Psychopathy as a Phenomenon of Interest in Information Systems Research

Abstract

Psychopathy is typically associated with criminal behavior but is common in organizations. While psychopathy is estimated to be present in one per cent of the general population, it may be present in up to four percent of senior managers. Psychopaths in organizations are believed to cause considerable individual and organizational harm. Psychopathic behavior has been suggested as a cause behind the Enron collapse and the Global Financial Crisis. Despite the attention in other research areas, psychopathy has only one reference in information systems (IS) research. This paper proposes psychopathy as a phenomenon of interest for IS. The paper examines the research literature concerning psychopaths in organizations and then relates this to IS implementation failure. The difficulties of researching psychopathy and future research are also discussed.