A nascent British Marketing Professor Clive Boddy has been studying the effects of Corporate Psychopaths over the past five years. In November of 2011 he has publicized his findings in his book “Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational Destroyers.”
His book presents empirical research that corporate psychopaths can destroy companies, entire industries even cause global financial crisis.
He says people who are categorized as psychopaths, which are approximately 1% of the population, have no conscience or empathy and do not care for anyone other than themselves.
And when they advance to executive levels in large corporations it is a disaster waiting to happen.
He asserts that capitalism lost some of its credibility when the large corporations are destroyed by the actions of the corporate psychopaths.
Boddy also argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics that corporate financial scandals have assumed epidemic proportions and corporate psychopaths are essentially responsible from the recent Wall Street based financial crises.
He points out that these people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”
He asserts dynamic and fast paced environment of Financial Industries such as Wall Street are breeding grounds for these psychopaths as they can make their way to executive levels without being exposed.
He emphasizes the role of dark and dysfunctional leaders. “They do whatever it takes to win contracts, take credit for other’s work, over-promise to clients, and use corporate resources for their own ends. They are predators who prey on the easiest source of sustenance and parasitically destroy organizations from within (Babiak and Hare 2006).”
He refers to Robert Hare’s research about the causations of this personality disorder as Hare, the leading research psychologist in this area, states that it is not definitively known that whether this syndrome stems from physical, biological or environmental factors.
He does not mention the role of capitalism in his book as a possible environmental factor but considering the cutthroat nature of competition based means of production, requirement of continual economic growth and blatant materialistic inclination of capitalism; he should look into it.
The author erred in the third paragraph “approximately 1% of the population, have no conscious or empathy and…” Having studied this area for some time now, the word conscious should read conscience. Psychopaths/Sociopaths have no conscience, a condition most of us find nearly incomprehensible. Progressives tend to be concerned about “the other”, whereas brain studies find that psychopaths have no normal activity in the part of the brain that seems to control conscience. Many brain scans among the “conservative” mind seem to have either lesser or no activity in this same part of the brain.
Psychopathy is clearly genetically influenced to a great degree. There are probably several genes in each human when switched on or off can combine to create this condition; that’s the nature of many inherited traits. Genetic polymorphism is well understood from the studies of paleontology and simply means one gene can have a number of different influences in the developing fetus.
There are many unknowns in this area of study, however, it is indisputable fact that there may be only about 1% of true, full-blown psychopaths. My wonder is what about the influence of only some of the genes tending toward psychopathy along with the ones that do not. My guess is nurture plays a significant role in this problem, and IQ probably has something to do with the more successful psychopaths. Given the variables, I would hypothesize that a greater number (maybe 15-20%) of all children born in this country lean toward psychopathic behavior even though they probably are not full-blown psychopaths. They are the dark horses in this game.
Ken,
Thank you so much for the additional info. Clive Boddy states 1% in his book, but given the state of world’s economy I actually would agree with you about the 15-20% which makes me more nervous. I think all companies should come up with some form of testing to identify if they are hiring these dangerous people.
You said you studied in this area. Is there a test to identify psychopathy?
It is an interesting theory nonetheless, and I am pleased that research is being done on it to highlight this issue!
You think the possibility of there being 15-20% borderline psychopathic individuals, sociopathic individuals, and full-blown psychotic individuals in the corporate sector is scary? If this is the case, then ask yourself how many of our politicians in EVERY country in the world are sociopaths, and how many leaders of different countries are sociopaths or full-blown psychopaths?
It’s easy to see if you look for it–and the answer is staggering. As a high-paced corporate environment is easy for these individuals to hide in, so is a representative government. These individuals tend to excel at manipulating the feelings of others, and once in positions of power are nearly impossible to remove, and have the power to cover up the worst of their depredations from scrutiny by the sane.
I would estimate that at least 40% of the current American government are either borderline sociopaths or fully functioning ones. Those, of course, are merely the elected officials–I believe the number of those same personality types appointed by sociopaths to positions of power, including at least 3 of the Supreme Court Justices, are so large as to be numbing in scope. This answers many difficult questions about the conduct of the American government of late, especially since so many of them are in league with their counterparts in Big Business.
I would also suggest that groups like Skull ‘n Bones are selection devices for future sociopathic entrants into government, as are all fraternities that use torture when hazing. I agree with you, we BADLY need a test to determine who is and isn’t a sociopath of some kind, and EVERY politician, corporate executive and clergyman in the world needs to be forced to take it. No exceptions.
God help us all.