Counterproductive Work Behaviors

4The Corporate Psychopath

As mentioned above, despite traditional views of psychopathy as being purely maladaptive, certain features of the disorder can predispose individuals for success in arenas characterized by physical or social risk, such as business, law, politics, high-contact or extreme sports, law enforcement, firefighting, and front-line military combat (Boddy, 2014). The realization that psychopaths are found at the top of organizations and seem to favor working with other people’s money in large financial organizations led to the development of the corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis. The theory suggests that corporate psychopaths rising to key senior positions in modern corporations where they are able to ...