Employee Narcissism and Promotion Prospects

First published: January 23, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12619

Commentary

Self-absorbed individuals can be in positions of influence, but it's hard to explain how they become so.

Because upward mobility in formal hierarchies depends on supervisory evaluations, the study here examined the relationship between employees' narcissism and supervisors' evaluations of their promotability, testing predictions from displays of power and impression management perspectives.

Two multi-source surveys of organizational employees and their supervisors (S1: N employees = 166, N supervisors = 93; S2: N employees = 128, N supervisors = 85) measured employees' narcissism (S1, S2), employees' sense of

The results supported the display of power perspective. Narcissism showed both higher self-promotion and greater sense of power over supervisors, but it is the latter that explained the positive relationship between employees' narcissism and their evaluations of their promotability.

Employees with high levels of narcissism behave as if they are more powerful in the organization, and therefore exhibit the behavior expected of them in higher-level positions, according to the study.