Recent studies have reported an association between narcissism and employee work outcomes. Narcissism has been studied for a long time, but its relationship with employee work outcomes is not much explored, particularly in Pakistani context [44]. Banking sector of Pakistan has been a fast growing business sector in Pakistan [7], and the literature suggests that mental distress among banking professionals has increased drastically over the last decade [15, 17, 27, 52]. It affects their performance and leads toward turnover. There may be different reasons for this alarming change, but unsupportive leadership is considered one of the main factors [7]. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of narcissistic leadership on employee work outcomes (job satisfaction, job performance, well-being, stress and intentions to quit) in the banking sector of Punjab, Pakistan.
Narcissism has been studied as a positive as well as a negative trait [45, 46]. The supporters state that people with narcissistic personality are intelligent [5], highly creative [50, 61] and have high self-esteem [60, 21]. On the other hand, some researchers believe that people with narcissistic personality hate themselves and the high self-esteem is just a defense mechanism [10]. The central focus of a narcissist’s behavior is his own self, i.e., the behavior is highly focused on self and doing things that are just good for themselves, instead of focusing on the needs of others around and affected by them [54]. According to Campbell et al. [14] and Fahy [22], the people with narcissistic personality are not good at teamwork as narcissists tend to blame others for their failures. Narcissistic leadership has negative relationship with team’s creativity as well [30]. That’s why, people do not like them and try to avoid them. Studies have shown that narcissists, when given the chance, try to take more than others, make competitive choices [12, 13] and try to do good when they see higher opportunity [59]. According to Campbell [11], they are only attracted to people with high status. On the other hand, people are impressed by them at first because of their energy and extraversion, but this is a short-lived duration [47]. When people start to notice how self-centered they are, this phase of attraction most likely fades. It is reported by narcissists’ partners that initially they had an exciting relationship, but the relationship lacks intimacy [25]. They most likely behave in an erratic and aggressive manner when criticized [10, 41]. Overall, a narcissistic individual can have many outcomes for himself that are positive, but there are many negative consequences of his/her behavior for those who are in relationships with him/her.
Narcissistic leaders are observed to follow their own agenda rather than thinking about their followers and do what suits them instead of doing what is best as a whole [16, 45, 46]. As compared to others, narcissists are most likely to self-promote and self-nominate toward management positions [34]. Managers with such personality engage their skills in influencing, bullying and deception [28] to get desired positions. They use these tactics more often than their actual skills and take extra credit for success than they actually deserve; and if they fail, they blame others for it [34]. There are certain psychological problems related to narcissistic leadership like inferiority feelings, unquenchable need for power, hypersensitivity, anger, lack of empathy and inflexibility.
Malik and Khan [44] examined the impact of narcissistic leadership on psychological contracts of employees (i.e., motivation level, commitment level, ownership of work, and behavior and attitude). The results showed that narcissism of boss causes a decrease in psychological contracts of the employees who work for such bosses. According to Robbins [51] and Akehurst et al. [2], employees set their attitudes toward their jobs by considering their behavior, feelings and beliefs. The satisfaction of employees toward their jobs is influenced by many factors within the organization. However, the satisfaction of an employee with his job and the leadership style of the boss are two main elements that have a definitive impact on the effectiveness of an organization [7]. Leadership style of the boss or manager has a direct relationship with employee satisfaction [3, 58]. However, narcissism seems to have a complex relationship with job satisfaction of the employees. Some studies find a direct positive relationship of narcissism and employee job satisfaction [1], some find a direct negative relationship [43], whereas some find no direct relationship at all [56]. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:
Hypothesis 1
Narcissistic leadership would have a significantly negative impact on employee job satisfaction.
The success of any organization relies on the ability of its leader to optimize the human resource of that organization. A good leader understands how important employees are in accomplishing the goals of organization and the importance of motivating employees to move toward these goals. It is believed that leadership style of the boss has significant relationship with employee job performance [19, 36, 49]. Fang et al. [23] conducted a study on hospital employees to check relationship between leadership style and employee job satisfaction, commitment and job performance. The results indicated that leadership style has a significant direct positive impact on job satisfaction. On the other hand, there is an indirect positive relationship of leadership to job performance through job satisfaction. This suggests that leadership style effects job performance of employees through job satisfaction. Godkin and Allcorn [29] stated that satisfied employees cause the organization to be successful. As narcissistic leadership is considered to be a negative kind of leadership, it would have negative association with job performance. However, its relation with job performance is yet to be examined. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:
Hypothesis 2
Narcissistic leadership has a significantly negative impact on employee job performance.
The stress caused by poor supervision often results in compromised well-being, and the outcomes are either mental or physical disturbance. The literature suggests that leadership is linked to employee well-being in a way that it acts as means to affect the well-being of employees [39]. According to Gilbreath and Benson [26], employee well-being is not only affected by the physical work environment, but also by the psychosocial work environment. Godkin and Allcorn [29] found that narcissists spend unlimited amount of time in order to succeed. In this process, they blame and exploit others working for them. If the narcissistic leader is working overtime, then he/she expects the same from his employees without considering about their well-being. Narcissistic leadership is considered as a negative style of leadership. Therefore, the relationship between narcissistic leadership and employee well-being needs to be studied.
Hypothesis 3
Narcissistic leadership has a significantly negative impact on employee well-being.
Leadership is one of the main causes of stress among employees. It is reported that employees face distressed situation if they face an abusive leader or a passive leader. Both kinds of leaders result in increased stress among the followers [9, 53]. Hsieh [37] also validated that leadership style has a significant negative influence on job stress and significant positive influence on job satisfaction. Narcissistic leaders tend to be arrogant [35] that leads to vanishing the sense of community from organization and leaving employees depressed, feeling anxious and disengaged from work [29]. Based on the above discussion, this is assumed that narcissistic leadership would have significant relationship with employee job-related stress.
Hypothesis 4
Narcissistic leadership has a significantly positive impact on increased stress level of employees.
The behavior of supervisor is one of the most important factors in increasing or decreasing employee’s morale. Manager expects from employees, in terms of productivity and quality of work, but fails to develop sense of belonging among employees [18]. It results in hateful feelings about the leader. To start over and have a new beginning, employees have to leave the place and find new work. According to Grier [31], a couple of employees had to leave the organization and start over new due to narcissistic boss. There is a saying, ‘Employees don’t leave companies—they leave bosses.’ Satisfied employees execute more positive feelings toward their jobs with increased feelings of responsibility and accountability and stay with the organization for a long time [55].
Elçi et al. [20] examined the effects of ethical leadership and leadership effectiveness on employee turnover intentions using work-related stress as a mediator. They concluded that ethical leadership and leadership effectiveness have negative association with employee turnover intentions, whereas work-related stress has a positive effect on employee turnover intentions. As narcissistic leadership is considered to be a negative kind of leadership, its relation to employee turnover intensions is yet to be examined.
Hypothesis 5
Narcissistic leadership has a significantly positive impact on employees intent to leave.