Slashdot Mirror
Explaining Corporate Culture Through "The Office"
Writing in the ribbonfarm.com blog, Venkatesh Rao uses The Office to explain and illustrate a theory of management he calls the Gervais Principle (after the TV series's creator). Taking off from Hugh MacLeod's cartoon laying out a corporate hierarchy in layers of Sociopaths, the Clueless, and Losers, Rao riffs on and updates the Peter Principle, in these terms: "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into [clueless] middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves." Don't know about you, but this analysis suddenly makes sense of much that mystified me in my sojourn in corporate America.
You could simply have said "my boss is a woman"...
From the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, the premier psychological dictionary of Britain
Since you quote a British work as well as the American checklist, I think you ought to be aware that the terms are used in slightly different ways in The US as compared to Europe.
However, before you dismiss a layman's views, perhaps you would benefit from reading at least some of the works of Robert Hare (who devised the checklist) and Hervey Cleckley; they give a number of interesting case studies of what can be considered typical behaviour for psychopaths.
Perhaps you have heard the saying "'tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt"?
Certainly; I have never heard it put better.