THE DARK PERSONALITY AND JOB SUCCESS IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY: USE OF INTERPERSONAL MANIPULATION IN THE WORKPLACE

This dissertation relates job desires and outcomes to the Dark Personality (Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Low Agreeableness, Low Honesty-Humility) in the United States Army. It purports that individuals high on the Dark Personality desire more power, money, and status, and that they obtain jobs that afford them these luxuries by using manipulation at work. Two pilot studies used samples of United States Army members to create and test index variables: Dark Personality, Total Manipulation in the workplace, Desire for Job Success, and Total Job Success in the Army. Individual personality traits, manipulation tactics, and job desires were examined in secondary analyses. Using a sample of 468 United States Army Members, central analyses indicated that Army members high on the Dark Personality desired Job Success. Likewise, army members higher on the Dark Personality used more Manipulation tactics at work, including the egregious tactics. Yet, using more Manipulation tactics at work predicted lower levels of Job Success in the Army. Most manipulation tactics had a negative impact on Job Success, with the exception of soft tactics like Reason and Responsibility Invocation. Together, these results indicate that selective use of soft manipulation predicted Job Success, but use of more manipulation tactics predicted less Job Success in the Army. Curvilinear results indicated that being either very low or very high on the Dark Personality predicted more Job Success in the Army, whereas having intermediate levels of the Dark Personality predicted less Job Success. Finally, possessing the Dark Personality and using more Manipulation tactics at work, together, predicted less Job Success in the Army. Collectively, the results indicate that army members with intermediate levels of the Dark Personality want more powerful and high paying jobs, yet their strategy of manipulating their coworkers to move up the job ladder does not result in higher ranking, higher paying Army positions. However, Army members highest on the Dark Personality achieved job success, defying the maladaptive influence that antisocial personality traits and manipulative behaviour had on job success for most Army members. Therefore, this dissertation indicates that successful corporate scoundrels exist in the Army, but there are few of them.

Essays in dynamic optimal taxation: working experience, unemployment scarring and poverty

This thesis investigates the design of optimal tax systems in dynamic environments. The first essay characterizes the optimal tax system where wages depend on stochastic shocks and work experience. In addition to redistributive and efficiency motives, the taxation of inexperienced workers depends on a second-best requirement that encourages work experience, a social insurance motive and incentive effects. Calibrations using U.S. data yield higher expected optimal marginal income tax rates for experienced workers for most of the inexperienced workers. They confirm that the average marginal income tax rate increases (decreases) with age when shocks and work experience are substitutes (complements). Finally, more variability in experienced workers' earnings prospects leads to increasing tax rates since income taxation acts as a social insurance mechanism. In the second essay, the properties of an optimal tax system are investigated in a dynamic private information economy where labor market frictions create unemployment that destroys workers' human capital. A two-skill type model is considered where wages and employment are endogenous. I find that the optimal tax system distorts the first-period wages of all workers below their efficient levels which leads to more employment. The standard no-distortion-at-the-top result no longer holds due to the combination of private information and the destruction of human capital. I show this result analytically under the Maximin social welfare function and confirm it numerically for a general social welfare function. I also investigate the use of a training program and job creation subsidies. The final essay analyzes the optimal linear tax system when there is a population of individuals whose perceptions of savings are linked to their disposable income and their family background through family cultural transmission. Aside from the standard equity/efficiency trade-off, taxes account for the endogeneity of perceptions through two channels. First, taxing labor decreases income, which decreases the perception of savings through time. Second, taxation on savings corrects for the misperceptions of workers and thus savings and labor decisions. Numerical simulations confirm that behavioral issues push labor income taxes upward to finance saving subsidies. Government transfers to individuals are also decreased to finance those same subsidies.