Dark Leadership and the Fate of Organizations

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the authors’ view of how the relatively recent interest in the dark side of personality has influenced leadership research. Conventional wisdom of leadership researchers has always been that the corporate elite is a race of heroes. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section provides some context and background for the subsequent discussion of leadership and the dark side of personality. The second section describes how the authors arrived at the notion of “the dark side of personality” and its impact on leadership. The third section summarizes the lessons that have been learned about these topics over the years. The chapter concludes with some final observations.