For Kaitlin Takacs-Haynes, professor of management in the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, studying greed has been on her mind since having a conversation with a colleague during the 2008 financial crisis.
“My first study came out of that initial conversation where we agreed that executive greed at a lower level led to this bigger unfolding of the financial crisis, and we saw that there was no work on greed at that time,” she said. “We thought we would fix that problem, and I’ve been researching greed ever since.”
For her latest project, Takacs-Haynes, whose first paper on greed was published in 2015, recently reached out to Kyle Emich and Kurt Norder, fellow UD management professors, due to Emich’s expertise in group dynamics and Norder’s work in computational content analysis.
“So it seemed like it would be a good match to bring the three of us together,” she said.
The three professors conducted the most comprehensive scholarly review of greed to date in a paper recently published in the Academy of Management Annals. Analyzing more than 500 academic studies across 10 research communities including economics, psychology, management, finance and sociology, their conclusion was unequivocal: greed is neither good nor sustainable.
One of the team’s most significant contributions was the creation of a unified definition of greed. Prior research was fragmented, often talking past itself because scholars used incompatible definitions.
“The lack of a common, agreed-upon definition is a key reason greed remains under-researched,” Takacs-Haynes said. To address this gap, the researchers synthesized common elements across hundreds of studies to produce a definition that can anchor future work.
They define greed as unbridled and insatiable acquisitiveness, characterized by the pursuit of excess resources beyond one’s needs in ways that harm others. Importantly, harm is not incidental but an essential aspect of greed that clearly separates greed from ambition or healthy self-interest.
After surveying the research communities, the researchers found no evidence supporting the claim that greed produces positive long-term outcomes.
“We didn’t find any evidence that greed is good in any of the empirical data,” Emich noted. “That’s the number one takeaway we wanted to get across.”
At the individual level, greed may lead to short-term material gains, but it undermines psychological well-being. Greedy individuals are prone to constant upward social comparison, which erodes life satisfaction and self-esteem.
“The purpose of obtaining resources is to increase life satisfaction,” Emich said, “but if you’re greedy, you’re not really able to do that.” Instead of fulfillment, greed creates a cycle of dissatisfaction in which nothing is ever enough.
The researchers also challenged the widespread belief that greed has always been viewed as economically beneficial. Takacs-Haynes argued this idea is historically inaccurate and rooted in a misinterpretation of Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher and economist regarded as the “father of modern economics.”
“Adam Smith never did say that greed was good,” she said. “He was a moral philosopher as well as an economist.” While Smith supported self-interest as a motivator, he distinguished it sharply from acquisitive behavior that violated moral norms and harmed others.
For most of history, greed was considered immoral and socially destructive. Only in relatively modern economic thought did it begin to be reframed as virtuous or necessary.
“We were right about greed 2,000 years ago and wrong about it 200 years ago,” Emich stated.
Another central insight from the professors’ research is that greed is not merely an individual personality trait. It exists across multiple levels: individual, group, organizational and institutional.
“We present greed as a multi-level construct,” Takacs-Haynes said. “Not just individuals, but groups and organizations can also be greedy.”
This matters because greed spreads. Once normalized at any level, it becomes contagious.
“Greed can move top down or bottom up,” Takacs-Haynes noted, flowing through hierarchies and social networks. Power accelerates this process. “A greedy person in a position of power, or a popular person people want to emulate, can create greed contagion.”
Studies reviewed by the researchers showed that in mixed environments, greed tends to dominate. Non-greedy individuals cluster together but wield little influence. One reason is moral rationalization.
“If you’re greedy in service of your company or your group, you can rationalize it as altruism,” Emich explained. Once such behavior becomes normatively accepted, it spreads rapidly.
At the organizational level, greed often manifests as an obsessive focus on efficiency, revenue and shareholder value at any cost. Takacs-Haynes warned that this shift signals a fundamental distortion of organizational purpose.
“Companies that drive for revenues and profitability or efficiency at no matter the cost – that’s where we see the true purpose of organizations shifting into greed,” she said.
While such strategies may boost short-term performance, long-term consequences are damaging.
“If you focus too much in the short term on profitability, in the long term it will hurt,” she explained. Cutting training, safety and employee well-being hollows out organizations and increases the likelihood of crises.
Despite its pervasiveness, greed is not inevitable. Norder emphasized that recognizing greed’s multi-level nature creates opportunities for intervention.
“It allows you to have empowerment at different levels,” he explained, from individual choices to organizational policies and broader systems.
The first step, the researchers argue, is acknowledgment.
“The inconvenient reality is that greed exists, and that it causes harm,” Takacs-Haynes said. “The first thing is to measure it and acknowledge its existence.”
From there, organizations can emphasize value-based leadership, stronger governance and long-term strategic thinking rather than narrow financial controls.
By integrating decades of fragmented research, the scholars present a clear, evidence-based challenge to a deeply ingrained myth. Greed may promise short-term rewards, but it consistently produces long-term psychological, organizational and societal harm.
“If you look at the data across communities, it’s telling a story that greed is not good,” Emich said.
Their work invites organizations and societies to reconsider assumptions long taken for granted, and to ask not only how much can be gained, but who is harmed along the way.