Dark Side Behavior – defining the concept

The concept of dark side organizational behavior is to some degree an under researched concept in the management, leadership and organizational studies literature. There are however, a number of notable articles that have attempted to advance the topic (e.g.

Balthazard et al. 2006; Dellaportas et al. 2007; Duffy et al. 2006; Lawrence and Robinson 2007b; Paulhus and Williams 2002). Whilst the general management and organizational behavior literature exploring dark side research has been limited, it is even more pronounced in the HR literature save for a number of insightful pieces (see Callahan 2011; Ghosh et al. 2011a; Ghosh et al. 2011b; Godkin and Allcorn 2011; Trudel and Reio 2011). As the negative impact from the financial crisis has continued to unfold, there has been an upsurge in the dark side literature. For the purposes of clarity, the concepts of dark side and dysfunctional behaviors will be used interchangeably as they reflect a darker nature in people and organizations that have the capacity to lead to some form of organizational crises or disaster (Shrivastava et al. 1988; Turner 1976, 1994).

Over the past two decades the extant literature has explored the dark side concept from multiple levels and perspectives - from workplace deviance, incivility and counterproductive behaviors (Andersson and Pearson 1999; Aquino and Thau 2009; Bennett and Robinson 2000; Cortina 2008; Duffy et al. 2002; Hepburn and Enns 2013; Robinson and Bennett 1995; Robinson and O'Leary-Kelly 1998; Warren 2003) to unethical behavior and corruption (Chikudate 2002; De Hoogh and Den Hartog 2008; Giroux 2008; Greenfield 2010; Jensen et al. 2009; Lipton 2002; Sherman 2002; Sims and Brinkmann 2003; Trevino 1986; Trevino et al. 2006; Werther 2003a); from leadership derailment and dysfunction (Aasland et al. 2010; Board 2010; Boddy 2011; Einarsen et al. 2007; Felps et al. 2006; Furnham 2010; Furnham et al. 2012; Gustafson and Ritzer 1995; Judge et al. 2009; Kets de Vries 2006; Leap 2008; Lewellyn and Muller-Kahle 2012; Stein 2000; Stein 2005) to organizational corruption and deceit (Anand et al. 2005; Ashforth and Anand 2003; Ashforth et al. 2008; Greve et al. 2010; Levine 2005a; Stein 2003, 2011; Whittle and Mueller 2012). Dark side behavior therefore exists on multiple levels along a continuum that ranges from relatively benign behavior such

as incivility at one end of the spectrum to fraud and corruption at the opposite end of the spectrum.

There have been a number attempts to correlate dark side behaviors with performance / failure or develop instruments to capture various types of dark side behaviors. Robinson and Bennett (1995) and Bennett and Robinson (2000) for example, are credited with developing one of the first multi-dimensional scales to measure workplace deviance and its impact on the individual and organization. The utility of this scale has significance in that it can identify antecedent conditions that my lead to various types of deviant behavior which may act as an early warning indicator of more fundamental organizational issues. Similarly, Chatterjee and Hambrick (2007) and Brennan and Conroy (2013) utilized text based searches to determine the impact of specific dark side behaviors [narcissism and hubris] on organizational performance and found some evidence to support their hypotheses / arguments that these dark side traits can have positive as well as negative effects of the organization. Furnham et al. (2012) also found evidence that a number of dark side behaviors can be positively linked with individual and organizational success, for example high self-confidence, risk-taking and cunning correlate strongly with sales type personalities and are associated with success in this field. That said the narcissistic dispositions associated with successful CEO’s that Chatterjee and Hambrick (2007) found are also posited to turn from a positive to a negative attribute as power grows (Furnham et al. 2012: 912) potentially resulting in leadership derailment.

Although much of the literature has explored aspects of dark side behavior in the context of the individual, group perspectives – there is a dearth of pre-existing empirical literature that advances our understanding of how and why dark side behavior becomes socialized and legitimized at the organizational and institutional [field] level. Scholars such as Campbell et al. (2011), Shadnam and Lawrence (2011) and Stein (2011) have argued that understanding the interplay between hierarchical levels and variants of dark side behavior might shed light

on the antecedent conditions that legitimize the socialization of these behaviors. Stein (2011) for example, posited that a manic culture [reflective of a number of narcissistic dimensions] played a significant role in the decision-making behavior of the political and financial leadership in many countries impacted by the financial crisis. Crucially, Stein contends that a change in culture metastasized over a multi-decade “incubation period” that ultimately resulted in regulators and governments “abdicating their authority by facilitating excessive and reckless financial liberalization” (p.174). Stacey (2010) however offers a more clinical critique of the “incubation period” highlighted by Stein and argued that it was the shareholder primacy ideology that ultimately absolved managers and leaders from any responsibility other than maximizing shareholder wealth and pointed the finger back at academia for developing theories to which those engaged in dark side behaviors could use to rationalize and justify that behavior.

Following organizational failure, there is generally a rush to reassert institutional legitimacy (Brown 2004) by focusing on the low hanging fruit – in the case of the financial crisis, that fruit was regulatory enforcement failure. The concern with this rush to judgment is that it has the potential to downplay root causes of the crisis and subsequently minimize the impact of the social environment as an important antecedent as Vaughan (1999: 271) insightfully argued:

“…the irony here is that we learn much about how things go wrong, but absent the tools of organization theory, the full set of social organized circumstances that produced these harmful outcomes remains obscure”

Dark side research then seeks to recognize the importance of trying to understand the how, why, when and where dark side behavior is likely to emerge, embed and become institutionalized. Despite the upsurge in interest, the theoretical research has often far

outweighed the empirical studies of dark side behaviors and this is perhaps one of the primary reasons why studies exploring the dark nature of individuals and organizations fail to gain traction within the research community until such time as a critical event, organizational disaster or failure occurs (Buchanan and Denyer 2013; Gephart 1993; Shrivastava et al. 1988).