Narcissistic Leaders and the Office Altar: What a New Research Says About Remote Work Resistance
Why do some leaders push so hard to bring everyone back to the office, even when the evidence on productivity points in the opposite direction? A study published in 2026 in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes offers a sharp, data-backed answer: for a significant subset of leaders, resistance to remote work is not about performance. It is about ego.
The paper, “Worship me at the office altar: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work,” is authored by Marissa S. Shandell, Courtney E. Elliott, and Adam M. Grant, all from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. It is one of the most rigorous investigations to date into the personality roots of return-to-office mandates, and its findings deserve wider attention beyond organizational behavior journals.
The Central Argument
Shandell, Elliott, and Grant build their framework on two theoretical pillars. The first is the extended agency model of narcissism (Campbell and Foster, 2007), which conceptualizes narcissism as a self-regulatory system oriented around protecting and enhancing self-esteem through dominance and admiration. The second is media richness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1984, 1986), which ranks communication channels by the quality and density of social cues they transmit.
The synthesis is elegant: in-person interaction is the richest possible medium for a narcissistic leader. It enables eye contact, physical presence, vocal dominance, and the immediate, unambiguous feedback that feeds what the literature calls “narcissistic supply” (Kernberg, 1975). Remote work, by contrast, compresses all of that into a video tile. Everyone is the same size on screen. Responses arrive late or not at all. The social hierarchy, so carefully constructed in physical space, becomes harder to read and harder to perform.
Three Studies, One Consistent Finding
The authors tested their hypotheses across three independent studies, each using a different method.
In Study 1, they analyzed archival data on 259 Fortune 500 CEOs during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than relying on self-reports (which narcissists tend to distort), they used unobtrusive measures: photo size in annual reports, signature size, and relative compensation compared to the second-highest-paid executive in each firm. These indicators of narcissism predicted more intense and broader public resistance to remote work, even after controlling for industry type, firm size, and CEO tenure.
In Study 2, a preregistered three-wave survey with 359 US leaders conducted in 2023, the authors moved beyond the CEO level. The sample included lower-level, middle-level, and upper-level leaders across 17 industries. Narcissism remained a significant predictor of remote work resistance across hierarchical levels, and the mechanism was clear: the effect ran through two motivational pathways, power (the desire to control and direct others) and status (the desire for admiration and prestige). Crucially, trust in employees, a factor frequently cited in earlier research as the main driver of leader resistance, did not explain the relationship once narcissism and these two motivations were accounted for.
Study 3, a preregistered experiment with 546 leaders, manipulated state narcissism by prompting participants to reflect on the value of bold, self-centered leadership styles. The activation of narcissistic states led to greater resistance to remote work, mediated specifically by power motivation. Status motivation was significant as a predictor of resistance but was not significantly activated by the manipulation itself, a nuance the authors flag as a direction for future work.
What This Means for Organizations
The practical implications are uncomfortable. If narcissistic leaders resist remote work not because of legitimate concerns about collaboration or learning, but because physical proximity is where they extract validation and exercise control, then framing the return-to-office debate purely in productivity terms misses a fundamental variable.
Shandell, Elliott, and Grant note that return-to-office mandates have been shown to reduce employee satisfaction and increase turnover among senior and highly skilled workers, without improving firm performance (Ding and Ma, 2024; Ding et al., 2024). The irony, as the authors point out, is that ego-driven resistance to remote work may impose real organizational costs in the name of leader comfort.
Their practical recommendation is structural: remote work policies should be determined collaboratively, not left to the discretion of individual leaders. And for employees navigating narcissistic managers, the research suggests that rather than advocating assertively for flexibility, a more effective approach may involve consulting the leader for their perspective, giving them a sense of authority over the process, before making the case.
Why This Paper Matters
The study sits at an important intersection. Remote work research has proliferated since 2020, but most of it examines employee outcomes, not leader psychology. Narcissistic leadership research, meanwhile, has focused heavily on financial risk-taking, strategic change, and team dynamics, not on workplace arrangement policies. Shandell, Elliott, and Grant open a new line of inquiry with unusually strong methodological triangulation: archival data, survey data, and experimental data, across different samples, time periods, and levels of leadership.
The finding that narcissists, who are drawn to virtual platforms for self-presentation in non-leadership contexts (Buffardi and Campbell, 2008; Gnambs and Appel, 2018), actively resist virtual interaction when in positions of authority adds meaningful theoretical nuance. Context changes the calculus. Online environments can amplify visibility; they can also flatten hierarchy. For a narcissistic leader, the second effect dominates.
A Final Note
The research does not argue that all return-to-office advocates are narcissists, nor that remote work is universally superior. It argues that personality shapes policy in ways that are often invisible, and that organizations benefit from recognizing this. As remote and hybrid arrangements become structural features of the labor market rather than pandemic exceptions, the question of who gets to decide where work happens, and why, matters more than ever.
The full paper is available in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 195, 2026. The authors’ supplementary materials and preregistration documents are publicly available via OSF.
Final Summary:
This research explores the psychological reasons why narcissistic leaders tend to oppose remote work and advocate for a return to the office. Across three studies, including an analysis of Fortune 500 CEOs, the authors demonstrate that narcissism predicts a stronger preference for in-person leadership. This resistance is driven by the leader’s desire for power and status, as virtual environments provide fewer opportunities for ego reinforcement and dominance. Unlike leaner digital channels, face-to-face interaction offers the rich social feedback necessary to satisfy a narcissist’s need for admiration and control. The findings suggest that return-to-office mandates may often stem from a leader’s self-centered motivations rather than objective concerns about productivity or performance. Ultimately, the text highlights how personality traits significantly shape organizational policies regarding flexible work arrangements.
Worship me at the office altar: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work
Marissa S. Shandell, Courtney E. Elliott, Adam M. GrantThe Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Received 9 September 2024, Revised 8 May 2026, Accepted 12 May 2026, Available online 9 June 2026, Version of Record 9 June 2026.