Journal article
Linguistic markers of CEO hubris
Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.167, pp.687-705
2020
Abstract
This article explores the link between CEOs' language and hubristic leadership. It is based on the precepts that leaders' linguistic utterances provide insights into their personality and behaviours; hubris is associated with unethical and potentially destructive leadership behaviours; if it is possible to identify linguistic markers of CEO hubris then these could serve as early warnings sign and help to mitigate the associated risks. 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 unethical and potentially destructive effects of hubristic leadership. This research contributes to the wider study of hubris and unethical leadership by applying a novel method for identifying linguistic markers and offers a way of militating against the risk of unethical and destructive CEO behaviours induced or aggravated by hubristic leadership.
Details
- Title
- Linguistic markers of CEO hubris
- Authors/Creators
- V. Akstinaite (Author/Creator)G. Robinson (Author/Creator)E. Sadler-Smith (Author/Creator)
- Publication Details
- Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.167, pp.687-705
- Publisher
- Kluwer Academic Publishers
- Identifiers
- 991005541924707891
- Copyright
- © 2019 Springer Nature B.V.
- Murdoch Affiliation
- College of Arts, Business, Law and Social Sciences
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
Source: InCites
Metrics
83 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Citation topics
- 1 Clinical & Life Sciences
- 1.313 History of Medicine
- 1.313.2433 Surgical Evolution
- Web Of Science research areas
- Business
- Ethics
- ESI research areas
- Economics & Business