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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-second-mouse-gets-the-cheese dept.

Empirical evidence that nice people don't always finish last:

Think your boss is a jerk? Wonder why the management of your organization consists of sociopaths? Some academic researchers suspect you're not alone, and they start their new paper with the statement, "We suffer no shortage of jerks in power." And they go on to ask the obvious question raised by this fact: "Does being a jerk help people attain power?"

To find out, the researchers set up a very long-term experiment. After administering personality surveys to undergrad and MBA students, they waited over a decade to follow up and find out which personality types had accrued power in the world of employment. The results suggest that jerks don't necessarily get ahead at work; instead, some of the consequences of being unpleasant offset the benefits that it might otherwise provide.

[...] The good news here is that, as the researchers put it, "individuals who were more selfish, combative, and deceitful did not, subsequently, attain higher power." So, nice people do not necessarily finish last. But, at the same time, nobody seems to be held back by displaying that list of behaviors on the job.

Journal Reference:
Cameron Anderson, Daron L. Sharps, Christopher J. Soto, et al. People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2005088117)


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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:56PM (8 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:56PM (#1045399) Homepage Journal

    Most folks, apparently including the paper's authors, fundamentally do not get that success in management has nothing to do with the degree of "niceness" or "anti-niceness" a person possesses. The traits they're looking for are the ability to see and the willingness to make the best decision for the company. That is to say, entirely rational decisions but factoring in the emotions of those that the company depends on.

    Sociopaths can do the job quite well but the ones that don't understand loyalty and see the value it holds in people the company is required to deal with are not going to do as good of a job as those who can.

    Non-sociopaths can do the job just as well though. They have the advantage of having a built-in understanding of loyalty but have to put forth the effort to only allow that to impact their decisions insofar as it affects the success of the company.

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:34PM (#1045452)

    This is why no one should listen to bird brains. This self-employed spineless twerp is always whinging about MBAs and management stupidity, but suddenly he has an attack of the capitalists and NEEEEDS to prop up his reality whefe management is actually competent which is why everyone should be happy in their little hamster wheel.

    What a load of shit, "you're poor because other people are just BETTER than you and no we shouldn't have universal healthcare even though all the numbsrs show it makes a country better."

    Go boil your head, maybe it'll help?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:44PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:44PM (#1045458)

    Sorry Buzz. Too many counterexamples of assholes who served for many years and became very wealthy despite wrecking the company. All you have to do is make everything look good, cash out when the stock is high, and then who cares about the company whose longterm future you destroyed.

    Example: Prime asshole and former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:15PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:15PM (#1045603) Homepage
      I think Steven Elop turned every project/company he touched to shit, and got golden handshaked all the way up to one of the biggest companies (at least as measured by brand awareness at their peak) in the world. Which he literally killed.
      --
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    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 03 2020, @04:19PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday September 03 2020, @04:19PM (#1045901) Homepage Journal

      Yes, you're always going to have counterexamples in a nation with as many businesses as we have. And you're going to go on thinking they're the norm even though they're not because it excuses your own failure.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:03PM (3 children)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:03PM (#1045512)

    I think hierarchically-minded institutions also don't tend to consider the network effects of those sorts of soft skills. If you encourage loyalty (i.e., from the upper ranks) as a perspective/behavior, your employees may sub/consciously experience that the environment encourages them to at least microdose loyalty amongst themselves. While loyalty to the company gets you measurable unpaid overtime and other stuff that shows up on a spreadsheet (or badge/door logs), loyalty to each other can improve productivity when worker A bee can do anything from get a cup of vitellogenin [wikipedia.org] (ok, I just now looked that up) from the breakroom for worker B bee, to having B notice and volunteer an extra five minutes to fix a problem that A's been struggling with for a couple hours.

    Harder to quantify, but makes some problems just never appear on the radar, and it would seem that some good portion of a company's day-to-day operational efficiency has to be about in/visibly overcoming/circumventing obstacles.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 03 2020, @04:21PM (2 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday September 03 2020, @04:21PM (#1045903) Homepage Journal

      Incorrect. All it takes is competition that does take advantage of all the values a company has access to and the shitty corp is out competed in the marketplace.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday September 03 2020, @07:22PM (1 child)

        by krishnoid (1156) on Thursday September 03 2020, @07:22PM (#1045996)

        Modulo deep pockets and regulatory capture, yup.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 03 2020, @08:12PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday September 03 2020, @08:12PM (#1046034) Homepage Journal

          Nah, politicians are tools (pun absolutely intended) and can be purchased for either good or evil. Nothing stopping the "on the up and up" companies from purchasing a few dozen to deal with the realities of this our imperfect world.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.