The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day: Narcissism

I appended the answer to the title rather than requiring everyone to read into the third paragraph. Mods: I know that's not precisely by the rules but is that ok? It seems like a clear improvement for readers, reducing the click-bait and making the decision to read/ignore much quicker.

Marissa S. Shandell, Courtney E. Elliott, Adam M. Grant, Worship me at the office altar: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 195, 2026, 104496, ISSN 0749-5978, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2026.104496

> Rigorous evidence shows that forcing people to come in every day backfires. Take it from studies of over 450 companies and over three million employees: Return-to-office mandates fail to increase financial returns. They succeed only in motivating star employees to quit, reducing the satisfaction of those who stay and discouraging new talent from joining. Experiments at tech companies and nonprofits show that letting people work from home part of the week boosts happiness and decreases turnover by a third — without any cost to performance. In many cases, those employees even get more done, because they don’t have to spend time commuting and don’t get distracted by office interruptions.