Boddy, C. (2006).

The dark side of management decisions : organisational

psychopaths. Management Decision, 44 (10) pp. 1461-1475. (AR61499)

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0025-1747.htm

Organisational
The dark side of management psychopaths
decisions: organisational
psychopaths
1461
Clive Roland Boddy
Middlesex University Business School, Perth, Australia Received March 2006
Revised September 2006
Accepted September 2006
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to look at some of the implications of organisational psychopaths for
organisations and corporations.
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Design/methodology/approach – This paper defines organisational psychopaths as being those

psychopaths who exist at an incidence of about 1 percent of the general population and who work in
organisations. The paper describes how these organisational psychopaths are able to present
themselves as desirable employees and are easily able to obtain positions in organisations. Without the
inhibiting effect of a conscience they are then able to ruthlessly charm, lie, cajole and manipulate their
way up an organisational hierarchy in pursuit of their main aims of power, wealth and status and at
the expense of anyone who gets in their way.
Findings – The paper suggests that, just as criminal psychopaths are responsible for a greater share
of crimes than their numbers would suggest, so too organisational psychopaths may be responsible for
more than their fair share of organisational misbehaviour including accounting fraud, stock
manipulation, unnecessarily high job losses and corporately induced environmental damage.
Originality/value – The paper suggests that having organisational psychopaths running
corporations that are themselves, at best, amoral is a recipe for negative consequences.
Keywords Occupational psychology, Organizations, Ethics
Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction
Recent revelations as to the Machiavellian machinations of the managers of some of the
world’s largest companies that have gone bankrupt have reportedly (McCormick and
Burch, 2005) lead to a growing interest in how psychopaths effect organisations and
the workplace. Organisational psychopaths are the 1 per cent of the population who
score highly on a psychopathy checklist and who work in organisations. Estimates of
the incidence of psychopathy vary from researcher to researcher with Clarke saying
that 2 per cent of males are psychopathic (Clarke, 2005), Stout estimating that 4 per
cent of the population are psychopathic (Stout, 2005b) and Salekin et al. (2001) saying
that 5 per cent of a student sample displayed marked psychopathic traits. The
definition of the incidence of psychopathy depends on what cut-off point is adopted in
the particular psychopathy measurement scale used.
A key-defining characteristic of psychopaths is that they have no conscience (Hercz,
2001; Stout, 2005b) and are incapable of experiencing the feelings of others. Their other
characteristics however (Walker, 2005) make them appear very hireable and worthy of
Management Decision
promotion; they are smooth, adroit at manipulating conversations to subjects they Vol. 44 No. 10, 2006
want to talk about, willing to put others down, are accomplished liars, totally ruthless pp. 1461-1475
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
and opportunistic, calculating and without remorse. Their cold-heartedness and 0025-1747
manipulativeness are the traits that are least discernable by others (Mahaffey and DOI 10.1108/00251740610715759
 MD Marcus, 2006) and this allows organisational psychopaths to gain people’s confidence.
They are adept (BBC, 2003) at faking the emotions which they do not have and by
44,10 doing this they appear normal to those around them.
Although not any more or less intelligent (Johansson and Kerr, 2005) than the
population as a whole, according to Hare (BBC, 2004; Stout, 2005b) organisational
psychopaths see the world as one large “watering hole” and use their arrogance and
1462 charm to rise up the ladder of corporate success, knocking off whoever gets in their
way.
They have a knack of getting employed and of climbing the organisational
hierarchy because of their charm and networking skills. This implies that there are
more of them at the top of organisations than there are at the bottom. Organisational
psychopaths have been argued to be more motivated and better equipped than other
corporate managers to rise to high corporate positions. They are more motivated
(Boddy, 2005b) because they crave the power, money and prestige that go with senior
managerial positions and they are better equipped because they lack empathy
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(Maibom, 2005; Chapman et al., 2003) and are ruthless, prepared to lie, have fewer other
claims on their time because of fewer other emotional attachments (Maibom, 2005) and
can present a charming façade and appear to be an ideal leader. They can thus
eventually rise to senior positions and control huge resources that can be used for
selfish or selfless ends; resources that can be used for the good of the organisation or
for their own good. That is why the study of these people in organisations is important.
If large organisations and corporations are run by psychopaths then any chance of
decisions being made that are friendly to the environment, to employees or to investors
is greatly reduced.
The presence of psychopaths in the workforce has only been acknowledged (Hare,
1993) within the past 20 years. However with the realisation that every large company
almost certainly has organisational psychopaths working for them (Newby, 2005;
Clarke, 2005; Hercz, 2001) it is arguably incumbent on academics working in the area of
business to understand what potential effects this can have on corporate decision
making and organisational outcomes. How these organisational psychopaths think, act
and behave affects the organisation and its management in ways that need to be
explored and recognised if management are to manage them.
Organisational psychopaths are employees with no conscience (Stout, 2005a) who
are willing to lie and are able to present an extrovert (Miller and Lynam, 2003),
charming façade in order to gain managerial promotion via a ruthlessly opportunistic
and manipulative approach to career advancement (Hare, 1993). The implications of
their presence in business organizations is an area that is relatively new (Deutschman,
2005; Boddy, 2005c; Butcher, 2004; Morse, 2004) to business and behavioural research.
Organisational psychopaths are reportedly (Hare, 1994) drawn to business
organizations because within them are the sources of power, prestige and money
they seek to accrue to themselves. Hare (Utton, 2004) reports that psychopaths are to be
found wherever you get power, prestige and money.
The US psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley was one of the first to develop the idea of the
psychopathic personality in his book The Mask of Insanity. Cleckley considered
(Chapman et al., 2003) psychopaths to be superficially charming, emotionally shallow,
egocentric and deceitful, irresponsible, insincere and remorseless. More recently and
building on Clerkley’s work, Professor Robert Hare has probably conducted the most
work on criminal psychopaths (Deutschman, 2005) and his work is referred to in
describing organisational psychopaths below.
 Hare refined, modified and extended Cleckley’s checklist for identifying criminal Organisational
psychopaths and has recently begun to apply this tool for the identification of
organisational psychopaths. According to Hare a subset of his criminal checklist caters
psychopaths
for identifying organisational psychopaths:
.
they are glib and superficially charming;
.
have a grandiose sense of self-worth;
. are pathological liars;
1463
.
good at conning and manipulating others;
.
have no remorse about harming others;
.
are emotionally shallow, calculating and cold;
.
callous and lacking in empathy; and
.
they fail to take responsibility for their own actions.
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These are the personality traits traditionally deemed central to the syndrome
(Lilienfeld and Andrews, 1996) as opposed to the more behavioural antisocial
manifestations of it. According to researchers (Salekin et al., 2001) Hare’s checklist
when subject to factor analysis usually presents a two factor solution (Hare et al., 2004)
and a two factor structure is widely discussed in the literature (Miller and Lynam, 2003;
Lynam et al., 1999; Chapman et al., 2003; Sandoval et al., 2000) as a feature of
psychopathy. The factors are described as being on one hand the personality traits
traditionally deemed central to the syndrome and on the other the anti-social
behavioural manifestations of the syndrome.
Organisational psychopaths are thus defined as those workplace employees who
are perceived to exhibit a score of 75 per cent or more on the 20 traits identified as
psychopathic in Hare’s psychopathy checklist (Hare, 1991) modified (Deutschman,
2005) for use in business research. A number of measures exist that determine a level of
psychopathy and these include (Salekin et al., 2001) the psychopathic personality
inventory, personality diagnostic questionnaire, Hare’s psychopathy checklist and
others. In researching these psychopathy measures Salekin et al. (2001) found that a
substantial level of convergence exists between five measures they tested and
concluded that there is a high convergent validity between psychopathy measures and
antisocial personality disorder. Other researchers (Reise and Wink, 1995; Sandoval
et al., 2000) have also found significant correlations between different psychopathy
measures. It is reasonable to state therefore that the principal psychopathy measures
commonly used in psychology are measuring essentially the same thing. However
Hare’s is the most commonly used method (McCann, 2002) for identifying psychopathy
in both research and clinical settings and is the best validated (Lilienfeld and Andrews,
1996; Sandoval et al., 2000) and most reliable (Lynam et al., 1999) measure. This
psychopathy checklist has been adopted worldwide (Wormith, 2000; Molto et al., 2000)
as the standard reference for researchers and clinicians to assess psychopathy.

Organisational psychopaths
Psychopaths should not be confused with psychotics who are people (Davidson et al.,
1998) suffering from a mental disorder which has made them lose touch with reality.
Organisational psychopaths, also known as corporate psychopaths, are the circa 1 per
cent segment of the population who are psychopathic and who work for organisations.
Psychopathy does not imply a loss of touch with reality but is rather, according to
 MD Robert Hare, a world expert on psychopaths, a cluster of interpersonal, affective,
lifestyle and antisocial characteristics.
44,10 A main criterion for psychopathy (Prior, 2002) is the lack of a sense of guilt and the
absence of a conscience (Boddy, 2005a; Hare, 1999). Probably their single key-defining
characteristic is that they have no conscience (Hercz, 2001). Organisational
psychopaths are reported to be able to use their extroverted charm (Hare, 1994) and
1464 charisma (McCormick and Burch, 2005) to shrewdly manipulate others to achieve their
own selfish ends of enrichment and empowerment. They cold bloodedly get rid of
anyone standing in their way in the organisational hierarchy. Although not psychotic
then, they are ruthless and dangerous (Hofmann and Hasebrook, 2004) to the economic
and mental health welfare of those around them and to the companies and
organisations that employ them.
Able to adapt to their environment, organisational or corporate psychopaths have
the ability to appear reasonable and sincere to whoever they are talking to at the time
and are quite capable of lying to put across the right message about them-selves. Their
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aim is self-gratification (Hare, 1994) and their means is the manipulation of others to
their own ends. They are thus very far from being the lunatics of popular imagination
and can be amusing and entertaining conversationalists, able to present themselves
well and to charm those around them. According to Hare (Hare, 1994) psychopaths are
only concerned with looking after themselves and have no concern whatever for the
effects that their actions may have on others. They are able to rationalise their
behaviour and shrug off any sense of personal responsibility. They are completely
indifferent to the suffering or the rights of others. It has been noted that although they
lack emotional depth they are able to put on brief displays of emotion to their own ends
and to appear to have the usual range of human responses.
Organisational psychopaths do not seem like the psychopaths of popular
imagination when you first meet them (Adshead, 2003). They can appear to act as
appropriately as anyone else and they use that disguise of normality (Clarke, 2005) to
gain the trust and support of others. They are able to use their charm to seduce (Reise
and Wink, 1995) and manipulate (Deutschman, 2005) their victims and play games of
corporate politics.
Psychologists have historically been most concerned with criminal psychopaths,
often those who directly and physically harm others. Organisational psychopaths are
different in that they are much more in control of themselves (and others) and can
appear (Walker, 2005) to be charming, polished, likeable and even charismatic.
While psychopathy measures correlate (Sandoval et al., 2000) positively with
antisocial personality disorder there are some differences between these. Antisocial
personality disorder is defined by National Institute of Mental Health (Anon., 2006) as a
pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others and inability or
unwillingness to conform to what are considered to be the norms of society. The
disorder is reported to involve a history of chronic antisocial behaviour that begins
before the age of 15 and continues into adulthood. The disorder is also said to be
manifested by a pattern of irresponsible and antisocial behaviour as indicated by
academic failure, poor job performance, illegal activities, recklessness, and impulsive
behaviour. Symptoms are said to include an inability to tolerate boredom, feeling
victimized, and a diminished capacity for intimacy. Antisocial personality disorder,
also known as psychopathic personality or sociopathic personality often brings a
person into conflict with society as a consequence of a pattern of behaviour that is
amoral and unethical.
 Complications that might arise from having this disorder include: frequent Organisational
imprisonment for unlawful behaviour, alcoholism and drug abuse. According to Hare
(Hare, 1999) this definition is unproblematic for referring to criminal psychopaths
psychopaths
because the definition itself was made after the study of criminal psychopaths, mainly
in prison populations. A weakness of research into psychopathy is acknowledged
(Chapman et al., 2003; Salekin et al., 2001; Kirkman, 2005) to be the lack of
generalisability from it because of the dominant use of criminal populations in research 1465
studies.
Hare states that organisational psychopaths are clever, charming and manipulative
enough to avoid detection and conflict with society and therefore avoid prison and that
a revised definition has to be used for these psychopaths. Other researchers (Lilienfeld
and Andrews, 1996) also acknowledge that antisocial personality disorder
characterises the behavioural aspects of criminal psychopaths rather than the innate
personality factors and that because the majority of studies of psychopathy have been
with incarcerated populations (Lynam et al., 1999) psychopathy has been confounded
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with criminality measures. Hare’s argument is essentially that just because

organisational psychopaths do not display obvious antisocial personality disorder
traits, does not mean that they are not psychopathic, just that their displayed
behaviours are different to those of a typical criminal psychopath.

Origins of psychopathy
In terms of the origins or causes of psychopathy there is still much debate. Research
conducted in 1993 by Joanne Intrator with Robert Hare collaborating (Kaihla, 1996)
suggests a physical, neurological factor at work. The researchers used an emotional
language test that tested reactions to neutral words as well as to emotionally-loaded
words after injecting test subjects with a radioactive tracer and then scanning colour
images of their brains. When normal subjects processed the emotion-laden words, their
brains lit up with activity, particularly in the areas around the ventromedial frontal
cortex and amygdala. The former apparently plays a crucial role in controlling
impulses and long-term planning, while the amygdala is often described as “the seat of
emotion.” In tests on the psychopaths, those same parts of the brain appeared to remain
inactive while processing the emotion-laden words.
Hare says that psychopathy is a syndrome, a collection of characteristics that
together make up a psychopath. However it is not known definitively whether this
syndrome stems from biological or environmental factors (Hare, 1994) and is probably
the result of an interplay of both. Somehow internal controls and emotions are
undeveloped and a conscience is not present in the individuals concerned. Research
(Nadis, 1995) indicates that a neurophysiological factor may be affecting psychopaths
and that some areas of their brains may be undeveloped or under-active. For example
psychopaths reportedly respond differently to emotional stimuli than normal people
do. They do not become apprehensive before electric shocks are delivered and the area
of the brain known as the amygdala does not activate as much in psychopaths as in
normal people in response to emotional stimuli. A study using magnetic resonance
imaging (Birbaumer et al., 2005) found that the amygdala of psychopaths does not
react to emotional stimuli as much as it does with non-psychopaths.
Thus it may be a biological predisposition that when subject to an adverse social
environment (Kirkman, 2005) creates the conditions necessary for the development of a
psychopath. The social environment, such as educational opportunities and family
 MD background may determine how the psychopathy becomes manifested as either
criminal psychopathy or organisational psychopathy.
44,10 Another experiment (Nadis, 1995) showed that psychopaths paid as much attention
to a picture of a woman with blood oozing out of her head who looked like she had been
run over by a car as they did to a picture of a woman who was just riding a bike in front
of cars. Normal people remembered the emotionally worrying picture of the wounded
1466 woman in much more detail than they did the other more emotionally neutral pictures,
whereas psychopaths treated both pictures in the same rational, unworried way,
displaying a distinct lack of an emotional response.
According to Hare psychopaths themselves see no problem with their lack of
conscience, empathy or remorse and do not think that they need to change their
behaviour to fit in with the societal norms that they do not believe in. One researcher in
this field refers to non-criminal psychopaths like organisational psychopaths as being
successful psychopaths. They are successful in as much as they have deployed their
skills of lying, manipulation and deception well enough to avoid detection; can avoid
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the displays of antisocial personality that would get them into trouble with the law and
can have successful careers (in terms of their getting jobs and promotions in those
jobs).

Why do organisational psychopaths work for organisations?

Organisational psychopaths work for organisations and corporations because they are
attracted (Hercz, 2001) by positions of power. Motivated by a desire to win what they
see as being the “game” of life, and by a desire for power and a desire to gain wealth
and prestige, organisational psychopaths gravitate to wherever these can be found and
this often means that they are to be found in large organisations. Hare says that
(Deutschman, 2005) organisational psychopaths can be found in positions which have
power and control over other people and where the opportunity is there for
self-enrichment.

How organisational psychopaths get into organisations

According to Hare (Walker, 2005) organisational psychopaths look and dress like any
other business people, can be very persuasive, fun to be around and so are able to do
well at recruitment interviews. Organisational psychopaths also do well in interviews
because of their charm (Anon., 2005), ability to think on their feet and ability to present
a good image. Their charm in particular means that (Gettler, 2003) they come across
well at job interviews and promotion interviews and inspire people to have confidence
in them (Ray and Ray, 1982) and this means that they can easily enter and do well in
organisations and corporations. They present the traits of intelligence and success that
many people aspire to (Ray and Ray, 1982) and they thus come across as accomplished
and as desirable employees. Being accomplished liars (Kirkman, 2005) helps them in
obtaining the jobs they want.
According to evolutionary psychologists (Hofmann and Hasebrook, 2004) humans
like to be liked and approved of in order to gain social advantages, supportive
relationships from parents and friends and to attract mates (e.g. spouses). Psychopaths
are aware of this need that people have and are able to use this by presenting
themselves as people who can help, befriend and aid others. They thus make
themselves attractive to know and this facilitates their generating support networks
for themselves. Their friends, family and patrons do not typically realise at early
 stages of their relationships that to organisational psychopaths they are all extremely Organisational
expendable.
Once inside an organisation they can survive for a long time (Loizos, 2005) before
psychopaths
being discovered during which time they can establish defences for themselves to
protect their positions. Dr Paul Babiak, an organisational psychologist working in this
area (Selamat, 2004) says psychopaths tend to rise quickly in organisations thanks to
their manipulative charisma, their single minded determination to get to the top and 1467
their almost complete lack of remorse about who they run over in the process. Babiak
says that their intelligence and social skills permit organisational psychopaths to
present a veneer of normalcy that enables them to get what they want.
Hare reportedly says that (Gettler, 2003) once organisational psychopaths are inside
an organisation they go about methodically planning their rise to the top. Psychopaths
have a reported talent (Ullman, 2006) for using other people and for concealing their
true motives through a combination of ingratiating ways and a façade of normality.
Their polish and cool decisiveness (McCormick and Burch, 2005) can make them seem
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like ideal leaders.

They identify (Clarke, 2005; Hare, 1994) a potential support network of patrons who
can help them; they identify pawns who can be manipulated and they also identify
“police” (auditors, security and human resources personnel) who could potentially
hinder their progress if not dealt with. Organisational psychopaths then manipulate
their way up the corporate ladder, using pawns and shedding patrons as they become
superseded and no longer needed. According to Hare two fractions then typically
develop in the organisation; the supporters, pawns and patrons of the organisational
psychopaths and the detractors, those who realise they have been used and abused or
that the company is in danger. A confrontation results from this during which the
detractors are outmanoeuvred and ultimately removed and the organisational
psychopath ascends to power.

The effects of organisational psychopaths on organisations

Every large company has organisational psychopaths (Newby, 2005) working for it.
According to human resources magazine (Anon., 2005) the recent spate of corporate
collapses in the US can be linked to the senior management of those corporations
exhibiting the behaviours of organisational psychopaths. As organisational
psychopaths are only interested in self-enrichment, then it follows that they do not
necessarily have the interests of their employers in mind and will go against those
interests if they perceive that this will benefit them.
Reporting on the privatisation of New Zealand hospitals in the 1990s one
commentator (Bjornsson, 2002) likened the effects to those that would be expected from
an organisational psychopath. Once corporate management took over the running of
hospitals, corporate norms reportedly began to replace healthcare norms in the
hospitals concerned. This meant that knowledge sharing between hospitals was
stopped, resource allocation became based on a financial analysis of which
departments could make a return on investment rather than being based on societal
health needs and risk became redefined as being the risk to a hospital’s reputation.
Reportedly although there was little money for patient treatment there was money to
spend on team building exercises, management consultants and generous executive
benefits.
As organisational psychopaths have little or no conscience then they are not
driven by any idea of social fairness or social responsibility and this in turn limits
 MD the development of corporate social responsibility within the corporation.
Organisational psychopaths lack any sense of remorse, guilt or shame and so
44,10 are capable of making decisions that put lives at risk in situations where other
managers would make different decisions. Not sharing medical information
between hospitals may put lives at risk that could otherwise not have been put at
risk and so the example from New Zealand above is an apt one. Where an
1468 organisation has been infiltrated by organisational or corporate psychopaths the
result is often (Ullman, 2006) that a few people get very rich while everyone else
suddenly finds themselves abandoned, out of a job, without their promised pension
and/or without even a company left to work for.
In studies of criminal psychopaths Hare and others have found that psychopaths
are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime compared to their incidence in
the criminal population. It is not unreasonable therefore to hypothesise that
organisational psychopaths may be similarly responsible for a disproportionate
amount of organisational misbehaviour, including accounting fraud, stock
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manipulation, unnecessary firings and corporately induced environmental damage.

Organisational psychopaths who get to the top of organisations can be assumed to
be highly intelligent as well as manipulative and some research indicates that
(Johansson and Kerr, 2005) high intelligence in psychopaths seems to enhance their
destructive potential. The power inherent in senior managerial roles in major
organisations and corporations means that the implications of these findings are
obviously significant for corporate management and regulation and for the societies in
which those organisations operate.
In terms of what some of the implications of this for practitioners and employees
are; Clarke, in his book Working with Monsters (Clarke, 2005) describes the destructive
effects organisational psychopaths can have on the inter-personal relationships, mental
health and self-image of the people working around them and he reminds employers
that they have a duty of care top protect their workforce from harm. This should
include providing protection from the effects of working with psychopaths, Clarke
says. Shareholder groups, like pension funds, may also start to take an interest in
whether organisations screen for psychopathy in mangers in order to help protect their
investments.
From a review of the literature on organisational psychopaths it is possible to
hypothesise that a number of effects may be evident resulting from the presence of
organisational psychopaths in managerial roles in organisations. In order to stimulate
further debate and research in this area these are discussed briefly below.

Corporate failure
Organisational psychopaths are concerned with their own enrichment and success and
not that of the organisation they work for. It may be hypothesised therefore that
corporations and other organisations that employ organisational psychopaths are
more likely to experience failure than others are. Psychopaths have no emotional
attachment to the company they work for or to the people they work with and find it
easy (Loizos, 2005) to sack people.

Fraudulent activities
Psychopaths are willing to falsify financial results to get promotion (McCormick and
Burch, 2005) bonuses and other benefits and even to commit outright fraud (Clarke,
2005) on the company that employs them. Fraud is (Kirkman, 2005) a particular crime
 that psychopaths tend to commit according to Cleckley, one of the fist writers and Organisational
researchers on psychopaths.
psychopaths
Unnecessary employee redundancies
Organisational psychopaths have no conscience and are not concerned with the
financial or emotional effects of their actions on other people. They are quite willing to
sack large numbers of staff if this will impress the stock market when passed off as a 1469
cost cutting exercise. The real aim would be to increase the share price and make the
organisational psychopaths’ shares or share options in the company more valuable or
make the company (and its psychopathic managers) more financially powerful.

Exploited workforce
Organisational psychopaths parasitically claim the credit for work they have not done
(Clarke, 2005) and blame others for things that go wrong because of their actions. They
are very willing to exploit the workforce or to move operations to a geographic area
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where the workforce can more easily be exploited. With no emotional attachments to
their colleagues organisational psychopaths are happy to exploit everyone who works
for them.

No sense of corporate social responsibility

As they have no conscience organisational psychopaths are not at all concerned with
the consequences of their actions on the environment or on society. They have no sense
of corporate social responsibility other than paying lip service to the concept when it
makes them look good to do so.

Disheartened workforce
Organisational psychopaths use their manipulative skills to dominate the people they
work with (Clarke, 2005), exploiting them, involving them in sexual affairs, spreading
rumours and engaging in office politics to further their aims. Employees who realise
what is going on after being used and abused and who lose control of their careers at
the hands of a organisational psychopath are naturally disheartened. They are often,
according to Clarke, too afraid to talk to others in the organisation about how they are
suffering.

Political decision making

Generating hostility between groups of colleagues and co-workers can create confusion
in the workplace and enable psychopaths to push through their own agenda at the
expense of the organisations true interests. They can be master political manipulators
and this enables them to make organisational decisions in their own interests rather
than in those of the organisation.

Workplace bullying
Bullying is used by organisational psychopaths as a tactic to humiliate (Clarke, 2005)
subordinates. This may occur just because many psychopaths enjoy and are
stimulated by hurting people but it is also used as a tactic to confuse and disorientate
those who may be a threat to the activities of the organisational psychopath. It
distracts attention away from the activities of the organisational psychopath that may
otherwise be notice by a normally functioning staff.
 MD Short-term decision making
Organisational psychopaths are often content to maximise their immediate wealth and
44,10 power and will tend therefore to make decisions which are not necessarily in the long
term interests of the organisation they work for.

Disregarded investor interests

1470 Self-enrichment, self-promotion and self-gratification are the main aims of
organisational psychopaths. They always put their own interests first and this
means that the interests of investors in the company are disregarded.

Lost economies of expertise

Staff who get in the way of the rise of organisational psychopaths or who try and police
their activities often end up undermined, counter-attacked and eventually removed
from the organisation. Expert staff members are thus lost for no objective reason other
than that they got in the way of an organisational psychopath. This leads to a loss of
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expertise within the organisation and it is thus weakened.

Environmental damage
As organisational psychopaths have little or no conscience then they are not concerned
with the effects of their actions on the environment or on other people and this in turn
limits the development of any sense of environmental responsibility within the
corporation as a whole.

Decisions of questionable legality

With no conscience or sense of morality organisational psychopaths have no problems
with making organisational decisions that are immoral, unethical, contrary to accepted
codes of professional practice or outright illegal.

Business partnerships with organisational psychopaths

Martha Stout, a psychologist and author of the book The Sociopath Next Door says
that most business partners would feel an allegiance to each other out of a common
humanity whereas psychopaths (Loizos, 2005) lie without remorse and treat the
partnership as a game, a game that they aim to win. It can be expected therefore that
when a number of partners go into a business together, if one of them is a psychopath,
then that person will end up with the great majority of financial and material gains
from the business.

Coping with organisational or corporate psychopaths

According to Hare, who is probably the world’s leading expert on psychopaths, if we
can not identify psychopaths we are forever doomed (Hare, 1994), as individuals and as
a society, to be their victims. Psychopaths are able to succeed in society (Deutschman,
2005) and in corporations largely because their colleagues are unaware that people like
this actually exist. Creating an awareness among organisational managers that
psychopaths exist is thus a good first step in attempting to stem the havoc (Clarke,
2005) that these people cause in organisations.
Refining the earlier work of Cleckley (Kirkman, 2005) Hare’s checklist for
identifying criminal psychopaths (Johansson and Kerr, 2005) is now the most widely
used assessment measure in the world for this. This checklist assigns a score of 0-2 on
 each of 20 attributes (Hare, 1991) and those who score 30 or over are entitled to be Organisational
called psychopaths.
Hare (1999) says that even experts can be taken in by psychopaths and that great
psychopaths
care needs to be taken with identifying them and dealing with them. He suggests that it
is a good idea to look for other victims, to form a team with, in attempting to deal with
psychopaths and that this is possible because most psychopaths have lots of victims.
However psychopaths want power and Hare warns that it is dangerous to engage in 1471
direct power struggles with psychopaths as they will seek to inflict emotional or
physical harm on those who oppose them. Both Hare and Clarke, another writer on
organisational psychopaths (Clarke, 2005), advise cutting your losses when dealing
with them. Clarke advises getting out of the organisation concerned as early as you
can, as often by the time you “blow the whistle” on their behaviour your credibility will
have been undermined already and you will not be believed. At the recruitment stage
interviewers should beware of smooth talking, charming extroverts who say all the
right things and seem like ideal candidates. Gaining references from their ex-bosses as
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well as from their peers and their subordinates can illuminate their true nature.

Why do not organisational psychopaths retire once they become rich?

In discussions about organisational psychopaths it has been observed (Boddy, 2005d)
that organisational psychopaths do not retire once they become very wealthy, which is
perplexing until one considers the nature of organisational psychopaths. According to
Hare the psychopaths’ appetite for power and control is insatiable. In other words they
never feel that they have enough power, money or prestige. This may be why such
people in the corporate world do not retire voluntarily no matter how wealthy and
successful they become. Playing the game of corporate power politics is what gives
them their thrill and nothing in their lives can replace that. Being emotionally shallow
they probably have few real friends or a family (promiscuity often brings divorce for
them and friends are discarded as they lose their usefulness) with whom they have
emotional ties. A family day at the seaside is just not appealing to them compared to
the satisfaction to be gained from another day manipulating and abusing people at
work.
Speculation as to what drives organisational psychopaths includes that they pursue
wealth and status to compensate (Pepper, 2005) for an internal sense of worthlessness
and despair. This again gives a clue as to why they never consider themselves rich
enough to retire; in place of an emotionally fulfilled life they have an ever-extendable
wallet that can never be full enough and a desire for power that can never be
completely satisfied and would certainly not be satisfied by retirement.

Why do organisational psychopaths go on corporate acquisition sprees?

Also in discussions about organisational psychopaths it has been noted (Boddy, 2005d)
that organisational psychopaths tend to go on corporate acquisition sprees once they
are in a position to do so. They buy other companies around the world because their
appetite for power and control is insatiable and because it feeds their grandiosity.
The more they can say that they control in terms of financial turnover, geographic
coverage, number of companies purchased, then the more they can feed their sense of
self-importance and the more they can claim to be worth to the company in terms of
salary and bonuses. According to one commentator (Bendell, 2006) they need to be
loved, love to be feared and like to live a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption in order
to reinforce their sense of greatness. Acquisitions also create a sense of change and a
 MD certain amount of chaos in organisations and according to Dr Paul Babiak, (Bendell,
2006) organisational psychopaths thrive in a changing environment. They can hide
44,10 their activities behind a rapidly changing background and can more easily deflect
attention away from themselves and the results of their activities in this environment.

Corporations as psychopaths
1472 It has recently been suggested (Bakan, 2006) that corporations themselves could be
psychopathic because of their lack of conscience. Comments by Robert Hare in the
article suggest that corporations do have the characteristics of a psychopath according
to the definition of the World Health Organisation which states that psychopaths
display the characteristics of being: callous to the feelings of others, incapable of
maintaining enduring relationships, reckless as to the safety of others, deceitful,
incapable of experiencing guilt and display a failure to conform to social norms and
laws.
Corporations which have become psychopathic will engage in such activities as
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seeking out loopholes in the law to avoid taxes and regulations, manipulating their
stock prices where possible to the benefit of executives with shares and share option
schemes and to the detriment of investors, pension funds and workers. Corporations
engage in illegal accounting practices to cover these activities up regardless of the
long-term implications of doing this. If corporations themselves display psychopathic
characteristics then the effect must be amplified or even multiplied when some or all of
the managers running those corporations are organisational psychopaths as well. Here
the lack of any conscience or guiding sense of morality in the corporation can be a
recipe for financial, environmental and societal disaster.

Further research
This paper has been more concerned with exploring the effects of psychopaths on
organisations and of the effects of psychopathically managed organisations on society
and the environment rather than on individuals. This is not to say for one moment that
their effects on individuals are not worth studying and preventing if possible. Rather
that their effects on all areas of business need to be studied and researched in more
detail. Further research is arguably badly needed is this area because very little
research has been undertaken in this area to date and research is needed to contribute
to the building of a body of knowledge to explain the impact of organisational
psychopaths on organizations. Such research would be significant because it would
stimulate debate on this issue in academic circles outside the disciplines of psychology
and criminology and in particular will bring it to the attention of business strategists
and other academics involved in conducting research into business.

Conclusions
The effects of organisational psychopaths on organisations are just beginning to be
explored and this is an under-researched and important area that needs further
research. Further research has been called for into the effects of organisational
psychopaths on the psychopathology of organisations and on employee’s mental
health (Hofmann and Hasebrook, 2004), on the implications of organisational
psychopaths for organisational fraud and business longevity (Boddy, 2005b) and on
the implications of organisational psychopaths for management (Boddy, 2005a) and
corporate social responsibility. Research into how commonly organisational
 psychopaths are to be found at the top of organisations and what the effects of this are Organisational
on the organisations is also much needed.
In the meantime organisations that are concerned that they may be employing
psychopaths
organisational psychopaths can employ consultancies like John Clarke’s or Robert
Hare’s to help them identify organisational psychopaths and manage their behaviour.
Employees who consider they may be working with an organisational psychopath
should perhaps be well advised to look beyond the popular quizzes on the subject such 1473
as that reported in The Times newspaper on-line (The Times, 2005) or the BBC (BBC,
2003) and review some of the more substantial published literature on the subject, such
as Clarke’s (2005) Working with Monsters, or Hare’s (1993) Without Conscience, to help
them confirm or soothe their fears about their colleagues.

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Corresponding author
Clive Roland Boddy can be contacted at: [email protected]

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