Managerial Egocentricity and Subordinates’ Career Sustainability: The Role of Emotional Disengagement

Abstract

Drawing on the conservation of resources (CoR) theory, this study examines the impact of egocentric managers on their subordinates’ emotional engagement and career sustainability. Time-lagged data were collected from 282 early- and mid-career banking professionals through an online questionnaire. The proposed model was assessed using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM), revealing that managers who exhibit more egocentricity negatively influence subordinates’ emotional engagement, which, in turn, reduces their ability to sustain their careers. The study further shows that employees’ emotional disengagement partially mediates the relationship between a manager’s egocentricity and subordinates’ career sustainability. The study concludes by discussing theoretical and practical implications and offering directions for future research.

Keywords

career sustainability job engagement egocentric leaders egocentricity employee’s well-being

Introduction

Career sustainability scholarship is in a progressive stage, and scholars have diverted their attention to investigating this phenomenon (Chin et al., 2019). Career sustainability is defined as “the sequence of an individual’s different career experiences, reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, crossing several social spaces, and characterized by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual” (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015, p. 7). Employees’ physical health, well-being, and productivity are crucial for the long-term sustainability of their careers (De Vos et al., 2020). Good physical health prevents the occurrence of ailments and injuries that have the potential to disrupt work continuity. Well-being, which includes mental health and work–life balance, contributes to long-term employment engagement and satisfaction by enabling employees to manage stress and prevent fatigue. Employees in excellent health and well-being are more likely to achieve high productivity levels, enabling organizations to accomplish their objectives and maintain a competitive edge in their respective industries. Collectively, these components establish a solid groundwork for an enduring and prosperous professional trajectory (see Donald et al., 2024). Considering the criticality of the indicators of career sustainability—such as health, happiness, and productivity—on individuals’ vocational journeys, it becomes essential to recognize the factors that could potentially disrupt these key elements.

Career sustainability has garnered the attention of management scholars, who have explored the topic both theoretically and empirically. While theoretical advancements aim to provide deeper insights into the subject (Donald et al., 2024), empirical research has predominantly focused on testing propositions derived from these theoretical efforts (Fang et al., 2021). For instance, the initial development of the career sustainability framework (De Vos et al., 2020), followed by the proposal of an ecosystem of sustainable careers (Donald et al., 2024), has opened new avenues for empirical inquiry on the subject. Current empirical studies notably emphasize identifying factors that enable (e.g., career competencies; Agbanyo et al., 2024) or disrupt (e.g., burnout; Barthauer et al., 2020) career sustainability. Within the leadership domain, research demonstrates that leadership support and feedback foster career sustainability (Fang et al., 2021). However, how managers who exhibit more egocentricity impair their subordinates’ career sustainability has yet to receive significant scholarly attention.

Among the critical disruptions caused by managers who are more egocentric are lower innovation (Zhang et al., 2022), workplace deviance (Leong et al., 2025), and job dissatisfaction (Liu et al., 2022), which consequently lead subordinates to disengage from their jobs (Sutton & Stapleton, 2023). Therefore, the presence of corporate egocentrics in managerial roles leads employees to believe that the organization cares little about their commitment to employee well-being (Elci, 2020). As a result, key indicators of career sustainability, such as affective well-being (Hood, 2024), psychological well-being (Mathieu et al., 2014), and job continuity (Khan et al., 2021), are significantly impacted. Taken together, managers who exhibit more egocentricity significantly undermine the foundations of a sustainable career (Boddy, 2017) by fostering job disengagement among their subordinates (Sutton & Stapleton, 2023). Despite the detrimental effects of egocentric managers on key indicators of career sustainability and job engagement, the interplay among egocentric managers, job engagement, and career sustainability has received limited attention. Thus, this study addresses this gap and contributes to the existing knowledge by demonstrating how egocentric managers—a trait associated with psychopathic leadership—diminish their subordinates’ career sustainability (Figure 1).

Theory and Hypotheses

Psychopathic Managers

In the management domain, Cleckley (1976) incorporated the term “corporate psychopaths” in his book “The Mask of Sanity.” Cangemi and Pfohl (2009) afterward asserted that individuals with psychopathic dispositions frequently hold executive and senior positions in industry and business. Managers who exhibit psychopathic propensity are associated with managerial and behavioral transgressions. A prevalent distinction is between primary and secondary psychopathy, in which primary psychopathy captures the core concept of psychopathy (Murphy & Vess, 2003). Individuals indicating primary psychopathy are characterized by such traits as egocentricity, manipulativeness, callousness, and lack of empathy and remorse (Laurijssen et al., 2024). These individuals may function well in society and display charming demeanor but repress their dark and shallow interior (Cleckley, 1976).

In recent years, the intersection of psychopathy and leadership has garnered significant attention within the fields of organizational psychology and management studies (Laurijssen et al., 2024). Individuals exhibiting elevated levels of primary psychopathy often achieve success and thrive in organizational environments (Hill & Scott, 2019). Despite their achievements, such individuals typically display traits such as egocentrism, ruthlessness, insensitivity, and manipulativeness (Babiak et al., 2010). These traits in managers drive them to become corporate psychopaths, which is particularly concerning due to their substantial influence over others (Galinsky et al., 2015). Anderson and Brion (2014) assert that their manipulative nature enables them to secure and sustain authoritative positions within organizations. This control can create an impasse, hindering an organization’s ability to progress effectively, as these leaders prioritize self-interest over the well-being of both individuals and the organization (LeBreton et al., 2018).

Manager’s Egocentricity and Subordinate’s Career Sustainability

Egocentricity is a distinctive trait of psychopathic leaders that is centered on an exorbitant focus on self-achievement. Goodhew and Edwards (2024) argued that egocentric individuals innately prioritize themselves and may calibrate their level of effort in accordance with perceived self-benefit. Egocentrism is associated with deficits such as a lack of self-awareness, narrow perspective, and less empathic behavior, due to which such individuals may confront serious impediments (Streib, 2023). Arguably, managers with egocentricity tend to portray less consciousness toward others’ needs due to an overemphasis on themselves. This is the state of perplexity or confusion, a deficit in the context of egocentric individuals, as Streib (2023) reasoned.

Conservation of resources (CoR) theory can assist in understanding the influence of egocentric managers on subordinates’ career sustainability. Drawing on the CoR theory (Hobfoll, 1989), this study tests how managers’ egocentricity undermines subordinates’ career sustainability. The CoR theory explains that individuals strive to obtain, retain, and protect valuable resources, including but not limited to personal, social, and physical resources. Therefore, an individual’s inability to regularly replenish these resources threatens them with potential loss (Hobfoll, 1989). From the lens of CoR theory, managers’ egocentricity depletes subordinates’ valuable resources such as emotional energy, attention, and self-confidence (Liao et al., 2022), thereby leading to their emotional disengagement. This outcome, in the form of subordinates’ disengagement, reflects their perceived depletion of resources and inability to restore what has been lost, which consequently undermines their career sustainability—another loss of a valuable resource.

This sequential mechanism aligns with CoR theory’s principle that losing a valuable resource is more distressing than failing to obtain new ones, considering that gaining new resources becomes critical after the loss of certain valuable ones (Hobfoll, 1989). Thus, CoR provides a reasonable foundation for our assertion that managers’ egocentricity depletes subordinates’ emotional resources (disengagement, in our case), which consequently reduces their likelihood of achieving career sustainability. When managers exhibit more egocentric behavior, characterized by an excessive focus on self-projection and advancement, their tendency to understand subordinates’ emotions diminish. This conduct may be glimpsed in the shape of caching opportunities, seizing credit from subordinates’ work, and disregarding the developmental needs of their team members (Pandey, 2022).

Hypothesis 1

Manager’s egocentricity relates to subordinate’s career sustainability

Subordinates’ Emotional Disengagement and Career Sustainability

Since its inception, the concept of burnout has been elucidated in myriad ways; nonetheless, there is a general consensus that it encompasses two primary components: a cynical/detached disposition toward one work and a high level of exhaustion (Demerouti et al., 2010). The exhaustion component is considered emotional depletion and envelopes “feelings of being overextended and depleted of one’s emotional and physical resources” (Maslach, 2001, p. 399). The cynical component was initially referred to as “depersonalization”; however, this was relabeled as disengagement, as Sonnentag and Bayer (2005) argued. Demerouti et al. (2010) have asserted that disengagement is the extent to which an individual withdraws or distances themselves from all aspects of their work. Disengaged employees “withdraw and defend themselves physically, cognitively, or emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, 1990, p. 64).

Emotional disengagement is characterized as a deficit in emotional investment in one’s work, which can have negative repercussions on both an individual and organizational level. Emotional disengagement is a predecessor to career unsustainability, which renders circumstances that result in emotional exhaustion, decreased job satisfaction, and increased turnover intentions. Emotional disengagement is significantly influenced by emotional exhaustion. Employees experiencing greater emotional exhaustion are likely to report and articulate emotional derangement and work–family conflict (Haq et al., 2021). Emotional disengagement can be interpreted as a reflection of perceived inequities in organizational settings. When an organization fails to reciprocate emotional investments in the form of equitable treatment or support, employees may begin to withdraw emotionally. This withdrawal may activate an emotional disengagement cycle, resulting in a descent in job performance and a subsequent perception of inequity due to a lack of emotional investment (Ogunfowora et al., 2022).

In workplace settings, the association of managers with subordinates is considered critical and dynamic and can affect careers. Employees reflect emotional disengagement when they emotionally withdraw from their work. This detachment stems from the perception that their contribution is underrated or inadequately reciprocated by their managers. The feeling of subordinates’ insufficient contribution may diminish their engagement due to emotional and psychological costs related to continued involvement in an unstable exchange.

Hypothesis 2

Subordinate’s emotional disengagement relates to subordinates’ career sustainability

Mediating Role of Emotional Disengagement

Emotional disengagement is defined as “a pattern of response, typically to negative emotional experience, that attempts to deny, suppress, or mask those resulting negative feelings” (Lori, 2017). As we previously contended, managers who exhibit more egocentricity prioritize their needs and interests over those of their subordinates (Goodhew & Edwards, 2024), which consequently build a perception of injustice and a lack of support among subordinates (Pandey, 2022). This disrupts obtaining, retaining, and sustaining valuable resources, the fundamental principle of CoR (Hobfoll, 1989), resulting in subordinates feeling unsupported and undervalued. This emotional and psychological distress is characterized by job disengagement, which occurs when employees retreat emotionally and psychologically from their work due to a dearth of positive exchanges and encouragement from managers. Literature provides evidence that psychopathic managers are the cause of employees’ dissatisfaction from their career and jobs (Sutton & Stapleton, 2023), which consequently leads them to emotionally disengage at work (Sutton & Stapleton, 2023). As a result, key indicators of career sustainability, such as affective well-being (Boddy, 2014), psychological well-being (Mathieu et al., 2014), and job continuity (Boddy, 2017), are significantly impacted. Taken together, psychopathic leaders significantly undermine the foundations of a sustainable career (Boddy, 2014, 2017; Mathieu et al., 2014) by fostering emotional disengagement among their subordinates (Sutton & Stapleton, 2023).

Hypothesis 3

Subordinate’s emotional disengagement mediates the relationship between manager’s egocentricity and subordinates’ career unsustainability

Method

Data Collection and Response Patterns

We recruited early and mid-career professional participants from commercial banking financial institutions in Pakistan. We collected time-lagged data through a structured questionnaire build and administered through Google Forms. Our professional connections helped us generate leads, access, identify, and collect a reasonable number of valid responses from participants. Participants’ email addresses assisted us in maintaining their identity needed to approach them for other rounds of data collection (T1, T2). Data on managers’ egocentricity (T1), subordinates’ emotional disengagement (T2), and career sustainability (T3) were collected in three waves, each separated by a two-week interval.

A short guide for participants to complete the questionnaire informed them about the remaining two parts of the instrument to be shared at some later time for their response. We included an attention check of instructional nature in the instrument during each wave of data collection to filter the careless responses (Meade & Craig, 2012). An example of the included attention check is “please select ‘neutral’ for questionnaire item 2”.

Our leads supported well in collecting maximum quality responses in a reasonable timeframe during each wave (T1, T2, T3). We received 344 responses during T1 (response rate 55%) followed by 317 and 298 during T2 and T3, respectively. The final dataset included 282 valid responses (male: 181, female: 101) from participants who completed all three waves and passed attention checks, with 16 invalid responses excluded. In terms of the overall demographic pattern of all valid responses, data showed that the lead representatives of the sample included male 181 (64%), aged between 26 and 29 years (28%), having bachelor qualification 196 (70%) at their early stage of career 171 (61%).

Measures

Participants responded all questions on a five-point Likert scale range from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 = “strongly agree.”

Manager’s Egocentricity (T1)

Managers’ egocentricity (T1) was measured using an original 5-item scale from Boduszek et al. (2016). A sample item is “My line manager does not usually appreciate the other person’s viewpoint if he/she does not agree with it.” The construct showed good reliability in previous studies (α = 0.69; Boduszek et al., 2016). Cronbach’s α in this study was 0.88.

Subordinate’s Emotional Disengagement (T2)

We measured the subordinate’s emotional disengagement with three items adopted from Houle et al. (2022). A sample item includes “I am not enthusiastic about my job.” The construct showed good reliability in previous studies (α = 0.94; Houle et al., 2022). Cronbach’s α in this study was 0.77.

Subordinate’s Career Sustainability (T3)

Subordinate’s career sustainability was measured with twelve items adopted from Chin et al. (2022). A sample item is “My career makes me feel happy because I use my resources well.” The construct showed good reliability and validity in previous studies conducted in Pakistan’s context (α = 0.88; Ahmad & Bilal, 2025). Cronbach’s α in this study was 0.87.

Analysis Strategy

We employed IBM SPSS for preliminary data analysis and covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) for advanced statistical testing of the proposed theoretical model (Figure 1). For advanced-stage analysis, we used a two-stage approach of model examination (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988)—which includes the examination of the measurement model through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) followed by the structural model assessment. Furthermore, we performed 10,000 bootstraps, and a significance level of 0.05 was set to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results

Correlation, Normality, Multicollinearity and Common Method Bias (CMB)

Table 1 reports the result of descriptive analysis. All variables showed low (^r EC, CS = 0.325) to moderate (^r ED, CS = 0.464) level of significant correlation. The normality of the data, assessed through skewness and kurtosis, and the multicollinearity among variables, assessed through variance inflation factor (VIF), both indicated the absence of non-normality (Skewness <2; kurtosis −3 | < 3; Kline, 2016) and collinearity (VIF <5; Hair et al., 2010) issues. We assessed CMB using Harman’s single-factor test. All factors loading onto a single latent construct explained 36.20% of the variance, which is significantly less than the recommended threshold value of 50% (Podsakoff et al., 2003).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics

Variables	Mean	SD	CS	EC	JE	Skewness	Kurtosis	VIF
CS	2.58	1.0452	1			0.145	−1.215
EC	3.96	0.9114	−.325^a	1		0.145	0.728	1.156
ED	4.07	0.7454	−.464^a	−.367^a	1	0.145	1.106	1.156

^aCorrelation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

CS = career sustainability, EC = egocentricity, ED = emotional disengagement.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

The proposed hypothetical model, shown in Figure 1, is a three-factor model. We performed a CFA to assess how well the data fit this model. We compared the fit indices of the proposed model (Model 3) with those of alternate models (Model 1 and Model 2). The fit indices evaluated included the Comparative Fit Index (CFI >0.90; Kline, 2016), the Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI >0.90; Tucker & Lewis, 1973), the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR <0.05; Hu & Bentler, 1998), and the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA <0.08; Kline, 2016). Table 2 presents the CFA output for all three models. The results indicate that Model 3, the proposed model, exhibits the best fit with values of χ²/df = 1.774, SRMR = 0.039, CFI = 0.975, TLI = 0.968, and RMSEA = 0.052. In comparison, Model 2 has values of χ²/df = 5.566, SRMR = 0.117, CFI = 0.853, TLI = 0.817, and RMSEA = 0.127, while Model 1 shows values of χ²/df = 13.623, SRMR = 0.163, CFI = 0.586, TLI = 0.494, and RMSEA = 0.212. The item loadings for all constructs exceeded the recommended threshold value (range 0.65–0.84; >0.50; Hair et al., 2010). Cronbach’s alpha also meets the minimum recommended value (>0.70; Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994): EC (α_T1 = 0.88), ED (α_T2 = 0.77), and CS (α_T3 = 0.87). The convergent validity satisfies the threshold criteria (range 0.60–0.53; AVE >0.50; Fornell & Larcker, 1981).

Table 2.

CFA Model Fit Indices

Model	χ ²	df	χ²/df	Δdf	Δχ²	SRMR	TLI	CFI	RMSEA
Model 3^a	90.520	51	1.774	-	-	0.039	0.968	0.975	0.052
Model 2^b	294.99	53	5.566	2	204.47	0.117	0.817	0.853	0.127
Model 1^c	735.63	54	13.623	3	645.11	0.163	0.494	0.586	0.212

Note.

^aCombines EC, ED, and CS.

^bCombines EC and ED.

^cComprise factors EC, ED, and CS.

Hypotheses Testing

Table 3 summarizes the direct, indirect, and total effects of the tested relationships.

Table 3.

Hypothesis Testing

Effects	Relationship	β	t Values	p Values	CI [2.5%]	CI [97.5%]
Direct effect	EC → CS	−0.133	2.130	0.033^a *	0.013	0.257
	EC → ED	−0.287	4.284	0.000^a **	0.166	0.425
	ED → CS	−0.709	6.206	0.000^a **	0.502	0.950
Indirect effect	EC → ED → CS	−0.204	4.402	0.000^a **	0.120	0.303
Total effects	EC → CS	−0.337	6.021	0.000 **	0.231	0.450
Total effects	EC → ED	−0.287	4.284	0.000 **	0.166	0.425

^aHypothesis is supported.

*Relationship is significant at p < 0.05; ** relationship is significant at p < 0.001. CS = career sustainability, EC = egocentricity, ED = emotional disengagement.

Direct Effects

Managers’ egocentricity (EC) significantly predicted subordinates’ career sustainability (CS) (β = −0.133, t = 2.130, p < 0.05), supporting H1. Managers’ EC also significantly predicted subordinates’ emotional disengagement (ED) (β = −0.287, t = 4.284, p < 0.001), which in turn significantly predicted subordinates’ CS (β = −0.709, t = 6.206, p < 0.001), supporting H2.

Mediation Effects

Following the steps recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986) and Weems (2025), we tested whether subordinates’ ED mediates the relationship between managers’ EC and subordinates’ CS. The indirect effect was significant (β = −0.204, t = 4.402, p < 0.001), while the direct effect remained significant, indicating partial mediation. The total effect of managers’ EC on subordinates’ CS was also significant (β = −0.337, t = 6.021, p < 0.001), confirming that managers’ EC influences subordinates’ CS both directly and indirectly through ED, consistent with H3.

Discussion

Psychopathic individuals are prevalent in both professional and personal contexts, exerting a significant impact on those they interact with. Although they have a detrimental impact on the personal and professional aspects of those they interact with, our study specifically focuses on how they influence the career sustainability of their counterparts in the workplace. In particular, we examined how managers’ egocentricity affects the career sustainability of their subordinates. The findings reveal that employees under egocentric managers exhibit higher emotional disengagement, which adversely impacts their career sustainability. Furthermore, we highlight that working under an egocentric manager can negatively impact a subordinate’s career sustainability, either directly or through emotional disengagement. Thus, our results suggest that toxic leadership can adversely affect both immediate outcomes, such as emotional disengagement, and long-term outcomes, such as career sustainability, for subordinates.

Theoretical Implications

This study advances the understanding of toxic supervision by highlighting its cascading effects on employee emotional and career outcomes. Specifically, it enriches the toxic triangle framework (Padilla et al., 2007), which explains how destructive leadership traits—such as the ideology of hate, negative life themes, and personalized power—negatively impact those under the direct influence of such leaders. This study empirically enriches the toxic triangle framework (Padilla et al., 2007) by identifying emotional disengagement and career unsustainability as critical consequences of destructive leadership.

Literature also supports that employees’ emotional engagement is a critical resource that enhances their learning effectiveness (Taylor & Statler, 2014) and aids organizations in developing their corporate brand (Hardaker & Fill, 2005). Furthermore, managers play a crucial role in fostering emotional connections between employees and their work, which, in turn, helps organizations retain talent. Existing evidence suggests that employees leave their managers, not the organization (Reina et al., 2018). Our study integrates insights from the CoR theory (Hobfoll, 1989) to explain how egocentric managers tend to deplete their subordinates’ emotional resources, such as engagement in their job roles. Through the lens of CoR, we further illustrate how emotionally disengaged employees must work hard to protect and regain the emotional engagement they risk losing, in order to maintain their career sustainability—another critical resource.

While existing research provides valuable insights into how external factors such as career development opportunities and organizational support can help individuals sustain their careers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015), our study expands this understanding by demonstrating how internal psychological traits exhibited by immediate leaders can influence subordinates’ emotional disengagement. By showing that emotional disengagement partially mediates the relationship between egocentricity and career sustainability, we contribute to the theory that psychological and emotional states significantly shape career outcomes within the broader career ecosystem (Baruch & Rousseau, 2019). While our findings establish that self-focused leaders reduce subordinates’ engagement and career sustainability, they also slightly diverge from literature suggesting that narcissistic leaders may, at times, contribute to their subordinates’ development through increased visibility and high-performance expectations (Nevicka et al., 2018). Furthermore, although gender is not a central variable in our research, we suggest that future studies examine how individuals of different genders perceive and respond to egocentric leaders, as prior literature indicates that gendered social norms shape how people experience and react to such behaviors (Eagly et al., 2007).

Practical Implications

Our findings support the assertion that egocentric managers can drive subordinates’ emotional disengagement, which, in turn, negatively impacts their career sustainability. This phenomenon demands immediate remedial measures, as failing to address it can lead to withdrawal behaviors, job dissatisfaction, and ultimately, high employee turnover (Christian & Ellis, 2014). Career counselors can play a critical role in guiding individual and corporate clients to proactively monitor employee engagement levels through tools like pulse surveys (Saks, 2006). Lower engagement levels can act as early indicators of egocentric leadership. By being proactive rather than reactive, organizations can address disengagement issues promptly. Counselors and practitioners should also help clients design effective mentoring and coaching sessions to support employees exhibiting lower engagement. These sessions should provide clear developmental pathways, reducing the negative impacts of egocentric leadership while creating opportunities for career growth within the organization. Such proactive interventions can help sustain employee engagement and mitigate the long-term consequences of egocentric management.

The findings also suggest that organizations collaborate with career practitioners to mitigate the negative impact of egocentric managers on employee engagement and career sustainability. Career advisors can support both individual and organizational clients by recommending targeted interventions, such as leadership development programs and 360-degree feedback systems. While psychopathy requires prolonged clinical interventions, egocentrism, by comparison, can be handled through feedback and counseling. Such mechanisms enable managers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their leadership style as perceived by subordinates, peers, and superiors (Fleenor et al., 2010). When this feedback is complemented with tailored coaching and structured reflections, it can improve self-awareness, thereby addressing egocentrism. Moreover, outcomes of such proactive assessment of managers’ egocentricity through feedback and reflections could help organizations identify and manage egocentric traits before assigning them managerial roles. Developing emotional intelligence (EI) in leaders remains critical for sustaining supportive and career-enabling environments (Caruso & Salovey, 2004).

Given the severity of toxic leadership (e.g., Christian & Ellis, 2014), it is imperative for individuals and organizations to adopt proactive measures to manage leadership and enhance employee engagement. Career consultants can guide client organizations to establish leadership accountability structures by integrating subordinates’ well-being and career development as core metrics in leaders’ performance evaluations. This approach could effectively mitigate the adverse effects of managerial egocentricity (Gentry et al., 2008). Incorporating key performance indicators related to employee well-being and career development into managerial performance management systems can enable organizations to evaluate leaders’ ability to foster their subordinates’ career growth and cultivate a culture of inclusivity.

The study also holds significance for HR practitioners. They could assess the emotional regulation and self-awareness of candidates during the process of managerial selection. Initially, they could evaluate whether potential candidates for managerial roles have the capacity for self-reflection and perspective-taking (Leroy et al., 2015). Considering such aspects during the hiring process aligns with evidence that emotionally intelligent managers safeguard employees’ psychological safety and career sustainability (Luthans & Avolio, 2003). Such self-assessment and feedback practices help restrain the penetration of egocentric managerial behaviors and foster sustainable career trajectories (London & Smither, 1999).

Limitations and Future Research Directions

First, this study focused on early and mid-career banking professionals, which may limit the generalizability of findings to other industries or senior leadership levels. However, toxicity among leaders is not confined to these levels and is also prevalent in upper echelons, regardless of the industry. Therefore, Future research should explore the egocentric tendencies of leaders across senior management levels and diverse industries to enhance external validity. In light of this, we further suggest that the egocentric tendencies of leaders should be examined at senior management levels across other emerging industrial sectors. Such research would contribute to enhancing the external validity of the phenomenon.

Second, we focused on the egocentric dimension of psychopathic leadership to examine its impact on subordinates’ engagement and, ultimately, their career sustainability. The literature identifies three additional dimensional facets of psychopathic leadership: affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, and interpersonal manipulation (Boduszek et al., 2022). We recommend that future studies incorporate these remaining dimensions into the theoretical framework proposed in this study. Such an approach would allow for a comparative analysis of how each facet of psychopathic leadership uniquely influences subordinates’ engagement and career sustainability.

Third, the most frequently cited definition of career sustainability in the literature (e.g., Bhaskar et al., 2023) conceptualizes it as “the sequence of an individual’s different career experiences, reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, crossing several social spaces, and characterized by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual” (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015, p. 7). Despite this, the literature often presents an ambiguous understanding of the term career sustainability (Chin et al., 2019). However, the operationalization of career sustainability by Chin et al. (2022) offers a baseline for better conceptual clarity, which we adopted in the present study. Additionally, there is evidence in the literature that uses specific, concrete proxies for career sustainability, such as career satisfaction, performance, and employability (see Talluri et al., 2022). Testing career sustainability through these indicators could provide valuable insights, particularly in the context of psychopathic leaders and subordinate engagement. We argue that the impact of psychopathic leaders on these proxy measures of career sustainability is more straightforward and discernible compared to the broader, widely used measure of career sustainability.

Fourth, Subordinates reported their manager’s egocentricity, which could be influenced by individual biases and by their limited knowledge of their managers’ personality traits. Thus, we suggest that future studies collect multisource or dyadic data (Conway & Lance, 2010).

Conclusion

Amid the daily external and internal challenges, the well-being of employees working under psychopathic managers continues to deteriorate, adversely affecting their career satisfaction, performance, and employability. Time-lagged data collected from working professionals reveal that a leader’s egocentricity significantly diminishes employees’ emotional engagement, making it increasingly difficult for them to sustain their careers. The findings underscore the importance of holding leaders accountable for fostering team well-being and career development to ensure sustainable workplace practices.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Bilal Ahmad

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Bilal Ahmad, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at the Chaudhary Abdul Rahman Business School (CARBS), Superior University, Pakistan. He also serves as Assistant Director of HR Strategic Planning, Organizational Development, and Automation at Superior University. His research primarily focuses on career management and related areas within business administration. His work has been published in Academy of Management Proceedings, Journal of Career Development, International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, and South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, among others. Beyond his academic and professional engagements, he has a strong interest in calligraphy and painting.

Saba Bilal has more than a decade of professional experience in the field of human resource management. She is a graduate of Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, Pakistan. Her research interests include employee voice and career resilience. In her leisure time, she enjoys spending quality time with her family.

Dr. Shahid Latif is a Lecturer in Accounting in the Department of Accounting and Finance at Curtin University, Malaysia. He is also a member of CPA Australia. Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Management and Technology, Sialkot Campus, Pakistan. He holds a PhD in Accounting from Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. His research has been published in reputable journals, including Asian Review of Accounting, South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, Global Business Review, Business Perspectives and Research, and International Journal of Emerging Markets, among others. His research interests include accounting and control systems, performance management systems, management accounting systems, financial literacy, sustainability, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and corporate governance. Beyond academia, he enjoys reading and engaging in activities that support lifelong learning.

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