Peer-reviewed research on how executive personality shapes organizational outcomes.
My research sits at the intersection of strategic management and behavioral science. I study how the measurable psychological traits of CEOs and senior executives — narcissism, humility, Machiavellianism, agreeableness, psychopathy — systematically predict the decisions they make and the results those decisions produce.
My most-cited work demonstrates that CEO narcissism drives corporate social responsibility spending — not out of altruism, but as a vehicle for self-enhancement. This has implications for how boards evaluate CSR commitments and how investors interpret "purpose-driven" leadership. More recent work extends to the full Dark Triad, examining CEO psychopathy and its effects on downsizing decisions, and how "moral elasticity" among dark-trait executives enables simultaneous CSR and corporate irresponsibility.
In counterpoint to the narcissism research, I've studied how CEO humility creates market outperformance. The mechanism is counterintuitive: humble CEOs set lower expectations with analysts and stakeholders, then consistently exceed them. This "expectations management" effect compounds over time and produces superior risk-adjusted returns. This work was featured in Harvard Business Review.
Machiavellian CEOs are skilled bargainers who extract favorable terms from suppliers, partners, and even their own boards. My work in the Strategic Management Journal shows this produces measurable cost advantages — but the long-term consequences for trust and organizational culture are more complex. Related work in the Journal of Applied Psychology examines how Machiavellianism shapes executive pay outcomes.
My work on entrepreneurship examines the adversarial dynamics between founders and investors — a relationship that is far more psychologically complex than standard agency models suggest. Recent publications explore how personality drives funding outcomes, how power struggles unfold over venture control, and why entrepreneurship is psychologically perilous.
A meta-analysis published in The Leadership Quarterly (nominated for Best Paper, 2022) synthesized the evidence on agreeableness and leadership outcomes. Ongoing work examines the curvilinear effects of CEO agreeableness — why being "too nice" can be as problematic as being too aggressive.
A central challenge in studying CEO psychology is measurement — you can't ask a Fortune 500 CEO to sit for a personality test. I've pioneered videometric methods that assess personality traits from observable behavior in public settings (earnings calls, media appearances, conference presentations), enabling research on executives who would otherwise be inaccessible.
Full publication list and CV available on request.