Good soldiers or bad apples? Exploring the impact of employee narcissism on constructive and destructive voice

Abstract

Narcissists have always been thought to have both positive and negative characteristics. However, the existing research regarding the ways that narcissistic employees express such positive and negative traits in organizations is still limited. The results of a longitudinal field study based on 450 participants of one Chinese firm to investigate the hypothesized model. The results show that employee narcissism has a positive effect on destructive voice via perceived overqualification. Moreover, organizational identification weakens the relation between employee narcissism and destructive voice via perceived overqualification. The results casts light on the mechanism between employee narcissism and voice. These findings provide significant insights for organizations in regard to the managing of narcissistic employees and overqualified employees. These findings also have important practical implications for organizations, enabling them to develop more appropriate human resource management strategies for narcissistic employees.