Psychopaths at Work
“There are three basic motivations of psychopaths,” Babiak asserted. “They love to play games, they’re thrill-seekers willing to take risks and they like to hurt people. When you look to see what makes a successful business person, it’s someone willing to take risks, who likes to ‘play the corporate game’ to advance within a company.”
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Babiak claims that today’s roiling corporate environments tend to favor the psychopathic personality. Old-style corporate bureaucracies, with rigid policies and procedures, tend to expose that sort of employee more quickly. “The business world has changed. The old dinosaur model of an overly structured bureaucracy with many rules and closed culture doesn’t cut it any more,” he said. “Companies have to be swift, fast, less bureaucratic. This is an open invitation to the individual with psychopathic tendencies. The new corporate climate is an improvement over the old model because it makes work more pleasant, more creative and it’s conducive to getting more things done. The downside… is that it makes it easier for psychopaths to enter and succeed.”
