Corporate Psychopathy, with Clive Boddy

On psychopaths in the workplace and politics, and possible remedies

Our latest MindMatters is up. Elan and I interviewed Dr. Clive Boddy about his research on corporate psychopathy. I recommend you take an hour of your time to check it out (30 minutes at 2x). I thought it was a great discussion.

Clive Boddy is Associate Professor of Management at Anglia Ruskin University, a leading researcher in the field of corporate psychopathy, and author of the book A Climate Of Fear: Stone Cold Psychopaths At Work. Today on MindMatters, we interview Clive about his research, why psychopaths do not make good leaders (despite claims to the contrary), how they contribute to employee job satisfaction, and how toxic leadership intersects with incompetent leadership. Once a taboo subject, corporate psychopathy has gained widespread acknowledgment in the last decade or so. But another related subject is only now breaking through academia and public consciousness: political psychopathy. Clive discusses his own work in that field as well, with comments on screening politicians for psychopathy. We even talk about Star Wars.

(Audio is available here, or on most podcast platforms.)

In 2021 Clive published a paper on political psychopathy, using Hermann Goering as a case study. I had used similar sources (Gilbert, Kelley) in my own piece on the subject:

His latest paper is on Bernie Madoff: “Insights into the Bernie Madoff financial market scandal which identify new opportunities for business market researchers.” If you’re new to this Stack, or missed it the first time, you can also check out my own piece on Madoff:

Our discussion with Clive also got into another topic I’ve been highlighting here recently: socio-occupational adaptation. As he wrote in this paper:

Hogan puts the base level of ineffective leadership at around 65% ... This is to the extent that up to 70% of employees would take a pay cut if their immediate superior was fired ... Moreover, between 60% and 75% of employees report that the worst part of their job is dealing with their superior..., who is thus the main influence on employee job satisfaction.

This is just one symptom of upward-adaptation, i.e. incompetent people occupying a position above their level of competence. Psychopaths are usually incompetent, but they add a level of malevolence and abuse orders of magnitude higher than your average (non-psychopathic) inept boss or manager.

Like Lobaczewski, Clive supports psychological screening for politicians to exclude them top leadership positions. He is also receptive to the idea of something like employee participation in the manager hiring (or firing) process, which Lobaczewski also recommends in Logocracy. Incompetent and psychopathic managers often manage to pull the wool over the eyes of their superiors. Employees, by contrast, have a much better grasp on their managers’ level of competence.

Oh, and on that reference to Star Wars, here’s our MindMatters discussion on Revenge of the Sith, for those with academic interests some consider to be … unnatural.