Ngineer:
Sunfish, your posts are interesting but one thing does not make sense. Why would a narcissist employ others like himself? If he did this, would'nt he be constantly watching his back for the knife weilding narcissists below him?
Nope, they don't have to watch their backs once they have narcissists below them because they deliberately hire less competent people who know that anything less than complete and abject loyalty will result in instant punishment and dismissal. Those hired know that (since they are usually incompetent) their only protection from being "found out' is their boss - who doles out favours and big bonuses to those that please him the most. It's like a mediaeval court surrounding the King. Everyone says nice things to the king. Anyone who isn't loyal gets their head chopped off, and the guys that please the king the most get made into Dukes (or today, Group General Managers).
To put it another way, narcissists "play with people" the way you or I would play with a dog or a cat, and they have no compunction about setting one onto another just to watch the fight. They can also "calibrate" an individual pretty well, like we can work out which dog is dangerous to us - and the dangerous ones get "put down'.
The only way Qantas will get put right is when the cleaning out starts from the very top of the Board, and if the Chairman is a Narcissist (don't know if the current one is, Marg definitely was) then that is not going to happen. If you leave one narcissist in the system, they will systematically work their way up the ladder again, knifing competitors in the back as they rise.