Performative narcissism: When organizations are made successful, admirable, and unique through narcissistic work

Abstract

Dramatic stories of corporate crises appear in newspapers and magazines all over the world; one explanation offered by scholars has been that the affected organization suffered (literally) from narcissism. As responsible, ethical, non-narcissistic behavior is claimed to be crucial for management, the purpose of this article is to advance our knowledge about narcissism in organizations by developing an understanding of which organizational work enacts organizations as successful, admired, and unique. The dominant use of narcissism as a pathological condition limits the possibility to learn about organizing processes since it provides simplistic explanations. By introducing the notion of performative narcissism, we re-focus attention from the pathological condition of organizations to potentially pervasive organizational practices. Thus, we see that narcissistic work is a sociomaterial process not limited to organizational borders, but connecting and enrolling people, artifacts, animals, and places into mutually dependent, shifting, and composite assemblages that emerge through practices reproducing the organization as successful and unique.