The term “Narcissism” is a personality disorder, which the American Psychiatric Association defines as a sense of ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy.’ The disorder of narcissism is found to be prevalent in highly successful people at different organizational levels contributing to negative organizational culture. A narcissistic approach instills a sense of entitlement that is responsible for interpersonal exploitation and showing apathy towards others. Narcissist behavior is a result of an employee’s preoccupation with the idea of achieving autonomy in their profession.
The difficult employees are those that are the most temperamental, i.e., they are busy back-biting, criticizing, and bullying others. The idea behind the exhibition of such negative traits is the achievement of self-entitlement. Hence, these employees are termed as ‘difficult’ as they are involved in creating incivility at the workplace and are norm violators. The violation of ethical norms and policies in an organization is highly resistant to developing a culture of cooperation and mutual understanding. The difficult employees, as per definition, are not only limited to mid-management levels but are also seen in leadership positions. The difficult employees at leadership positions are more troublesome as they act as a very strong disruptive force in building a community-culture, thereby lowering the organizational performance. However, regardless of the position of the employee in the management cadre, every difficult employee offers resistance in the achievement of organizational objectives. This resistance offered by the narcissist employee creates a barrier in teamwork and elevating stress in the workplace environment.
The growing need to use wide-spread workgroups by contemporary organizations has increased the demand for effective team building. Therefore, increased emphasis is being placed on the ingraining of citizenship behavior and positive influences within the organization to successfully manage different workgroups. Recent research studies have been specifically targeted to define and control the emotional tone of a workplace to avoid conflict and aggravation of negative personality traits. It is suggested that community-centered organizational models implemented experience less toxic behavior and healthy organizational culture. It is suggested that the phenomenon of narcissism at the workplace exhibited by leadership and at different levels of hierarchy is a reason for a toxic environment and negative organizational performance.
It is revealed that an employee’s uncensored behavior at any organizational level and overly demanding bosses can contribute to workplace toxicity. Further, leadership narcissism may cause increased employee turnover as the employees are treated as financial liabilities, and bosses are prone to exhibit unethical behaviors. Narcissist employees tend to exhibit self-centered behavior and focus more on self-gratification at work. Therefore, in their pursuit of climbing the success ladder, such employees may cause bullying and exploitation. This exploitation may reach the level of abuse and violating the rights of other employees.
Hence, the idea of community building in contemporary organizations is a far cry in a negative organizational culture. The concept of community building in an organization refers to the transformation of one’s skills into a cohesive entity, manifesting a diversified set of skills. In order to build a community culture, it is important to assemble teams containing mutually supportive individuals and make policies that are fair and unrestricted to improvements.
It is observed that employees’ narcissistic behavior leads them to exercise performances that are directed to achieve their hidden motives of achieving self-success. Hence, the consequent unethical actions taken by a narcissist for achieving their selfish motives may cause a negative impact on the performance of the organization. The organization may face increase employee turnover due to an unfair and illegitimate workplace climate.
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