Problem personalities in the workplace: Development of the corporate personality inventory

The notion that individuals with psychopathic personality characteristics exist in the corporate world is both a logical extension of the estimated community prevalence rates of the disorder, as well as a scientific hypothesis based on the observation that a number of the characteristics of the disorder 9.1 Introduction 139 9.2 Aim 143 9.3 Method 143 9.3.1 Participants 143 9.4 Measures 144 9.4.1 Participant Demographics 144 9.4.2 Paulhus Deception Scales: Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding 144 9.4.3 Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised 145 9.4.4 Corporate Personality Inventory 145 9.5 Results 146 9.5.1 Descriptive Statistics 146 9.5.2 Factor Structure of the Corporate Personality Inventory 147 9.5.3 Discriminant and Concurrent Validity 152 9.5.4 Criterion Validity 152 9.6 Discussion 154 9.7 Limitations and Future Directions 156 References 159 Appendix: Corporate Psychopathy Inventory Items 161 could convey an advantage within this context (Crant & Bateman, 2000; Kets de Vries & Miller, 1985). However, very little literature has actually tested the validity of the hypothesis, despite the proliferation of the idea in media portrayals and semi-academic publications (Babiak & Hare, 2006; Boddy, 2011b; Dutton, 2012). Given that psychopathy in its criminal manifestation has been shown to predict aggression and violent behaviour, the assumption has been that in a business setting those individuals with the disorder will be responsible for fraud (Blickle, Schlegel, Fassbender, & Klein, 2006), workplace bullying (Caponecchia, Sun, & Wyatt, 2012) and poor management (Babiak, Neumann, & Hare, 2010). Smith and Lilienfeld (2013) have, though, recently posited a ‘double-edged sword’ hypothesis, citing examples from studies that have shown positive characteristics including being a strategic thinker, being creative or innovative and successful leadership (Babiak et al., 2010; Lilienfeld, Waldman, Landfield, Watts, Rubenzer, & Faschingbauer, 2012). The present study seeks to further clarify the distinction between positive and negative manifestations of psychopathic personality characteristics in a corporate sample. The aims of the study include the development of an assessment tool to measure psychopathic personality traits in a business setting, as well as the elucidation of how these characteristics correlate with other validated measures relevant to psychopathy assessment.