CEO narcissism and TMT characteristics: the moderating role of task complexity

Narcissistic CEOs often exhibit the need to be in charge and thus build up loyal “business empires” around them. This study examines how narcissistic CEOs do that in selecting their top management teams, particularly with respect to team social capital and tenure. Moreover, this study aims to determine whether task complexity moderates the actions of narcissistic CEOs. Based on evidence obtained from 450 firms in Taiwan with 1868 observations of CEOs during the years 2013 to 2018, CEO narcissism proved to have an inverse relationship with top management team (TMT) tenure and social capital, suggesting that more narcissistic CEOs build a team that they can better control and command with minimal opposition. In addition, this study found that task complexity tends to weaken that inverse relationship between CEO narcissism, TMT social capital and TMT tenure.