Female CEOs with a squeeze of narcissism: A perfect cocktail for corporate performance?

Abstract

Narcissism is prevalent in the upper echelons, and CEO narcissism has been shown to affect corporate outcomes (although not corporate performance in a significant and robust way). We argue that narcissism may be performance enhancing in the context of female CEOs because female CEOs are unique – based on both nurture (i.e., the double bind) and nature (i.e., evolutionary traits) – in being able to exploit the bright sides of narcissism while moderating its dark sides. Our empirical results support our arguments. Thus, we find that narcissistic, female CEOs beat their male peers in terms of corporate performance.