Combating Perceived Psychopathic Traits of Business Executives in Outsourcing World

Paul Barry at The Power Index magazine had a few interesting things to say a few days ago. He wrote about an obscure British study from 2005 which compared the psychological profiles of business executives at English corporations with those at UK’s Broadmoor Special Hospital. They were compared against ‘criminally insane’ patients. The study seemed to find out what it intended to find out, that business executives have more psychopathic traits than the criminally insane. Psychopathy or psychopathic disorder is an outdated term for what is now known as sociopathic personality disorder.

The typical characteristics include superficial charm, manipulative and exploitative behaviour, self admiration and a general lack of empathy. People would naturally find it easy to correlate these studies with what they experience in real life, that business executives and those at the top rung are ‘psychopathic’ in nature, without any empathy for employees. The irony is that most of the times it seems like it is true though it is never an easy task to label somebody with a ‘sociopathic or psychopathic’ personality disorder.

The bottom-line is that most people tend to suspect or view people at the top as manipulative and exploitative, while those at the higher rungs of the corporate hierarchy tend to believe that the ones who whine are usually dependant in a pathological way. Unfortunately, both these images can easily be avoided if the hierarchies in corporations are less rigid and if the top level managers interacted with employees at the lower rung in an honest and empathic manner.

It would be rather naive to brand all business executives as psychopathic or sociopathic because they were forced to cut jobs, and it is equally sad to see top level managers treating their own employees as whingers and whiners. It does not reflect any personality disorder traits to me, but it rather reveals a stark lack of communication and barriers between people in different levels of corporate hierarchy. Communication within an organization becomes especially important when we deal with the difficult decision of outsourcing jobs to offshore locations.

A successful manager must be able to present the reasons why there need to be job cuts, and how offshoring can help everyone involved in the longer run. The paradox of offshoring and outsourcing world is that Internet has broken traditional barriers that existed once, and we have come too far to consider against offshoring or outsourcing. It is a reality, which has proved to be advantageous as well if carried out wisely. The onus however lies on the top evel managers to present their reasons in a way that is understood by all, so that confusions and misunderstandings are avoided.

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