Selected Readings - Narcissistic Leaders
The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons
"Throughout history, narcissists have always emerged to inspire people and to shape the future. When military, religious, and political arenas dominated society, it was figures such as Napoléon Bonaparte, Mahatma Ghandi, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt who determined the social agenda. But from time to time, when business became the engine of social change, it, too, generated its share of narcissistic leaders."
In this award-winning article in the Harvard Business Review Maccoby uses Freud's theory of personality types to examine the strengths and weaknesses of narcissistic leaders, or what he refers to as 'productive' and 'unproductive' narcissism.