Abstract
This paper explores the link between CEOs’ language and hubristic leadership. It is based on the precepts that: leaders’ linguistic utterances provide insights in to their personality and behaviours; hubris is associated with socially irresponsible, unethical and potentially destructive leader behaviours. Using computational linguistics we analysed spoken utterances from a sample of hubristic CEOs and compared them with non-hubristic CEOs. We found that hubristic CEOs’ linguistic utterances show systematic and consistent differences from the linguistic utterances of non-hubristic CEOs. Demonstrating how hubristic leadership manifests in CEO language contributes to wider research regarding the diagnosis and prevention of the socially irresponsible, unethical and potentially destructive effects of hubristic leadership. This study contributes to the wider study of social issues in management by applying a novel method for identifying linguistic markers which could serve as early warning signs of hubris. Our research offers a way of mitigating, the risk of unethical and destructive CEO behaviours that are induced or aggravated by hubristic leadership and thereby better manage corporate governance and the responsibility of CEOs to employees, shareholders and wider society.