Vulnerable narcissistic leadership meets Covid-19: the relationship between vulnerable narcissistic leader behaviour and subsequent follower irritation

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ABSTRACT Leaders’ vulnerable narcissism may cause followers irritation due to its antagonistic and neurotic nature. Based on conservation of resources theory, we propose and test a model of between-person and reciprocal within-person relations between weekly experiences of vulnerable narcissistic leader behaviours (VNLB) and followers’ irritation in subsequent weeks. We argue that in time of crisis and uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns related to it, VNLB adds to follower irritation. We drew a sample from a population affected by workplace uncertainty, that is, the UK education sector during the first weeks of the Covid pandemic (N = 159). Five weeks of longitudinal data were collected. We conducted a random intercepts cross-lagged panel model and separated within- from between-person sources of variance in VNLB and follower irritation. Our findings show that VNLB positively related to follower irritation at the between-person level. The relationships at the within-person level of analysis were less clear. Experiences of VNLB resulted in follower irritation in subsequent weeks for some of the time lags, but not for others. We find limited indicators for a reciprocal relationship between VNLB and irritation. We discuss implications and link our findings to the study context of COVID-19 pandemic.