Faculty Articles

Creating a survey for analyzing a culture of narcissistic, toxic, and power behaviors in an organization

Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

The purpose for creating this survey was to understand employees’ experiences of coping with their organizational administrators/leaders who have characteristics regarding narcissism and elements of power, and who create a toxic culture. After much research and reflection, it prompted me to further my thoughts regarding a development of an instrument to measure these factors of a person who maintains an administrative/leadership position. Additionally, this survey seeks to understand the challenges, successes, and advice from employees who have been prone to a power hungry, narcissistic, and toxic leadership culture, as well as the mystery behind these behaviors. This survey will hopefully provide others (e.g., employees, administrators, researchers) useful information for those who have been subject to power controlled, narcissistic, and toxic environments. Hopefully, the purpose of this survey will give organizational personnel an optimistic point of view to become better informed how to identify and deal with certain behaviors and characteristics of controlling, narcissistic, and toxic leaders. Campbell, Hoffman, Campbell, and Marchisio (2011) stated there is limited empirical research on how narcissistic characteristics of a leader have an impact on organizational issues. Leadership is an actual utilization of power used by leaders in an organization to influence or control behaviors of the employees (Daft, 2014). Dobbs (2014) commented that “toxic leadership is a multidimensional construct that includes elements of abusive supervision along with narcissism, authoritarianism, self-promotion, and unpredictability” (p. 15).

Comments

Unpublished working paper

Additional Comments

Please contact me at daviross@nova.edu for further dialogue and permission to use this survey.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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