The Big Five, the Dark Triad and Leadership - A Trait-based Assessment of Business Administration and Digital Management Students' Leadership Potential

Abstract

The increasing importance of digitalisation and advanced information technologies has led to the creation of relatively new business study programmes, such as digital management. Business studies are still among the most popular study programmes the world over and many business students aspire to hold leadership positions later in life. For over a century scholars have tried to identify the determinants of leadership from a variety of theoretical angles. Trait theory is considered to be the oldest approach in leadership research. By looking at leaders’ personality, trait theorists try to identify traits favouring leader emergence and effectiveness in order to distinguish leaders from non-leaders. Although the theory’s potential to provide satisfactory and consistent results has been questioned over the years, the trait-based approach has experienced a resurgence since the end of the last century, mostly due to the emergence of the Big Five typology. While the Big Five, often referred to as the bright side of personality, have been relatively popular in leadership research, the so-called dark side of personality has received less attention. However, corporate scandals and counterproductive work behaviours have led to an increasing interest in employees’ and leaders’ dark personality traits and in 2002, Paulhus and Williams established the Dark Triad to draw researchers’ attention to Machiavellianism and the subclinical forms of narcissism and psychopathy. In the thesis at hand, I will empirically investigate whether graduate digital management students are, from a trait-based view, more or less leader-like than business administration students in order to assess the student groups’ likelihood of emerging and being effective as leaders and to formulate assumptions about preferred leadership styles. I will assess the students’ personality by applying the Big Five Inventory and the Short Dark Triad.