How Narcissists Cannot Hold an Organization Together: A Mixed Method Approach to a Fictitious Puzzle Factory

How Narcissists Cannot Hold an Organization Together: A Mixed Method Approach to a Fictitious Puzzle Factory by Melissa T. Sasso, Ed.D. Nova Southeastern University David B. Ross, Ed.D. Nova Southeastern University Abstract The presenters will illustrate how the applied mixed methods dissertation was designed to explore in what manner narcissistic characteristics of leaders, toxic leadership characteristics, and power are related to the climate of an organization. The presenters will further reveal the embedded correlational approach utilized, where two self-administered surveys were used to collect data. The sensitive nature of the study will be revealed, followed by the utilization of snowball sampling. The exclusion criteria and number of participants will also be discussed. The use of nonparametric statistics and more specifically, utilizing the Spearman rho test will be demonstrated in detail. The 35 themes discovered within the study as well as the quantitative findings will be presented to the audience and how it was shown that qualitative data supported the quantitative data. The results will be discussed on how this study illustrated that of the nine quantitative findings, narcissistic and toxic leadership as well as elements of power indicated a weak correlation with importance. However, satisfaction indicated a stronger correlation with narcissistic and toxic leadership in addition to elements of power. To conclude, recommendations for future research on the topic of narcissism and leadership will be provided