Machiavellianism in the workplace

Machiavellianism in the workplace is the employment of cunning and duplicity in a business setting. The term Machiavellianism is from the book The Prince by Machiavelli which lays out advice to rulers how to govern his or her subjects. Machiavellianism has been studied extensively over the past 40 years as a personality characteristic that shares features with manipulative leadership tactics. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers and academics. The Machiavellian typically only manipulates on occasions where it is necessary to achieve the required objectives.

Oliver James identifies Machiavellianism as one of the dark triadic personality traits in the workplace, the others being narcissism and psychopathy.

A new model of Machiavellianism based in organizational settings consists of three factors:

The presence of Machiavellianism in an organisation has been positively correlated with counterproductive workplace behaviour and workplace deviance.

According to Namie, Machiavellians manipulate and exploit others to advance their perceived personal agendas but he emphasizes that they are not mentally ill. They do not have a personality disorder, schizophrenia and neither are they psychopaths. Machiavellianism represents the core of workplace bullying.

The following are the guiding principles of Machiavellianism:

High Machiavellians may be expected to do the following:

In studies there was a positive correlation between Machiavellianism and workplace bullying. Machiavellianism predicted involvement in bullying others. The groups of bullies and bully-victims had a higher Machiavellianism level compared to the groups of victims and persons non-involved in bullying. The results showed that being bullied was negatively related to the perceptions of clan and adhocracy cultures and positively related to the perceptions of hierarchy culture.

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