Narcissism and Network Brokerage: The Different Effect of Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry in Organizations

Although some scholars have found that narcissistic individuals tend to be brokers in their social networks, other scholars found no evidence. In this paper, we aim to provide an alternative explanation to the debate by applying the recently developed narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry (NARC) model to the argument. We argue that two dimensions (narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry) of narcissism allow an individual to occupy different network positions (i.e., brokerage vs. closure). We use an online survey to assess employees of a company in China and adopt the socio-centric approach of network analysis to analyze the employee network structures. The results show that whereas high narcissistic admiration individuals tend to exhibit brokerage, high narcissistic rivalry individuals are likely to be embedded in a close network. The negative effect of narcissistic rivalry on brokerage is the strongest when an employee is a newcomer. Our study enhances the understanding of narcissists’ social network structures and contributes to organization research by offering the first step in studying the effect of narcissism in a work setting, where network positions are critical in promoting the individual, team, and even organizational performance.