‘The pursuit of authority and glory may be an enemy of flexibility’
Executives who crave control and admiration are the ones driving return-to-office mandates, according to new research that HR professionals should weigh when leadership challenges flexible work policies without a clear business rationale.
A new peer-reviewed study has found that leaders with narcissistic personality traits are significantly more likely to resist remote and hybrid work arrangements. The research was conducted by Marissa Shandell, Courtney Elliott, and Adam Grant, and published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
The study concludes that narcissistic leaders oppose virtual work primarily because it threatens their access to power and status, rather than out of concern for organizational productivity. Shandell, Elliott, and Grant write that "leader narcissism is a critical but neglected source of resistance to remote work."
According to Psychology Today, narcissism is characterized by “a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment”.
The findings are drawn from three studies: an archival analysis of 259 Fortune 500 CEOs, a three-wave survey of 359 leaders, and a controlled experiment involving 546 leaders.
Narcissism versus public resistance
In the first study, researchers analyzed CEOs from the 2020 Fortune 500 list using unobtrusive measures of narcissism, including annual report photo size, signature size, and executive compensation relative to other senior leaders. The sample was 93 per cent male and 91 per cent white, with an average CEO age of 59.46 years and average tenure of 11.02 years.
Without control variables, CEO narcissism was positively associated with resistance to remote work, according to the study's regression results (b = 0.47, p < 0.001). That relationship remained statistically significant even after accounting for CEO age, gender, race, tenure, and firm size (b = 0.45, p < 0.001).
Exploratory analysis found narcissistic CEOs were more likely to also serve as board chairman, a proxy for power motivation, and to hold more external board directorships, a proxy for status motivation. However, both proxies predicted resistance to remote work only among CEOs in industries not dependent on frontline workers, according to the authors' moderated mediation analysis.
Your job ads may be attracting narcissists, according to a previous report.
Power and status link
The second study surveyed 359 U.S.-based leaders, who were 55.2 per cent male with an average age of 38.13 years. Narcissism was positively associated with remote work resistance (b = 0.50, p < 0.001), a relationship that held even after controlling for trust, the Big Five personality traits, and the two other Dark Triad traits, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
Bootstrapped mediation analysis found narcissism's indirect effect on resistance through power motivation was significant, with an indirect effect of 0.14. The indirect effect through status motivation was also significant, at 0.13, according to the study.
In the third study, an online experiment, participants exposed to a narcissism-activating prompt reported significantly higher remote work resistance (M = 3.69) than those in a control condition (M = 3.40), a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). Power motivation mediated this effect, with an indirect effect of 0.17, while status motivation did not significantly mediate the relationship in this study, the authors reported.
Recommendations for HR
Shandell, Elliott, and Grant recommended that organizations account for narcissism when forming committees responsible for remote work policy, writing that doing so "may be wise" given narcissistic leaders' preference for power- and status-conferring roles.
The authors also suggested that employees advocating for flexibility may find more success consulting leaders directly rather than pushing assertively, a strategy intended to avoid triggering leaders' power and status concerns.
“Given that remote and hybrid work are here to stay, and organizations face increasing challenges in attracting and retaining employees, flexible work arrangements are likely to become even more valuable,” said the authors. “Our findings show that narcissistic leaders’ cravings for power and status are key barriers to embracing this new workplace reality. The pursuit of authority and glory may be an enemy of flexibility.”
Narcissism is one of some of the toxic behaviours that should be eradicated at work, according to a previous report.
