From ScienceAlert, October 25:
There's something about psychopaths that gives them an edge.
Research suggests people with the darkest of impulses can be remarkably adept at climbing the corporate ladder, often ending up in places of great power.
But how far back does this creepy phenomenon of corporate psychopathy go?
According to organizational behavior researcher Clive Roland Boddy of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, the roots of corporate psychopathy can be identified as far back as 400 years ago – to the very dawn of modern corporate capitalism.
In a new study published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics, Boddy suggests that Jeronimus Cornelisz – a mutinous merchant shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629 in the infamous Batavia disaster – fits the bill as history's earliest identifiable corporate psychopath.
"What makes this case remarkable is that when we analyzed Cornelisz using a modern management psychopathy framework, he displayed every major characteristic associated with corporate psychopaths," Boddy says.
"The same playbook we see in toxic workplaces today appears in this case from 1629. He removed opponents, rewarded loyalists, created fear, manipulated followers, and pursued power at any cost."
The Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company, often considered the world's first multinational corporation.
The vessel ran aground on its maiden voyage, striking a coral reef in the Houtman Abrolhos islands, near Western Australia, on 4 June 1629.
As many as 250 survivors were stranded in the shipwreck and were ferried to a nearby island that came to be known as Batavia's Graveyard (now called Beacon Island).
After Batavia's merchant commander and captain sailed to Indonesia for help, taking with them dozens of senior crew, Cornelisz – who had already planned out a mutinous theft of treasure on the ship prior to the shipwreck – assumed leadership of the remaining survivors, ranking as the most senior corporate executive left behind....
....MUCH MORE
Also at ScienceAlert:
Experts Reveal The Difference Between a Psychopath And a Sociopath
Scientists Have Reconstructed The Face of The Oldest Known Homo Sapiens, And It Looks Very Familiar
