많은 선행 연구에서 CEO의 성격이 기업 성과에 영향을 미치는 것으로 알려져 있다. 이와 관련하여 최근 故 스티브 잡스에 대한 관심이 높다. 특히 그가 살아 있을 당시 그의 성격과 기업 성과간의 관계가 주요 관심의 대상이다. 스티브 잡스는 나르시시즘이 높은 CEO로 알려져 있다. 같은 맥락에서 나르시시즘 역시 기업 성과에 어떤 영향을 미칠지 학문적으로, 실무적으로 관심이 커지고 있다. 과연 CEO의 나르시시즘은 기업 성과에 긍정적인 영향을 줄 것인가 아니면 부정적인 영향을 줄 것인가? 본 연구는 다음과 같은 방법으로 이 질문에 대한 답을 찾고자 하였다. 첫째, CEO 나르시시즘의 유형을 세분하여, 각 유형이 경영 성과에 미치는 차별적 효과를 파악하고자 하였다. 둘째, 나르시시즘이 기업 성과에 미치는 효과가 CEO의 재임기간에 따라 어떻게 달라지는지를 알아보고자 하였다. 선행연구와 차별적으로 나르시시즘을 하위 유형인 과시(Exhibitionism)형과 권력(Power)형으로 세분하였다. 그리고 각 유형이 기업 성과(ROA)에 미치는 영향을 분석하였다. 또한 CEO의 재임기간이 나르시시즘의 각 유형과 성과 간의 관계를 어떻게 조절하는지 분석하였다. 연구결과에 따르면, CEO의 과시형 나르시시즘은 재임기간과는 관계없이 성과에 항상 부정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 이에 반해 CEO의 권력형 나르시시즘은 단기 성과에 미치는 영향은 분명하지 않지만 CEO의 재임기간이 늘어나면 성과에 부정적 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구를 통해 새롭게 추론해낸 사실이 있다. 지금까지 나르시시즘은 성격의 일종으로 알려져 왔다. 하지만 본 연구 결과에 따르면, 과시형 나르시시즘은 성격 측면에 가까운 것이 맞지만, 권력형 나르시시즘은 오히려 상황 측면에 가깝다. 이 부분은 추가적인 연구가 필요한 영역이다. 본 연구와 기존 연구와의 차별점은 CEO 나르시시즘의 어떤 세부 유형이, 어떤 원리로 경영 성과에 영향을 미치는지, 보다 미시적으로 접근한 점이다
Chief Executive Officers(CEOs) are responsible for the organizational performance. The organizational performance is considerably depend on how to play their roles. By establishing a collective purpose, communicating a vision with employees together, managing company core culture, and creating unique and competitive capacities, CEOs can have an impact on their company’s long-term direction, relations with important stakeholders, and general company reputation among publics. Because of such important roles, CEO personality characteristics are not only reflected in their personal preferences and behaviors but also in the important strategic planning and performances of the companies which they belong to. The personal characteristics of CEOs help to determine the extent of the CEO influence. Narcissism can be defined as the extent to which people are characterized by self-centered, self-aggrandizing, dominant, and manipulative tendencies. Narcissism is an essential characteristics for effective leadership. However, it is possible to have productive and non-productive influences on performance. Past research shows that in terms of narcissism as an important personality characteristic, there is contradicting prediction between CEO narcissism and organizational performance. This article reports on an examination of the relationship between CEO narcissism as a personality characteristic and organizational performance in a sample of 56 CEOs of major organizations in South Korea. This study uses unobstrusive measures of the CEOs narcissism – the prominence of the CEO’s photograph in annual reports and the CEOs prominence in press releases, and the CEO’s use of first-person singular pronouncs in interviews. This study has two primary objectives. The first objective is to investigate that two main constructs of narcissism have differential effects on performance. An empirical study has confirmed that the exhibitionism and power of CEO narcissism have different influences on ROA(return On Asset). The second objective is to confirm that CEO tenure is moderating between CEO narcissism and ROA. Different from previous studies, this study choose two factors; exhibitionism-factor narcissism and power-factor narcissism as independent variables. In conclusion, exhibitionism-factor and power-factor narcissism have different effects on corporate performance. CEO's exhibitionism-factor narcissism has negative effect on ROA independently of CEO's tenure. CEO's power-factor narcissism has no effect on ROA. However, this study shows that the longer CEO's tenure is, the higher negative effect on ROA is. This study also find out that characteristics of exhibition-factor and power-factor narcissism are different from each other. Exhibition-factor narcissism is more likely to personality, but power-factor narcissism is closely related to situation. In summary, our research makes a contribution by identify a new mechanism (i.e., why) and a corresponding boundary condition (i.e., when) of the effect of the exhibitionism and power of CEO narcissism on ROA. Also, our research expand on work in the domain of CEOs narcissism by proposing that two different sub-factors of narcissism can provide important insights into the effect of CEOs narcissism on their decision making and leadership styles. In other words, our research shows that CEOs narcissism is needed to be examined based on its sub-factors, exhibition-factor and power-factor narcissism, since these two sub-factors have different impacts on CEOs decision making and leadership styles. Final, our research also offers guidelines to companies’ board members for the effective hiring of their potential CEO. Based on the results of our research, companies could have some important guidelines when they need to hire a new CEO.