Have a personal or library account? Click to login

Narcissistic Leadership and Project Success: The Role of Knowledge Sharing and Collectivism in IT Firms

Open Access
|Nov 2023

Abstract

Purpose

In the quest of exploring specific developments in contemporary management research, this study highlights the prevalence of narcissistic leadership in IT firms. We employed the upper-echelon framework to analyze the impact of narcissistic leadership on project success. This study considered the dark side of a leader’s narcissism while analyzing how narcissistic leadership affects a project’s success through knowledge sharing and collectivism.

Design/methodology/approach

Structural equation modeling is employed to investigate this proposition. Using convenience sampling, approximately 370 questionnaires were dispensed out of which 272 completed questionnaires were utilized for performing the analysis of IT firms.

Findings

Narcissistic leadership affects project’s success through knowledge sharing and collectivism. The results indicate that narcissistic leadership negatively predicts project success. Moreover, knowledge sharing fully mediated the relationship between narcissistic leadership and project success. Whereas, collectivism moderates the relationship between knowledge-sharing and narcissistic leadership.

Originality

Our assumptions are based on the upper-echelon theory indicating that narcissistic leadership affects project success through knowledge-sharing and collectivism. This has been proved by the empirical analysis carried out in Pakistan’s IT sector.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/orga-2023-0024 | Journal eISSN: 1581-1832 | Journal ISSN: 1318-5454
Language: English
Page range: 352 - 374
Submitted on: Apr 5, 2023
Accepted on: Sep 17, 2023
Published on: Nov 17, 2023
Published by: University of Maribor, Faculty of Organizational Science
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 times per year

© 2023 Hina Tahir, Osman Sadiq Paracha, Syed Shafqat Mukarram, published by University of Maribor, Faculty of Organizational Science
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.