Primary Psychopathy in Formal Leaders and Job Satisfaction Levels of Employees Working in Family and Non-Family Firms

Duarte Pimentel () and André Pedra
Additional contact information
Duarte Pimentel: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, R. Jardim do Tabaco 34, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal
André Pedra: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, R. Jardim do Tabaco 34, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal

Administrative Sciences, 2023, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: This paper aims to explore differences in personality traits, focusing on the levels of primary psychopathy, between formal leaders of family and non-family companies as well as assessing differences in the job satisfaction levels of their employees. Moreover, we assess the relationship between the employees’ perception of their formal leader’s primary psychopathy levels and their job satisfaction levels in family firms. The empirical evidence is provided by a sample of 95 Portuguese employees, who responded to a questionnaire that included their perceptions of their formal leader’s primary psychopathy level and job satisfaction measures. All respondents work in small and medium-sized private companies with no management responsibilities and under formal hieratical supervision. The initial idea that family firms’ employees perceive lower levels of primary psychopathy in their formal leaders than non-family firms’ employees was confirmed. However, employees of family and non-family firms did not differ in their job satisfaction levels. The results also support the notion that perceived levels of primary psychopathy in formal leaders are negatively associated with the employees’ job satisfaction levels. These findings contribute to the research literature by addressing two aspects under-addressed in the comparison between family and non-family firms, while offering insights on the relationship between primary psychopathy in formal leaders and job satisfaction levels of employees working in family firms.

Keywords: family business; primary psychopathy; job satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/13/8/190/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/13/8/190/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:13:y:2023:i:8:p:190-:d:1221267

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().