Dr Clive R Boddy

Clive is a research methodologist and also a pioneer in the field of corporate psychopathy where he has been researching the effects of toxic, psychopathic managers on business, organisations and society since 2005.

Corporate Psychopaths Research Association

Background

Clive has worked in commercial marketing research and academic management research all his adult life and has undertaken about 850 research projects and published over 100 academic research papers, seven book chapters, three books and several magazine articles. Clive has held Professorships in Marketing, Market Research, Management and Leadership in the UK and Australia and has worked at the universities of Tasmania, Curtin, Adelaide, Nottingham Trent and Middlesex.

Clive has been influential in developing corporate psychopathy theory and the 'Corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis' is one of his most cited papers. Clive has appeared in UK and Canadian TV documentaries about corporate psychopaths and has been interviewed on the subject for radio programmes and newspaper articles.

Research interests

• Corporate psychopaths
• Toxic leadership
• Workplace bullying
• Entrepreneurism and innovation
• Job satisfaction
• Well-being
• Business success
• Projective techniques
• Qualitative research techniques

Areas of research supervision

• Corporate psychopaths as charming, charismatic, social adept, bullying, abusive, organisationally destructive leaders
• The impact of dysfunctional managers on organisational risk culture
• Marketing eg how salesforce integration influences salesforce performance
• Business success eg in the UK market research industry
• Entrepreneurialism in SME's eg in female entrepreneurs in South Africa

Teaching

Clive is supervising and teaching into the DBA course at ARU. This may include teaching research methods, research paradigms and philosophies and simple size issues for qualitative research.

Qualifications

• PhD, Middlesex University, 2016 
• Doctor of Business Administration, Curtin University. 2009 
• PGCHE, Middlesex University, 2002
• MA Marketing, University of Lincolnshire and Humberside
• Diploma of the Market Research Society, 1986
• Diploma in Marketing, CIM, 1985
• Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing Management, Liverpool John Moores University, 1985
• BSc Sociology, Leicester University, 1983

Memberships, editorial boards

• Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing
• Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management
• Fellow of the Association for Tertiary Education Management
• Fellow of the Market Research Society
• Fellow of the Higher Education Authority
• Member of the International Leadership Association
• Member of the British Academy of Management
• Board Member in the Encyclopaedia of Business and Professional Ethics, edited by Deborah C. Poff and Alex C. Michalos; 2016 onwards.
• Appointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Ethics, June 2011, onwards.
• Appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Market Research, September 2011, onwards.
• Appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, September 2010, onwards.
• Guest Editor: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Special Issue on Projective Techniques in Market Research. Published in 2010, Vol.13, No. 4.
• Co-Edited and acted as initial reviewer for papers submitted for presentation at the National Business Student Research Conference: “New Knowledge, New Applications, New Directions”: 2005, Perth, WA.
• Co-Edited and reviewed papers submitted for presentation at the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, Annual Marketing Conference 1995, Seoul, South Korea.
• Edited and reviewed papers submitted for presentation at the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, Inaugural Annual Marketing Conference 1994, Seoul, South Korea

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

Research grants

Clive has gained funding for research and related activities from the University of Tasmania and Nottingham Business School. Clive has also secured funding for the British Chamber of Commerce in South Korea and the Australian British Chamber of Commerce in Western Australia. His past gaining of commercial funding for specific research projects was to the value of about six million pounds.

Consultancy

As a commercial market researcher Clive offered research consultancy services to various clients including but not limited to: Avon, Australian Embassy Korea, Australian Tourist Commission, AT&T, American Express, Anheuser Busch, BAT, Bausch and Lomb, BellSouth, British Chamber of Commerce, Bulmer’s Cider, Caltex/Honam Oil, Coca Cola, Castrol, Cathay Pacific, CitiBank, De Beers, Del Monte, Diners Club, e-Defined.com, Estee Lauder, Eveready, Ferero, Ford Motors, Foremost Diary, General Foods, General Motors, Gillette, Guinness, Hakuhode, Hawley and Hazel, Hennessy, Hong Kong MTR, HSBC, Hutchinson Telephone, International Distillers, Inchcape Motors, Intel, IBM, Jardines, Johnson and Johnson, JWT, Kellogg’s, KFC, Kodak, Lego, L’Oreal, Lufthansa, McDonalds, Mobil, Nabisco, Nestle, Nedlloyd Lines, Ogilvy and Mather, Parker Pens, Paypoint, Philips, Pillsbury, Prudential, Pfizer, Roche, RJ Reynolds, Seagram, San Miguel, SGS, Smithkline Beecham, Shell, Tetra Pak, Tait and Co., United Distillers, Unilever, Visa International, World Gold Council, Yue Long Motors/Nissan.

Public lectures

• Corporate Psychopaths – What we know so far. A talk given to the Rotary Club of Freshwater Bay, Perth, Australia on Wednesday 27 October, 2021.
• How to Identify and Defend against Toxic Leadership – a half-day seminar given to a group of health service CEO’s and senior managers in Sydney, Australia, on 18 February 2020.
• On 3 July 2019; A public lecture at Curtin University on: “The influence of corporate psychopaths on employees, organisations and society”. There were 200 personal attendees as well as people ‘live-stream’ watching from the USA, UK, Columbia, Gambia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Nepal, Brunei, and Peru.
• Toxic Leadership – a talk given to a private business group at the Athenaeum Club Hobart, 28 February 2019.
• Reading University, 12 October 2017. Clive delivered a lecture on the role of corporate psychopaths in fraud and the global financial crisis to employees of the UK Financial Conduct Authority, the Treasury, and the Bank of England.
• Wolfson College Science Society, Cambridge University, 3 June 2016. Professor Boddy delivered a public lecture on “Corporate Psychopaths at Work and in Society”.
• Cambridge Network CEO Group, Milton Hall, 8 December 2015. Clive delivered a public lecture on “Corporate Psychopaths: Who they are, what they do and why they should be managed”.
• Greenwich University, 27 March 2015. Clive delivered a public lecture on “Corporate Psychopaths: Who they are, what they do and why they should be managed”.
• Homerton College, Cambridge University, 12 February 2015. Clive delivered a public lecture to “Cambridge Network” on “Corporate Psychopaths: Who they are, what they do and why they should be managed”.
• Presented public lecture on Corporate Psychopaths to Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, Thames Valley Group, 11 March 2014.
• Greenwich University, 21 February 2014. Clive delivered a public lecture on “Corporate Psychopaths: Extreme Managers”.
• Professor Clive Boddy delivered a short public lecture and paper on psychopaths in finance and business at the “Improving British Corporate Behaviour conference” at Westminster Palace, on 27 November 2013. This won the “Best Paper” award.

Other knowledge exchange activities

Entrepreneurship workshop. As an academic Clive developed a half-day presentation/workshop for potential entrepreneurs that was presented in a Master of Entrepreneurship course in Tasmania. The same course can be used as an introduction to what’s needed to be a successful entrepreneur for potential entrepreneurs in the UK.

Pice sensitivity analysis tool. As a commercial researcher Clive adopted, modified, and structured a method of researching the reactions of consumers to product prices that was first developed by Stoetzel in 1954 and subsequently refined by Gabor and Granger and then by Van Westerndorp in 1976. This price sensitivity analysis technique identifies a range of prices for a product which are acceptable to a target market as well as indicating both volume and revenue maximising prices. Clive packaged this method, presented it at a company conference and it was then published in the group magazine and adopted and sold by several of our research offices for client use.

Selected recent publications

Articles

Boddy, C., Taplin, R., Sheehy, B., & Murphy, B. 2021, “Psychopaths in White Collar Jobs? A Review of the Evidence and Why it Matters”. Society and Business Review.

Boddy, C. R., 2021, “Populism and Political Personality. What Can We Learn from The Dark Triad Personality of Hermann Goering?”. Journal of Psychohistory.

Boddy, C. R. & Boulter, L., 2020, “Subclinical psychopathy, interpersonal workplace relationships and moral emotions through the lens of affective events theory”. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance.

Boddy, C. R. & Taplin, R. 2020, “The Impact of Managerial Psychopathy on Organisational Innovation”, International Journal of Innovation Management.

Murphy, B., Boddy, C. & Sheehy, B., 2020, ''Corporate Law and Corporate Psychopaths”, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.

Boddy, C. R. 2020, ''Lonely, Homesick and Struggling: Undergraduate Students and Intention to Quit University”, Journal of Quality Assurance in Education.

Boddy, C.R., 2019, ‘Qualitative research for breakthrough innovation’. Qualitative Market Research.

Boddy, C.R., 2019, ‘Causality in Qualitative Market and Social Research’. Qualitative Market Research.

Boddy, C. R. & Taplin, R. 2017, ‘A Note on Workplace Psychopathic Bullying – Measuring Its Frequency and Severity’, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol 34, pp.117-119.

Boddy, C. R. 2016, 'Sample Size in Qualitative Research', Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 19, no. 4. pp.426-432.

Boddy, C. R. & Taplin, R. 2016, 'The Influence of Corporate Psychopaths on Job Satisfaction and its Determinants', International Journal of Manpower, vol. 37, no.6, pp.965-988.

Boddy, C. R. 2016, 'Unethical 20th Century Business Leaders: Were some of them Corporate Psychopaths? The Case of Robert Maxwell', International Journal of Public Leadership, Vol. 12, no.2, pp. 76-93.

Boddy, C. R. 2016, ‘Psychopathy Screening for Public Leadership’, International Journal of Public Leadership. Vol. 2 no. 4, pp. 254-274.

Boddy, C. R. & Croft, R. 2016, 'Marketing in a Time of Toxic Leadership', Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 44-64.

Boddy, C. R. 2015, “Psychopathic Leadership: A Case Study of a Corporate Psychopaths CEO”, On-line first, 1-16, 2015, Journal of Business Ethics.

Boddy, C. R. 2015, 'Organisational Psychopaths: A Ten-Year Update', Management Decision, vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 2407-2432.

Boddy, C. R., Miles, D., Sanyal, C. & Hartog, M. 2015, 'Extreme Managers, Extreme Workplaces: Capitalism, Organisations and Corporate Psychopaths', Organization, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 530 - 551.

Boddy, C. R. 2014, 'Corporate Psychopaths, Conflict, Employee Affective Well-being and Counterproductive Work Behaviour', Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 121, no. 1, pp. 107-121.

Book Chapters

Boddy, C. R., & Boulter, L., 2022. “Psychopathy and the Absence of Love in Organizations”. In “Love and Organizations”. Routledge. In press. Should be out soon.

Boddy C.R., Malovany E., Kunter A., Gull G. (2020) “Employee Well-Being Under Corporate Psychopath Leaders”. In: Dhiman S. (eds) “The Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Well-Being”. Palgrave Macmillan.

Boddy, C. R., 2020. “Corporate Psychopaths and Destructive Leadership in Organizations”. In: ‘Destructive Leadership and Management Hypocrisy: Recent Advances and Current Thought”. Emerald.

Boddy, C. R., 2020. “Business Without Conscience”. In: ‘Routledge Research Companion to Business with A Conscience’.

Boddy, C. R. 2015, 'Corporate Psychopaths: Uncaring Citizens, Irresponsible Leaders', in M. McIntosh, (ed.) Globalization and corporate Citizenship: The Alternative Gaze - A Collection of Seminal Essays, Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield, pp. 166-177. The chapter was based on an update of a previous paper called “Corporate Psychopaths: Uncaring Citizens, Irresponsible Leaders”.

Boddy, C. R. 2013, 'Counter-Marketing Case Studies', in N. Bradley & J. Blythe, (eds.), Demarketing, Routledge, London, pp. 65-81. “Chapter 5: published December 2013.

Boddy, C. R., Galvin, P. G. & Ladyshewsky, R. 2010, 'Corporate Psychopaths', in C. Millar, (ed.) Ethical Leadership: the global perspective: Vision, theory and practice for scholars and executives, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Recent presentations and conferences

Boddy, C.R. 2020, “Retention via connectedness: Insights from using projective techniques”. In the proceedings of the UTAS ‘Teaching Matters’ Conference, Tasmanian Institute of Learning and Teaching, Hobart, Australia, November 30th/December 2nd.

Boddy, C. R. 2019, “Epitome of Success or Embodiment of Failure? The Particular Paradoxes of Psychopathic Leadership” In the proceeding of the 2019 ‘British Academy of Management Conference’, Aston, England, September.

Boddy, C. R. 2019, “The Development and Validity of the Psychopathy Measure–Management Research Versions 1 & 2”. In the proceeding of the 2019 ‘British Academy of Management Conference’, Aston, England, September.

Boddy, C. R. 2018, ‘Meet These Targets or Else: Government Inspired Psychopathy in the National Health Service’ In the proceedings of the British Academy of Management, annual conference, University of the West of England, September.

Boddy, C. R. 2018, ‘Why Board Chairpersons Need to Be Able to Recognise the Corporate Psychopath CEO’ In the proceedings of the British Academy of Management, annual conference, University of the West of England, September.

Boddy, C. R. 2018, ‘Historical Champions of Shareholder Capitalism: Were They Corporate Psychopaths? The Case of Albert Dunlap’ In the proceedings of the British Academy of Management, annual conference, University of the West of England, September.

Boddy, C. R. 2018, ‘Fraud and Corporate Psychopaths: Current Knowledge and Propositions for Further Research’ presented at the EBEN (European Business Ethics Network) 2018 Research Conference ‘Corruption and Beyond – Fraudulent Behaviour in and of Corporations’.

Media experience

Media appearances

There have been reports of Clive’s work on web-based video news channels, radio channels, financial news channels like CNN.com and in on-line newspapers and in magazines such as GQ. Newspaper reports of the theory include those in The Independent, The Korea Herald and The Irish Examiner, The Star (Canada), The Australian and others. Coverage of Clive’s latest book has been reported on in “The Cambridge Independent” newspaper, the “London Evening Standard Newspaper” and “Mensa Magazine”.

Radio interviews

Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) National Radio. Clive was interviewed by Sana Qadar on Corporate Psychopaths and Bullying for the “All in the mind” programme which initially aired on 9 February 2020.

ABC Radio WA, ‘Drive’, aired at 6pm on 3 July 2019. Clive was interviewed by Andrew Collins about my public lecture on the same day on: “The influence of corporate psychopaths on employees, organisations and society”.

Curtin FM. 12 noon, Tuesday 2 July 2019. Clive was interviewed concerning his next day’s public lecture on; “The influence of corporate psychopaths on employees, organisations and society”.

ABC Radio Hobart, ‘Drive’, 4.30pm 6 November; 2018. Clive was interviewed by Gary Magnussen about Toxic Leadership and a course on Toxic Leadership he delivered at the University of Tasmania on Monday 26 November.

British Broadcasting Commission (BBC) Radio Cambridge, Morning Show, 3 June 2016. Clive was interviewed about his talk to Wolfson College Science Society at the University of Cambridge on “Corporate Psychopaths at Work and in Society”.

Filmed interviews have been for:

A TV programme for ‘Renegade TV’ first aired on UK TV in June 2021 and also available on-line. Clive was interviewed for this via Zoon by broadcaster Ross Ashcroft on 7.6.21 at 7pm.

“Meet the Psychopaths” A documentary series first aired on Channel 5 (UK TV) in December 2015. Clive advised on and appeared in the second documentary on “Power Psychopaths”. This has been repeated on prime-time UK TV at least three times since its first appearance.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for a documentary “The Psychopath Next Door” about psychopaths in society. First shown on 23 January 2015 at 2pm on CBC-TV. This was on-line where it was viewed over 675,000 times before being removed.

A related talk on “Corporate Psychopaths and Bullying”, for the TEDx series of public lectures can be found on YouTube. This has now been viewed over 1,100,000 times.