effects of psychopathy as well as describing how its constituent facets may relate differentially to outcomes and we will discuss relevant mechanisms and boundary conditions at the organizational- and person-level which may explain and moderate the relationship between psychopathy and job satisfaction, turnover, and productivity.

Chapter 5. How Managerial Psychopathy Contributes to Employee Mental Illness. (Clive Boddy,

University of Canberra; Curtin University, Australia).

Through the lens of corporate psychopathy theory, this chapter integrates theoretical perspectives on abusive supervision, workplace civility, dark humor, employee autonomy, and managerial psychopathy to examine the processes via which these variables influence employee mental health and illness. Findings from quantitative studies of the effects of working under psychopathic managers are integrated with qualitative research on the same phenomena, to gain a robust understanding of the ways in which managerial psychopathy contributes to employee mental health and illness. This chapter presents how psychopathic employees use incivility, bullying, aggressive humor, and close employee control to manage their environment via creating a climate of fear and disengagement and that this results in deteriorating employee mental health. 

Chapter 6. Successful Psychopathy in Vocational Contexts. (Prof. Gerhard Blickle & Dr. Hanna

A. Genau-Hagebölling, University of Bonn, Germany).

The personality trait of psychopathy incorporates features of “superficial charm, dishonesty, egocentricity, risk-taking, and a lack of empathy and guilt masked by apparent normalcy” (Smith & Lilienfeld, 2013, p. 206). The trait has been mostly associated with detrimental outcomes. However, there are also reports of quite successful psychopaths and the seemingly paradoxical idea of two faces of psychopathy fueled an emerging literature on successful psychopathy. In this chapter, we first discuss two problems that have hitherto hampered consistent approaches to the question of successful psychopathy. That is firstly the lack of a homogenous definition of the trait and secondly the question of what is actually implied by successful psychopathy. To overcome these problems, we propose using a triarchic perspective on psychopathy that has proven to be promising in the work context and we define successful psychopathy as achieving desirable outcomes rather than just the avoidance of undesirable ones. We then introduce different approaches of how successful psychopathy might actually look like and present empirical results regarding successful psychopathy in the workplace. In the latter, we also distinguish between “truly” successful cases and cases of success that, from the organization’s perspective, actually represent toxic careers. Finally, we provide an overview of the implications of these findings for practical organizational work and future perspectives. 

Part III - Tools and Strategies for Employees Working with Psychopaths

Chapter 7. How to know if a coworker has psychopathic traits. (Claire Caggiano, Isabelle Anillo,

& Dr. Tom D. Kennedy, Nova Southeastern University, USA.)

The presence of psychopathy in the workplace, though a relatively rare phenomenon, can facilitate a toxic work environment and potential emotional discord outside of the workplace. Psychopathy is commonly stigmatized in the media, with the afflicted often being portrayed as violent criminal masterminds. However, off the silver screen and in the corporate world, psychopathy manifests quite differently. Psychopathy is a constellation of traits that has been conceptualized in varying ways over the years. Two of the most widely accepted theoretical frameworks of psychopathy are the Triarchic Model and the Three factor Model which comprise many overlapping traits including impulsivity, lack of empathy, and a multitude of maladaptive interpersonal behaviors. While there are clinical ways to assess an individual for psychopathic traits, doing so in the workplace is complex and nuanced. Through education and the sharing of information, employees can recognize behavioral and personality characteristics that may be indicative of psychopathic traits in a coworker. It is important to note that not all associated psychopathic traits are maladaptive in the workplace. While knowledge of these characteristics should not be used to diagnose or discriminate, it may aid in the development of adaptive strategies as well as improved relationships in the workplace.

Chapter 8. The psychopath's bullying and controlling behaviors and coping strategies for

                        coworkers. (Dr. Hannah Scott, Professor, Ontario Tech University, Canada.

                                    [e-mail])

Up to 52 percent of employees are or have been subject to workplace bullying (WB) globally, in a wide variety of professions. It is only recently that there has been increased research interest on this phenomenon, in particular focusing on possible outcomes and victims’ coping responses. The research on WB suggests that this encompasses a wide variety of behaviors and interactions, ranging from subtle and covert tactics like withholding information and isolating a victim to overt aggression and physical abuse. This may be one possible reason as to why researchers differ in their definition of the term “bullying”, often equalizing it with “mobbing”, “harassment” or “aggression”. Many agree with a definition of bullying which includes a pattern of recurring adversarial verbal and nonverbal interactions directed towards a target and resulting in negative consequences on the target’s physical and mental health. Boddy (2011) offers strong, positive, and significant correlations between the ethical issues of bullying and unfair supervision in the workplace and the presence of corporate/workplace psychopaths. This chapter will describe the Power Control model of workplace bullying, which assumes that those who target workers are motivated by the need power and control in the workplace. Offenders, including workplace psychopaths, use both overt and covert tactics to keep targets off balance, adding to the psychological toll of being bullied at work. The tool described in this chapter helps targets of bullying name their experiences more effectively, which may aid in documenting and countering abusive and controlling workspace experiences. It may also be useful as a pre-emptive training tool when onboarding new members of an organization in helping prospective workers in identifying methods of both overt and covert control.

Chapter 9. Legal implications of having psychopaths on staff. (Benedict Sheehy, Bruce Baer

Arnold, & Clive Boddy, University of Canberra; Curtin University, Australia).

                        This chapter will identify the legal options available to organizations and affected people

in dealing with corporate psychopaths. To do so, it will canvas the main areas of law

potentially available to people, namely, tort and employment law. It will review the

limitations and basic inability of corporate law to address this problem. It will also draw

attention to the general limitations of law as a remedy to this serious problem.

Chapter 10. Strategies for Leadership and Human Resource professionals. (Author TBA)

Chapter 11. Conclusion. (Dr. Marie-Line Germain).

Über Autor(innen)

Marie-Line Germain is an award-winning scholar and Professor of Human Resources and Leadership at Western Carolina University, USA. She is the author of four books and has been a Fulbright recipient with visiting professorships in China, Finland, France, Ghana, Japan, and South Korea. Her research focuses on dysfunctional behaviors and psychosocial risks in the workplace.