Narcissism and counterproductive work behavior (CWB): Meta-analysis and consideration of collectivist culture, big five personality, and narcissism’s facet structure

A recent review of the relationship between narcissism and CWB reported two key results: (a) narcissism is the dominant predictor of CWB among the dark triad personality traits, and (b) the narcissism-CWB relationship is moderated by ingroup collectivist culture (k = 9; N = 2,708; O’Boyle, Forsyth, Banks, & McDaniel, 2012). The current work seeks to enhance understanding of the narcissism-CWB relationship in five ways. First, we update O’Boyle et al.’s (2012) meta-analysis to include over 50 per cent more data (k = 16; N = 4,424), and demonstrate that narcissism remains the largest unique predictor of CWB after controlling for the Big Five personality traits. Second, we reveal that O’Boyle and colleagues’ inference of cross-cultural moderation hinges on a single dataset from Bangladesh. Third, based on an original international dataset of on-line respondents, we reaffirm that ingroup collectivist culture does moderate/weaken the narcissism-CWB relationship. Fourth, we show that the narcissism-CWB relationship is stronger in published (corrected r = .48) versus unpublished studies (corrected r = .15). Finally, we propose a new moderator of the narcissism-CWB relationship: narcissism’s facets. One facet (Entitlement/Exploitativeness) relates positively to CWB, whereas another facet of narcissism (Leadership/Authority) relates negatively to CWB.