Narcissistic Leadership and Project Success: The Role of Knowledge Sharing and Collectivism in IT Firms
Published Online: Nov 17, 2023
Page range: 352 - 374
Received: Apr 05, 2023
Accepted: Sep 17, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/orga-2023-0024
Keywords
© 2023 Hina Tahir et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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.