Managers, are you a psycho?

It seems almost obligatory that the popular perception of managers is the tyrannical psycho bullying his (nearly always a man) way to the top.  So it's interesting that a couple of research papers have recently been published looking into this very thing.

'When Executives Rake in Millions: Meanness in Organizations' looks at meanness in executives.  The thesis goes that as the income gap becomes wider between senior managers and the rank and file, so poor behaviour from managers towards their employees increases.

They scored companies with “strength points” and “weakness points,” giving strength points to companies that offered employee profit sharing and deducting points for companies that had been penalised for employee mistreatment. The researchers then examined each company's executive compensation and looked for any correlations between increasing income and increasing meanness.

They concluded that “higher income inequality between executives and ordinary workers results in executives perceiving themselves as being all-powerful and this perception of power leads them to maltreat rank and file workers.”

Study 2

All of which kinda fits the self inflated picture of a psycho, which makes this second study interesting: Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the walk.  The research found that managers score higher on measures of psychopathy than the general population. 

The authors conclude that “the very skills that make the psychopath so unpleasant (and sometimes abusive) in society can facilitate a career in business even in the face of negative performance ratings.

Do good managers have to have a bit of psycho in them?