Corporate Psychopaths

As once-great companies are brought down by the misdeeds of their leaders, commentators on business ethics note that corporate scandals have assumed epidemic proportions. One writer on leadership goes as far as to say that modern society is suffering from a plague of bad leadership in both the private and public sectors (Allio, 2007). These commentators raise the intriguing question of how resourceful organisations end up with such poor leaders in the first place (Singh, 2008). Understanding the role of Corporate Psychopaths helps to answer this question. Psychopaths are people without a conscience who often end up in prison (Hare, 1999). They are one of the most studied of all people with personality disorders. A well-established, valid, and reliable method for identifying them exists, called the Psychopathy Checklist — Revised (PCL-R) (Hare, 1991; Hare at al., 1991). This checklist is used around the world, and has been called the ‘gold standard’ tool for identifying and assessing psychopathy (Edens, 2006; Mahmut et al., 2007; Edens et al., 2006).