The (In)Congruence Effect of Leaders' Narcissism Identity and Reputation on Performance: A Socioanalytic Multistakeholder Perspective

Judgments about others' personal characteristics intertwine with social interactions in the workplace. The personality and social psychology literatures show forming impressions of what others are like is vitally important, in part, because it facilitates the forecasting and acceptance of others' behavior. Interestingly, very few studies consider others' (i.e., subordinates) judgments about their leaders' personality and whether correspondence between leaders' self-perceptions and these others' judgments is capable of providing meaningful and unique information. Using a socioanalytic perspective that considers multiple stakeholders, this study explores the (in)congruence effects between leaders' self-perception of narcissism (i.e., identity) and subordinates' perceptions of their leaders' narcissism (i.e., reputation) on two types of performance outcomes. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis indicate that congruence between leaders' narcissism identity and subordinates' aggregated ratings of leaders' narcissistic reputation related to group task and contextual performance via shared justice perceptions and collective effort in Study 1. Results of Study 2, which focused on leader-subordinate dyads, found leaders' narcissism identity-reputation congruence effects were related to individual subordinates' task and contextual performance via the subordinate's individual justice perceptions, but not by way of individual effort. These findings have important implications for leaders and organizations and suggest that to fully understand the implications of leaders' narcissism, one should consider the perspectives of interacting parties and how they converge or diverge when investigating relationships with aspects of performance.