Abstract

This chapter considers the happiness of employees when they work for toxic leaders in the form of corporate psychopaths, who are deemed to be the “darkest” form of toxic leader. The chapter discusses happiness at work and how it is, or may be, influenced by the presence of managers who highly embody the most prototypical traits of the primary psychopath, currently known in management literature as the corporate psychopath. The chapter examines how corporate psychopathy and happiness interact to produce a deeply unhappy workforce whose only happiness may come from engaging in negative acts such as revenge behavior like sabotage or resignation. The chapter then deliberates on how the happiness or “contemptuous delight” of corporate psychopaths themselves can originate from their creating unhappiness in others.