Broad College of Business, Michigan State, United States
Employees’ active involvement with the strategy formation process has been thought to be crucial for organizational recovery from the crisis. However, little is known about what shapes employees’ perceptions about the crisis and organization, fostering trust in employees and motivating such behaviors. Drawing from the recent stakeholder view of upper echelons, we propose that a characteristic that people readily detect from CEOs—CEO narcissism—can be a key determinant of employees’ decision to involve with strategy formation process. Specifically, we examine two different presentation styles of narcissism—communal and agentic narcissism—and reveal their nuanced effects. We predict that employees’ perception of communal (agentic) narcissism in their CEOs has positive (negative) relationships with involvement in strategy formation via organizational trust. We also posit that, when employees attribute crisis internally to an organization to a greater degree, these relationships are further amplified. We tested our hypotheses across two studies, involving 258 employees (Study 1; online survey) from US, Canada, and the UK and 77 employees (Study 2; field survey) enrolled in an advanced degree program in a major U.S. university. Results generally supported our hypotheses.
