Narcissism in the Executive Suite: Implications for Strategic Decision-making and CEO Behavior

In this three-essay dissertation I explore the extent to which individual differences, specifically narcissism, in CEOs might be useful for advancing the understanding of executive behavior. I begin by discussing the nature of narcissism. Next, I develop propositions relating CEO narcissism to strategic, interpersonal, and symbolic aspects of executive behavior. In the second essay, I investigate the impact of two different sources of CEO confidence on risk-taking behavior. I propose that in the face of a given decision, capability cues and dispositional narcissism affect a state of confidence in CEOs, which in turn leads to risk-taking behavior. I discuss three kinds of capability cues recent organizational performance, recent media praise for the CEO, and recent CEO awards that can contribute to CEO confidence. I find evidence that, in general, CEOs engage in greater levels of risk-taking in response to capability cues. However, less narcissistic CEOs are more sensitive to objective performance cues than high narcissistic CEOs are. High narcissistic CEOs are more sensitive to social adulation than their less narcissistic counterparts are. In the third essay, I explore the credit-taking and blame-deflecting aspect of narcissistic CEOs. I find evidence that following poor performance, departure of top managers increased much more for high narcissists than they did for low narcissists. In addition, after poor performance, high narcissists did not lower their share of executive pay as much as did low narcissists.