Self-important university leaders have long been the scourge of faculty, and a study supports that view – finding evidence that “narcissistic” vice-chancellors really do make an institution worse.
Displayed through “excessive financial risk taking and empire building”, narcissism damages an institution’s research and teaching, as well as its league table performance, the paper found.
Researchers measured narcissism based on the size of a vice-chancellor’s signature – an approach used in recent research in accounting, finance and management – and tracked the performance of UK universities between 2009-10 and 2019-20.
The study, published in Research Policy, examined the signatures of the leaders of 133 universities, a total of 261 vice-chancellors over that period, and found that those deemed to have more narcissistic leaders registered declines in key measures, such as the National Student Survey and the Research Excellence Framework. It also showed that older and more prestigious universities were more likely to employ narcissistic bosses.
