Personality And Job Performance For Purposeful Work Behaviour

Neuroticism

Describe about the Personality and Job Performance for Purposeful Work Behaviour.

This paper is based on a research aiming at determining the relationship between job performance and personality. The topic of the relationship between job performance and personality is the most studied subject by the Organizational behavior students and industrial psychologists (Barrick & Mount 2013, p. 136). Job performance is defined by Barrick and Mount (2013) as a construct which is multi-dimensional. It indicates how best employees perform their duties and the initiative they take that results to how the resourcefulness they portray in solving problems. Furthermore, it also shows how the employees utilize the available resources and the energy and time that they spend on their tasks (Barros et.al 2014, p. 440).

What affects the job performance can be affected by some situational factors that include the organization, features of the job, and the co-workers. Therefore, job performance is mainly influenced by the need for change, amplitude, effective temperate, self-regard, and the interaction between the named constructs. In regards to this fact, most psychologists have over time questioned the credibility of the importance of personality with regards to prediction of job performance. However, going by the illustration by Hassan et.al (2016), most of the research on matters of personality and job performance has yielded evidence that relates the two with personality being a useful tool in measuring any job-related criteria.

In an attempt to discuss more on the topic, we look at the relationship between job performance and personality from the traits point of view, also regarded as the five personality dimensions. Before studying the concepts under the big five personality dimension, it is relevant to understand that the relevance of the dimensions differs by culture. The dimensions include conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to experience.

This is a personality dimension that is normal. Neuroticism indicates the universal tendency to experience negative effects like anger, sadness, embarrassment, guilt, disgust, and fear. The individuals having high score in this category may be subjected to higher risks of psychiatric problems. According to Brown and Sitzmann (2011), a higher Neuroticism score implies that the person is prone to experiencing unreasonable ideas and poor coping with stress. More so, the individuals in this category can be said to be having difficulties in controlling impulses too. However, the individuals who experience low score of Neuroticism have higher emotional stability.

It is, therefore, evident that Neuroticism is an ideal predictor of performance in various occupations. Going by their assertion, emotional stability is regarded as the second most among the important characteristics that are known to affect the employment of a candidate. It was noted further that Neuroticism is inversely proportional to the job performance. Nevertheless, Chan (2014)   predicts that Neuroticism only predicts the job performance in specific circumstances.

Extraversion

Extraversion.

Talkativeness, assertiveness, and sociability all fall under Extraversion. It is within this dimension that we find the terms “extroverts” and “introverts.” Extraverts tend to be more optimistic and energetic whereas introverts are a bit reserved, independent, and even-paced. Furthermore, Dala and Crede (2013) insists that positive experiences and feelings characterize Extraversion, hence seen as a positive effect. Most research points at Extraversion as an ideal predictor of job performance that are characterized by social interactions like managers and sales personnel. Lloyd (2016) also found out that Extraversion affects the job performance of a police officer basing his arguments on the existence of a higher level of interaction in the police service.

Openness to Experience comprises of the attentiveness to the inner feelings, active imagination, and preference for variety, aesthetic sensitivity, independence of judgment, and the intellectual curiosity. The individuals that score low on the openness are always a bit of conventional in both the behavior and also conservative in the outside look. On the other hand, the individuals with higher scores in this category are somehow muted with preparedness to question authority and also ready to entertain political and social ideas as well as entertaining new ethical ideas. A recent research ascertains that Openness to Experience is one of the best dimension applicable in matters dealing with consultations. The findings had it that most successful employees had a low score on the Openness to Experience.

However, Natoli (2003) contradicts the same and states that it is not one of the best or invalid predictor of job performance. This is explainable by considering after establishing that different jobs have different requirements, hence not standard.

In simpler term, this concept refers to an individual who is fundamentally altruistic who does not only sympathize, but also eager to help others in given situations. On the other hand, a disagreeable are rather skeptical of other people’s intentions. Agreeableness is an important predictor of an individual’s performance. It is further clear that agreeable is the master when it comes to predicting the job performance. Having said that, it is a debatable source of success in occupations that involves teamwork and customer service.

Conscientiousness.

Shaffer and Postlethwaite (2013) explains conscientiousness to be the self-control achievable and useful in planning, determined, and strong-willed. On the other hand, a higher conscientiousness workers would develop annoying fastidiousness, workaholic behavior, or compulsive neatness. Again, the low scoring individuals in this category may have the morals, yes, but might fail to apply them appropriately. According Zigarmi et.al (2016), the relationship between job performance and Conscientiousness is attributable to the relationship between integrity and Conscientiousness (Hassan et.al 2016, p. 12). Furthermore, goal setting and autonomy influences the relationship between conscientiousness.

Openness to Experience

Discussion

Most people believe that the personality factors plays a very crucial part in job performance. However, the psychologists have a different literature that regards the issue of personality factors as equivocal. Therefore, Dala and Crede (2013) concluded that the ground for optimism with reference to the implementation of personality tests in predicting the performance of the employees.

It is believed that the workers who lean most towards Extraversion and are vulnerable to have irrational ideas are poor in coping up with stressful conditions. Such individuals are known to be less creative compared to the emotionally stable. Therefore, given that the extraversion is associated with creativity and performance, it tends to experience utmost positive affect in employees.

The conical analysis is a confirmation that the Openness to Experience is correlated to the performance and creativity. With regards to this, the employees who tend to be open to experiences shows attentiveness to feelings, aesthetic sensitivity, and active imagination. As a result, such employees always attract higher ratings on their performance and creativity at the workplace.

Similarly, Conscientiousness is also associated with creativity and task performance. As confirmed by Lloyd (2016), the conscientious employees are better than the less conscientious in performing the duties at the workplace. Furthermore, the management performance is confirmed to be related to the emotional stability and openness to experience. However, some limitations still crop up whenever the topic on job performance and personality is discussed. To begin with, the latest research that was conducted on the same lack the predictive validity design. This results to the fleeing of most of the poor performers who cannot cope with the system at the place of work.  Therefore, it is advisable to establish the most accurate direction of the.

In order to establish the facts, the topic requires a direct engagement with the subjects, who tend to be employees of a given organization. On the same note, it is clear that whenever a research is performed, the point of exhaustion of the list of traits that can moderate the personality. Also, it might become a tasking operation in determining all other cues. As stated by Brown and Sitzmann (2011), most researchers tend to focus mostly on the job-based or task-based cues such as human resource systems or social factors. Therefore, to enhance future research, there is a need for studying the variables as the situational moderators.

Secondly, most models used in the research tends to ground in the degree at which the personality traits expresses themselves in the job performance. Therefore, the possibility in the case for which the personality expresses itself in behavior is omitted. According to Eggerth (2015), there is a necessity of ensuring that more appropriate approaches are developed for future research. The improvisation should aim at researching on how situations activate or impede the expression of the traits and how the traits get manifested in specific job behaviors that lead to performance. Besides, some cases tend to be irregular for instance in a case where an extravert feels like or behave like an extravert, or feel more motivated to produce the assertion behaviors.

Agreeableness

The third related issue is the measurement consideration. This aspect is mainly dependent on the intimately situational differences. This difference revolves around the organization, occupation, and the nature of the work. Looking at this, a typical example is a case whereby an accountant would prefer to work as an accountant in a keratin organization or place but not at another organization. This means that motivations and ability of each employee determine the job performance of each employee. Furthermore, at times idiosyncrasies develops making every other person argue that situational approach is the best.

Another possible explanation that brings out the lack of pure relationship between the the task performance and dimensions of personality is the ineffective well-defined correlation between the two. It is, therefore, true to state that the personality dimensions influences the job performance in places where there is high autonomy (Lloyd 2016, p. 8). However, most studies have various limitations, to begin with, most research lacks the validity design which later affects the magnitude of the correlation coefficients that are obtainable. The most experienced disadvantage of the design is that most research is conducted amidst resignation of poor performers hence leading to wrong results. For that reason, most of the research designs fail to meet the criteria for determining the direction of the relationship obtained.

Having done research on the interrelationship between the job performance and personality of a high school Principal, the result showed there is a direct relation between his traits and job performance. Looking at the principal’s personality character traits (introversion/extroversion) and the performance aspect (educational, managerial, professional, and administrative, it is true to say that there is a correlation. It comes out true to the assertion by Glavin (2015) that a performance of extroverted employees or top managers is better than for the introverted fellows. In considering the multiple regressions obtained about the personality characteristics and the employees’ performance score, the results shows variation. The central question that needs a lot of understanding is the relationship between an introverted principal and extroverted principal considering their various administrative and managerial procedures.

The study has investigated the correlation between the five personality traits and the job performance based on the role of multidimensional organizational commitment. The theoretical model which was developed and the personality to commitment and performance shows that the consequence of organizational commitment is inevitable (Wei 2016, p. 872).

The argument, therefore, stands that the commitment of an organization plays a vital part to determine the performance- personality relationship. Having said that, affective commitment also has a mediating part in determining the correlation between job performance and extraversion. Similarly, affective commitment can also resolve the relationship between job performance and neuroticism.

Conscientiousness

Going by the large-scale research data obtained from thousands of employees on the relationship between job performance and personality, Seddigh et.al (2016) argues that certain personality traits are relevant and significantly predict job performance. With this assumption, the possibility to support the use of personality in some employee selection in given job categories. The following are some of the specified job categories where a selection of employees can be based on specific personal traits.

Sales

Considering the sales position, conscientiousness is one of the best traits necessary in predicting the future performance. Apart from conscientiousness, extraversion as a trait comes second and is also necessary. With that, it follows that an employee with conscientiousness and extraversion traits makes the best sales person (Eggerth 2015, p. 458).

Customer Service

Given that the employee in this sector mingles with a lot of individuals from different diversities and background, it requires that the employees have multiple traits. In this category, conscientiousness again is the first character necessary in predicting the expected performance by the employee. Besides, Agreeableness and Openness to experience are also of great necessity when it comes to customer service job. According to Eggerth (2015), the call center employees’ productivity depends on their emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness which are all significant in improving. However, it creates an unusual mix that implies the complexity pattern of personality-based jobs that are rather demanding and complicated depending on the interpersonal interactions.

Wei (2016) shows another hierarchy on the same giving conscientiousness as the strongest predictor followed by emotional stability, which according to him, is less significant. Whether skilled or semi-skilled, it is evident that at some given time, one’s personality would determine how he/she performs his/her duties.

Professional

With regards to professional occupations, each profession has a different mix of personal traits that predicts the performance. However, conscientiousness is common to any profession of all the big five traits. Conscientiousness is the mother of all the personal traits that significantly predicts performance (Eggerth 2015, p. 458).

Leadership

Leadership begins from somewhere and is seen in two ways. The first leadership deals with how a regular employee emerges as a leader, and the second phase is how they perform once they get to the managerial post. Leadership emergence is strongly associated with the conscientiousness and extraversion. On the same note, leadership effectiveness, and good managerial performance are also dependent on the conscientiousness and extraversion. The personal traits, therefore, makes an employee to get noticed as a potential leader but become less important once one clinch to the leadership position (Brown and Sitzmann 2011, p. 470). This is factual given that leadership roles are complex and different set of skills and personality traits are only effective to specific leadership.

Discussion

Personality vs. other predictors

Whenever an organization gets overenthusiastic on the possibility of populating their staff with certain personalities, they tend to forget that personality only represents a segment of a wider picture. Besides, in each organization, the process of identifying the best predictors requires a vigorous job performance analysis. Therefore, it is important to note that each trait may be less or more important in different contexts.

Going by the findings of the various researches concerning personality and job performance, organizations have to do something extra in establishing the connection. It is necessary for the relevant bodies to envisage the personality of the employees while predicting managerial performance and creativity. However, conducting more research is necessary before using the results to predict job performance since they might not have been achieved in a particular context. On the same note, a broader sampling is needful when it comes­­­­ to establish the relationship between personality dimensions and job performance. Furthermore, the affects of language and cultural differences on the relationship between dimension and job performance need to be considered in the study.

Conclusion

Of all the predictors, conscientiousness is above any other regarding performance prediction across all job types. Second in the hierarchy, after conscientiousness is emotional stability. However, depending on the type of job, additional traits might become necessary. For instance, the jobs that have a stronger interpersonal component such as managerial and customer service would require agreeableness and openness at higher levels in predicting the possible outcome of the performance. However, new researches are underway in determining the possibility and how to combine the specific traits for each of the big-five for more efficiency in predicting job performances.

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