Machiavellianism in the workplace

Machiavellianism in the workplace is the employment of cunning and duplicity in a business setting. The term Machiavellianism is from the book The Prince by Machiavelli which lays out advice to rulers how to govern his or her subjects. Machiavellianism has been studied extensively over the past 40 years as a personality characteristic that shares features with manipulative leadership tactics. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers and academics. The Machiavellian typically only manipulates on occasions where it is necessary to achieve the required objectives.[1]

Oliver James identifies Machiavellianism as one of the dark triadic personality traits in the workplace, the others being narcissism and psychopathy.[2]

A new model of Machiavellianism based in organizational settings consists of three factors:[1]

The presence of Machiavellianism in an organisation has been positively correlated with counterproductive workplace behaviour and workplace deviance.[1]

Workplace bullying overlap

Main article: Workplace bullying

According to Namie, Machiavellians manipulate and exploit others to advance their perceived personal agendas but he emphasizes that they are not mentally ill. They do not have a personality disorder, schizophrenia and neither are they psychopaths. Machiavellianism represents the core of workplace bullying.[3]

The following are the guiding principles of Machiavellianism:[4]

High Machiavellians may be expected to do the following:[4]

In studies there was a positive correlation between Machiavellianism and workplace bullying. Machiavellianism predicted involvement in bullying others. The groups of bullies and bully-victims had a higher Machiavellianism level compared to the groups of victims and persons non-involved in bullying. The results showed that being bullied was negatively related to the perceptions of clan and adhocracy cultures and positively related to the perceptions of hierarchy culture. The results of a moderated regression analysis demonstrated that Machiavellianism was a significant moderator of the relationships between the perceptions of adhocracy and hierarchy cultures and being bullied.[5]

In research, Machiavellianism was positively associated with subordinate perceptions of abusive supervision (an overlapping concept with workplace bullying).[6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Kessler, SR; Bandeiii, AC; Spector, PE; Borman, WC; Nelson,CE; and Penney, LM 2010. Reexamining Machiavelli: A three dimensional model of Machiavellianism in the workplace. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40, 1868–1896
  2. ↑ James O Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks (2013)
  3. ↑ Namie, G. (2006). Why Bullies Bully? A Complete Explanation.
  4. 1 2 Greenberg J, Baron RA Behavior in Organizations: Understanding and Managing the Human Side of Work (2003)
  5. ↑ Irena Pilch, Elżbieta Turska Journal of Business Ethics February 2014 Relationships Between Machiavellianism, Organizational Culture, and Workplace Bullying: Emotional Abuse from the Target’s and the Perpetrator’s Perspective
  6. ↑ Kohyar Kiazada, Simon Lloyd D. Restubog, Thomas J. Zagenczyk, Christian Kiewitz, Robert L. Tang In pursuit of power: The role of authoritarian leadership in the relationship between supervisors’ Machiavellianism and subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervisory behavior

Further reading

Books

Academic papers

External links

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