Break the mold: does CEO narcissism affects corporate strategic distinctiveness?

Purpose This study attempts to explain whether CEO narcissism influences a firm’s strategic distinctiveness. Building on social role theory, the authors also focus on how CEO gender and age moderate the relationship between CEO narcissism and firm’s strategic distinctiveness. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct two studies to test the hypotheses. Study 1 uses a longitudinal sample of 8,080 firm-year observations of 1,595 unique firms listed in Chinese A-shares from 2006–2018. Study 2 uses cross-sectional data from a survey study of Chinese CEOs. Findings This study reveals that narcissistic CEOs’ pursuit of uniqueness and disregard for industry conventions lead them to favor highly distinctive strategic strategy. Besides, female narcissistic CEOs and old narcissistic CEOs have a weaker tendency to adopt distinctive strategy than male narcissistic CEOs and young narcissistic CEOs due to the constraints of role expectations. Originality/value First, this study contributes to the narcissism literature by shifting the focus from temporal strategic dynamism to spatial strategic positioning, demonstrating how CEO narcissism drives firms to deviate from industry peers rather than merely changing their own strategy over time. Second, we enrich the antecedents of strategic distinctiveness by identifying narcissism as a core psychological driver, responding to recent calls to explore the underlying motivations for why firms pursue unique strategic positions. Third, by integrating social role theory with upper echelon theory, we provide a more contingent view of the narcissism-strategy link, highlighting how gender and age act as boundary conditions that constrain the expression of a CEO’s narcissistic proclivities.