The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis

A peer-reviewed paper is set to appear in the Journal of Business ethics which proposes the theory that psychopaths on Wall Street have had a critical role in the global financial crisis.

Psychopathy is defined as the inability to empathize with the feelings of others. A theoretical paper, to be published in the Journal of Business ethics, will analyze the global financial crisis through the lens of the psychopath. The paper is titled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” and it is written by Clive R. Boddy.

Boddy describes psychopaths as “the 1% of people who have no conscience or empathy and who do not care for anyone other than themselves.” An echo of the Occupy’s nemesis the 1%? Perhaps.

Of course, this theory is not new—many have theorized a connection between the modern psychological sickness, including Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri in their seminal work “Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” (Note that schizophrenia and psychopathy are not the same, of course.) Boddy, of course, notes the current tradition in this theory in his paper. I wrote of this connection in “World Wealth Report: Rich Getting Richer,” in which I stated, “Is it not psychopathic, and more particularly sociopathic, that the world’s rich seem to have no problem that they are drawing more water from the well than the rest of us, even as the rich men of the US congressional and executive branches ask for austerity both here and abroad?”

Robert Jay Lifton has spent the better part of the last 60 years defining and cataloguing Psycho-History, so why not open studies into something like Psycho-Capitalism? Or, rather, Psycho-Corporatism? Brett Easton Ellis all but theorized the same thing in “American Psycho” with Patrick Bateman—it certainly needs a greater degree of theoretical work from academics and philosophers and should be made public.

Boddy uses terms such as “dark leadership,” “dark manager” and “imposters as leaders,” noting that business (and government) have more and more been elevating individuals to positions of power who cannot be said to care for the entire organizations that oversee and represent them.

That Boddy is willing to use the term “corporate psychopath” in a peer-reviewed theoretical paper is bold. Boddy deserves to be heard outside the realm of theory, though. His theoretical proposal, which is in fact the argument of all who aren’t dark leaders, should be part of the national discourse.

In the introduction, Boddy writes of corporate psychopaths:

[T]hey seem to be unaffected by the corporate collapses they have created. They present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings, and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events are very persuasive in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own continued worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.

Boddy notes that corporate psychopaths have also been termed Executive Psychopaths, Industrial Psychopaths, Organisational Psychopaths, and Organisational Sociopaths.

The author concludes by writing, “When presented to management academics in discussion, the Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is accepted as being plausible and highly relevant. It provides a theory which unifies many of the individual interpretations of the reasons for the Global Financial Crisis and as such is worthy of further development.

To read the full paper in PDF format, go here.

[Via Disinfo]