Good morning. Claire Zillman writing from London this morning. CEOs have offered many different reasons for calling workers back into the office—despite research that suggests working from home can be as effective, if not more effective, than in-office work. Amazon’s Andy Jassy says in-person collaboration is “simpler and more effective.” Jamie Dimon calls Zoom-heavy work “management by Hollywood Squares.” Instagram’s Adam Mosseri says five days in-office breeds creativity. Larry Fink even floated the idea that getting bodies back in chairs could help beat inflation.
These are the arguments CEOs have made publicly. But a new study suggests there’s a less flattering explanation that nobody has put in a memo. A Wharton study co-authored by organizational psychologist Adam Grant found that leader narcissism is directly associated with resistance to remote work. The main reason? Power is easier to perform in person.
In the six-year study, researchers collected data on Fortune 500 CEOs, using behavioral proxies—signature size, photo size in annual reports, pay gap relative to peers—to construct narcissism scores. The higher the score, the more likely a CEO was to publicly oppose remote and hybrid work and seek additional status (like a board chairmanship). In a separate experiment, CEOs whose egos were primed—by reflecting on the assertive leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison—showed significantly greater opposition to working from home than a control group.
“The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status—and the more they favored return-to-office mandates,” the authors wrote in a New York Times opinion piece.
Grant and his coauthors warn that ego may be blinding CEOs to the upside of more flexible working arrangements—a perk employees love—and motivating them to impose full-time in-office mandates that could backfire.
The study should be a wakeup call for leaders: There may be totally legitimate reasons to call employees back into the office, but massaging the boss’s ego isn’t one of them.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
Top leadership news
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The U.S. could lose nearly $500 billion by driving away international STEM students
A Peterson Institute paper published Tuesday found that a one-third drop in foreign-born STEM graduates over the next decade would cost the U.S. economy between $240 billion and $481 billion, as immigration crackdowns push talent to competitor countries. “These high-skill STEM workers lost to the United States won’t disappear. They will supply their talents instead to competitor countries,” the authors wrote.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are up 0.7% this morning. The last session closed down 0.1%. South Korea’s KOSPI rose 5.4%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 4.6%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 1.4%, while Mainland China’s CSI 300 rose 1.6%. India’s NIFTY 50 is up 0.1%, while the STOXX Europe 600 is up 0.6% in morning trading. Shares in SK Hynix surged 13.1% after the chipmaker unveiled plans for a $29 billion U.S. listing. Bitcoin has dropped below $62,000.
Around the watercooler
‘Wipe out and change are different’: Amazon exec slams AI job apocalypse fears as he hires thousands of Gen Z grads by Preston Fore
Ray Dalio just finished a 10-day trip to China. He says global leaders know America ‘doesn’t have what it takes to fight to maintain its empire’ by Nick Lichtenberg
Exclusive: Vinod Khosla wanted ‘every available dollar’ of Runlayer’s funding round. It just raised $30 million to govern the agent workforce by Lily Mae Lazarus
Trump mistakes the bully pulpit for bullying leadership — history’s villains were never heroes by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
