Definition
Corporate psychopathy is the condition whereby a corporation acts in a ruthless, uncaring, self-interested, conscience-free manner with respect to its employees, other people, and to the wider society in which it operates. Corporate psychopathy is marked by a callous lack of care or concern for the feelings of others, an incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, a reckless disregard for others’ safety, an incapacity to experience guilt and well as deceitfulness, and repeated lying and conning others for profit together with a failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior (Bakan 2004; Achbar 2003). The psychopathic corporation acts irresponsibly, harms the environment, damages employees, and places customers and society at risk in its attempts to fulfill its goals of profit maximization. It accepts no responsibility for its actions and has no regrets or empathy.
Description
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Achbar M (2003) The corporation. Tv Ontario
Bakan J (2004) The corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. New York Free Press, New York
Boddy CR (2015) Psychopathic leadership. A case study of a corporate psychopath CEO. J Bus Ethics:1–16. On-line first
Cleckley H (1941/1988) The mask of sanity, 5th edn. Private printing for educational use by Emily Cleckley 1988 (Formerly first published by C.V. Mosley Co.in 1941). Augusta, Georgia
Daneke GA (1985) Regulation and the sociopathic firm. Acad Manag Rev 10(1):15–20
Lee IB (2005) In there a cure for corporate “psychopathy”? Am Bus Law J 42(1–6):65–90
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Boddy, C.R. (2019). Corporate Psychopathy. In: Poff, D., Michalos, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Corporate Psychopathy- Published:
- 24 December 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1-2
-
Original
Corporate Psychopathy- Published:
- 26 June 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1-1