Introduction Althoughpeople generally expect that narcissism has only negative effects on leadershipbehaviors, there are some good sides of narcissism.
According to Post (1986), forsome conditions, especially in crisis, narcissistic leaders can be moreeffective and more desired by their followers than less narcissistic ones. Furthermore,Maccoby (2000) identified these kind of leaders as “productive narcissist”leaders, Conclusion Limitations Thereare some limitations of the study which can have adverse effects on the results.First of all, most of the studies in the literature are correlational studiesthat have little control and cannot infer cause-effect relationship. There arejust a few experiments on this topic but those experiments were conducted forspecific conditions like in military cadets. The limited number of experimentsin specific groups rather than experiments on organizational leadership ingeneral prevent researchers to generalize the results and find the underlyingreasons or moderators between narcissism and leadership. Theother important limitation of the studies is that gender equality do not providedin terms of number of women and men.
Most of the studies in the literature areconducted with men and most of the data are collected from men leaders. Thereare just a few research which collect data from women. It can be problematicbecause of the limited source to compare gender effects of gender trends inleadership and narcissism. Moreover, it’s also problematic to generalize theresults without controlling whether they’re the same or not. Lastly,the great number of the studies were conducted in Western societies, because ofthe deficiency of research in different cultures generalization can be debatable.The perspective toward leadership or leadership behaviors and the level ofshowing narcissism to others in the organization or attitudes towardsnarcissism can be different in independent or collectivistic cultures and thesecan have a potential effects on the results.
Therefore, conducting these kindof studies in various societies would be more beneficial to generalize theresults and see the differences or similarities between those cultures.Future Direction Inorder to reduce the adverse effects of limitations, further studies can beconducted. Experiments might be designed to measure the topic empirically,therefore number of women and men can be controlled in the experiments. Moreover,the situation of the organization can be considered. Because the situation ofthe organization which is whether the organization is in crisis, in process ofchange or stay stable can affect the leaders’ behaviors and attitudes towardnarcissism. Moreover, solid evidences like profit, successful change or advancementscan be examined while analyzing outcomes of leadership narcissism. Lastly, 360°feedbacks can be collected from coworkers and subordinates to evaluate theleader.
