Personality in the Upper Echelons – Advancing Theory, Methods, and Context

Closes:
Journal
Journal of Managerial Psychology
Guest editor(s)
Peter D. Harms, Cameron J. Borgholthaus, Alaric Bourgoin, Jane Park, Joshua White,

Special Issue Overview

Upper echelons research has long argued that organizational outcomes reflect the characteristics of those who lead them (Hambrick & Mason, 1984). Scholars have shown that personality plays a central role in shaping how executives interpret information, make decisions, interact with stakeholders, and steer their organizations (Cragun et al., 2020; Harrison et al., 2019; Herrmann & Nadkarni, 2014). Yet, despite a rapidly expanding literature on CEO personality and related constructs, recent reviews highlight persistent challenges: conceptual narrowness, methodological limitations, geographic concentration, and a tendency toward insularity rather than theoretical integration (e.g., Borgholthaus et al., 2026).

This Special Issue of Journal of Managerial Psychology seeks to advance the study of personality in the upper echelons (e.g., CEOs, C-suite executives, top management teams (TMTs), and boards of directors) by encouraging submissions that challenge existing assumptions, expand theoretical lenses, deepen methodological rigor, and broaden contextual diversity.

A recent comprehensive review by Borgholthaus et al. (2026) emphasizes the need to:

  • move beyond overreliance on broad traits such as the Big Five and narcissism,
  • integrate insights from personality psychology (e.g., motives, values, identity, life stories),
  • employ multi-method assessment and reduce dependence on proxy measures,
  • articulate mechanisms linking personality to organizational outcomes,
  • explore non-Western contexts and alternative governance systems, and
  • bridge macro–micro perspectives to understand how individual dispositions influence firm-level outcomes.

We invite research that helps answer pressing questions such as:
How do the motives, values, traits, and narratives of organizational leaders shape firm behavior? Under what conditions do personality effects strengthen or weaken? How can scholars better measure personality in the upper echelons? And how do institutional, cultural, and governance contexts shape the expression and consequences of executive personality?

This Special Issue aims to address these needs and catalyze a new generation of research on personality in the upper echelons.

 

Objectives of the Special Issue

  1. To deepen theoretical understanding of how personality operates within and shapes the upper echelons.
  2. To encourage methodological innovation in assessing executive personality, including multi-method designs, unobtrusive indicators, longitudinal approaches, and multimodal measurement.
  3. To broaden contextual relevance by examining executive personality across diverse governance systems, cultural settings, industries, organizational forms, and firm life-cycle stages.
  4. To integrate micro- and macro-level perspectives, illuminating how leaders' psychological characteristics influence organizational structures, strategic actions, culture, and performance.

 

Potential Themes and Research Questions

We welcome empirical (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods), conceptual, and methodological contributions. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

1. Broadening the Conceptualization of Executive Personality

  • How do motives, values, identity narratives, or psychological needs influence CEO or TMT behavior?
  • What personality facets (beyond broad traits) matter most for leadership effectiveness in the upper echelons?
  • How do personality dynamics unfold over time—particularly via personality change, developmental experiences, career shocks (see White et al., 2023)?

2. Mechanisms Linking Personality to Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

  • Through which cognitive, emotional, relational, or structural mechanisms do executive traits influence strategic choices, such as CSR (Petrenko et al., 2016), M&A (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007), innovation (Zhang et al., 2017), or risk-taking (Tuggle et al., 2024)?
  • How do personality-driven behaviors shape internal structures, including TMT dynamics (Peterson et al., 2003), leadership styles (Resick et al., 2009), or power distributions (Kashmiri et al., 2017)?

3. Contextual, Cultural, and Institutional Moderators

  • How does the effects of executive personality vary across national cultures, governance systems, family firms, emerging markets, or state-owned enterprises?
  • How do boards, investor expectations, and stakeholder environments constrain or amplify personality effects (Zhu & Chen, 2015)?
  • Under what conditions do personality traits have stronger or weaker organizational influence (Borgholthaus et al., 2023)?

4. Advancing Measurement of Upper Echelons Personality

  • How can scholars reduce reliance on proxies and enhance construct validity (see Borgholthaus et al., 2025)?
  • What multi-method assessment approaches (observer ratings, linguistic analysis, digital trace data, archival indicators, psychometrics) are most effective (Harms et al., 2025)?
  • How can personality be measured in ways that capture complexity, nuance, and contextual expression?

5. Personality in Boards, TMTs, and Collective Leadership

  • How do personality compositions, complementarities, or conflicts within upper echelons shape organizational outcomes (Harrison & Malhotra, 2024)?
  • What role does chair–CEO personality fit play in governance effectiveness?

6. Practical and Societal Implications

  • How should boards incorporate personality into CEO selection, evaluation, leadership due diligence, and succession planning?
  • How does executive personality shape ethical decision making, stakeholder relations, or societal outcomes such as environmental sustainability or inequality (Al-Shammari et al., 2019)?

 

Submission Process and Timeline

Submission window:
1 August – 30 September 2026

Decision notification:
31 December 2026

Target publication:
June 2027

Submissions must follow Journal of Managerial Psychology manuscript guidelines:
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jmp

Manuscripts (5,000–10,000 words, all-inclusive) should be submitted through the JMP online system:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jomp

All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review. Acceptance criteria include:

  • Theoretical contribution to personality and upper echelons research
  • Empirical rigor using appropriate and high-quality methodologies
  • Practical relevance for leaders, boards, investors, and policymakers
  • Alignment with the Special Issue theme

The Guest Editors welcome informal inquiries regarding fit and topic alignment.

 

References

Al-Shammari, M., Rasheed, A., & Al-Shammari, H. A. (2019). CEO narcissism and corporate social responsibility: does CEO narcissism affect CSR focus?. Journal of Business Research, 104, 106-117.

Borgholthaus, C. J., Bourgoin, A., Harms, P. D., White, J. V., & Fezzey, T. N. (2025). Surveying the Upper Echelons: An Update to Cycyota and Harrison (2006) on Top Manager Response Rates and Recommendations for the Future. Organizational Research Methods, 10944281241310574.

Chatterjee, A., & Hambrick, D. C. (2007). It's all about me: Narcissistic chief executive officers and their effects on company strategy and performance. Administrative science quarterly, 52(3), 351-386.

Cragun, O. R., Olsen, K. J., & Wright, P. M. (2020). Making CEO narcissism research great: A review and meta-analysis of CEO narcissism. Journal of Management, 46(6), 908-936.

Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. (1984). Upper echelons: The organizations as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of management review, 9(2), 193-206.

Harrison, J. S., & Malhotra, S. (2024). Complementarity in the CEO-CFO interface: The joint influence of CEO and CFO personality and structural power on firm financial leverage. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(2), 101711.

Harrison, J. S., Thurgood, G. R., Boivie, S., & Pfarrer, M. D. (2019). Measuring CEO personality: Developing, validating, and testing a linguistic tool. Strategic Management Journal, 40(8), 1316-1330.

Herrmann, P., & Nadkarni, S. (2014). Managing strategic change: The duality of CEO personality. Strategic management journal, 35(9), 1318-1342.

Kashmiri, S., Nicol, C. D., & Arora, S. (2017). Me, myself, and I: influence of CEO narcissism on firms’ innovation strategy and the likelihood of product-harm crises. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(5), 633-656.

Peterson, R. S., Smith, D. B., Martorana, P. V., & Owens, P. D. (2003). The impact of chief executive officer personality on top management team dynamics: one mechanism by which leadership affects organizational performance. Journal of applied Psychology, 88(5), 795.

Petrenko, O. V., Aime, F., Ridge, J., & Hill, A. (2016). Corporate social responsibility or CEO narcissism? CSR motivations and organizational performance. Strategic management journal, 37(2), 262-279.

Resick, C. J., Whitman, D. S., Weingarden, S. M., & Hiller, N. J. (2009). The bright-side and the dark-side of CEO personality: examining core self-evaluations, narcissism, transformational leadership, and strategic influence. Journal of applied psychology, 94(6), 1365.

Tuggle, C. S., Borgholthaus, C. J., Harms, P. D., & O'Brien, J. P. (2024). Setting the tone to get their way: An attention‐based approach to how narcissistic CEOs influence the board of directors to take more risk. Strategic Management Journal, 45(10), 2095-2121.

White, J. V., Harms, P. D., Borgholthaus, C. J., & Tuggle, C. S. (2023). I’m not the executive that I used to be: Understanding causes and consequences of personality change in the upper echelons. Journal of Business Research, 167, 114152.

Zhang, H., Ou, A. Y., Tsui, A. S., & Wang, H. (2017). CEO humility, narcissism and firm innovation: A paradox perspective on CEO traits. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(5), 585-604.

Zhu, D. H., & Chen, G. (2015). Narcissism, director selection, and risk‐taking spending. Strategic Management Journal, 36(13), 2075-2098.