Relationship Between Personality and Job Performance

Question: Discuss about theRelationship Between Personality and Job Performance. Answer: Introduction: Personality is very critical factors in studies that are related to predicting the employees job performance. It is the behaviour that differentiates one employee or person from another one (Beer Brooks, 2011) . Personality is the distinguishing factor that provides the wisdom or insight regarding specific person being able to perform specific job as compared to others (Sackett et al., 2002) . As defined by Kahn (1990) too engagement is the quality of harnessing the organizational members in best possible manner in their specific work roles. Considering the importance of creating engagement and personality traits for an organization several organizations across the globe have started taking personality traits while hiring their employees (Kahn, 1990). Realising the importance and critical importance of personality traits this essay will find out the relationship that exists between personality and their job performances. This essay will also further explain the manner in which the O rganizational Behaviour scholars as well as leaders need to apply the knowledge regarding personality and job performance within their organizations so as to derive maximum benefits from it. Personality Personality that can be defined as an enduring pattern of behaviours, thoughts as well as emotions that help in characterising any person combined with the psychological process which follows those characteristics (Robbins et al., 2013). The set of invisible features as well as practices that is present at the rear end of relatively stable pattern of behaviour while responding to the people, ideas, or objects present in an environment is known as personality (Daft, 2008). The traits that are very much relevant for personality are very much permanent as well as constant all through the work life in the personality behaviour model (Denissen et al., 2011 ; Gerber et al., 2011 ; Myers, 1998) . There are several theories of personality that helps in examining the similarities as well as variances in any person. The similarities that are found can be used for foretelling the persons performance as well as their behaviour, because these similarities help in finding the collective attributes present in the human nature (Hogan Shelton, 2006) . On the other hand the variances help in measuring the individual performances and are very beneficial in describing both human behaviours along with performances. Even the experts in the field of personality believe that every individual has quite long term as well as stable traits that cast impact on the employees behaviour at their workplace (Denissen et al., 2011 ; Gerber et al., 2011 ). In some of the researches conducted on personality , the scholars found that personality acts as quite effective tool that helps in prediction of the job performances of employees in any organization (Ozer Benet-Martinez, 2006 ; Schulman, 2011). This technique is mostly used by the Organizational Behaviour scholars as well as leaders during the process of personnel selection within organizations (Barrick Mount, 2000). In the organizational behaviour stream there has been major focus of researchers on both personality as well as organizational outcomes. According to the ;latest studies personality does cast impact on the environments in which the individuals live (Chen, 2004) (Barrick et al., 2002) and it also plays critical role in choosing the situation in which the individual person makes a decision to stay . The preferences given to the organizational environments, the activities liked by individual as well as the cycle of individuals with which one thinks of interacting, all de pends upon the individuals personality (Barrick Mount, 2000) . Such kind of values is also found to be strongly related to person-organization (P-O) fit. In this highly competitive world there is no such organization that depicts an unchanging or subservient behaviour and this mainly arises from the culture (Silverthorne, 2004) . Culture is one such aspect that helps in finding how much perfectly a person fits in a specific organization as the fit represents the feeling of comfort with that culture (Oreilly 2004; p 10). It is directly connected with the employees output levels as well as helps in finding the turnover of employee in any organization (Schmidt Ryan, 1993) . Any culture that is present and prevalent in any organization helps in development of customs related to employee behaviour, which in turn is effected by the P-O fit that finally impacts the end organizational output (Silverthorne, 2004) . Therefore, this clearly establishes the reality the personality traits of employee has positive connection with organizational productivity. This also gives a clarity regarding the fact that if the traits of the employees are match ing the organizational culture, then the productivity of the organization will certainly be improved or increased as desired by the organization. Personality and Related Theories In the research related to personality the literature indicates certain personality theories that are the key theories like : Psychoanalytic Theories; Biological theories; Humanistic Theories; Trait Theories as well as Behavioural , Social learning and Cognitive theories. Amongst all these theories of personality trait theory is the one that is widely acceptable as well as considered to be a, leading personality related theory that also considers the salient features that have more tendency of leading towards certain specific behaviours. The variances shown by the person in the trends towards development of a steady pattern of actions , thoughts as well as feelings are called a traits (Myers, 1998) . All the theories that are related to personality traits indicate that the behaviour of a person can be determined with the help of certain personality traits. Thus the Big Five Personality Theory also known as Big Five Model or the Five Factor Model or FFM has been considered the most wi dely acceptable model for personality. It demonstrates that the personality of human beings consists of five very reasonable as well as self determining aspects that provide a complete taxonomy as well as helps in reviewing the dissimilarities of an individual. It rather provides the real core present in the human nature because of these dissimilarities . Thus personality in general can be divided and then examined with the help of five highly distinguishable as well as distinct elements that are : Character; Disposition, Temperament, Intellect along with Temper. The five characteristic elements of the Big Five Model are: Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Extraversion along with Conscientiousness. Openness is mainly connected with creativity at their workplace and there might be an unknown connection between job performance and creativity (George Zhou, 2001) . For example any creative individual can unintentionally help in enhancing the productivity by coming up and implementing innovative or highly unique methods at workplace. Openness shows a positive correlation with standardized measures related to achievement as well as knowledge and it is found to be modestly connected with cognitive ability. Out of all the Big Five traits openness has highest correlation with verbal score of SAT (Noftle Robins, 2007) . Out of the five crucial and important personality factors conscientiousness is found to be highly consistent as well as a major predictor in case of workplace performance (Barrick Mount, 2000 ; Behling, 1998 ; Dudley et al., 2006) . For example when conducted a meta analysis regarding the prediction of job performance of employees considering the personality dimensions it shows that the broad measures of conscientiousness helps in predicting the overall job performance (Barrick et al., 2001) and it also assists in controlling the cognitive ability of employees (Hough Oswald, 2008) . Along with the overall job performance , several broad measures related to conscientiousness have shown that they help in predicting several other valuable behaviours of employees at workplace for example leadership , organizational citizenship along with undesirable behaviours for example procrastination (Judge Ilies, 2002) . Therefore conscientiousness is considered to be the best noncognitive perfor mance predictor that can be used across wide variety of work results as well as job types. The people exhibiting neurotic behaviour are found to be less happy, that also impacts the employees ability to do the tasks assigned in proper manner (Colquitt et al., 2009) . The people who are neurotic are found to be showing lesser job satisfaction , moreover they are more likely to fixate as well as remember the past negative experiences that they encountered at the workplace (Watson Clark, 1984). Such kind of features exhibited by neurotics influences both the job performance of the employees as well as their feelings regarding their job. The neuroticism comes associated with insecurity and this can finally lead to leaving or quitting the job(Mkoji Sikalieh, 2012) as well as dissatisfaction amongst the individual in relation to their job (Beer Brooks, 2011) . This might be the result of uncertainty regarding job performance or the individuals inability to perform or complete the task (Judge Hies, 2002) . Neuroticism is one such trait that is found to be helpful in case of t he jobs that need novel ideas along with formation of creative suggestions (Colquitt et al., 2009). Extraverts are the people who look for social relationships with their co-workers, finally resulting in increased relationships within their organizations. They also tend to show swift socialization as well as integration within their organization (Louis et al., 1983 ; McCrae Costa, 1991). This kind of process that helps in integration is found to be associated with positive work performance along with reduced likelihood of the employees to quit (Colquitt et al., 2009 ; Maertz Campion, 2004). Occupations are found to be positively linked with extraversion, mainly with the jobs that need training proficiency, leadership abilities as well as social interactions (Lim Ployhart, 2004) . Extraversion is found to be positively associated with leadership abilities (Lim Ployhart, 2004) along with level of job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) . Therefore in the workplace the extraverts are found to exhibit higher levels of satisfaction because of their ability to go through simulations of optimal levels within the social environment , whereas the introverts are reported to show lesser job satisfactions because of this reason (Neubert Taggar, 2004). Agreeable individuals show the ability to adapt that helps them to establish as well as maintain healthy relationship that is rewarding also at the same time , with their colleagues , place of business as wells co-workers (Olver Mooradian, 2003). Some of the qualities that are associated with agreeableness for example thoughtfulness, kindness and likeability, tends to result in successful relationships with their co-workers. This also enhances employee commitment as it encourages the employee to stay with the organization for long term. The positive opinion held by the workers regarding the work environment helps in enhancing performance along with increasing their motivation to stick to the job (Meyer Allen, 1991) . Most of the times it has been found that agreeable employees are very much high performing individuals as they are forever willing to understand as well as adapt to their current environment at work . In case of interpersonal oriented jobs and to help others agreeablen ess helps in prediction of performance that took a significant one. Unlike various other personality features for example Conscientiousness, Agreeableness is not found to be connected with bringing in success amongst the workforce for all kinds of jobs, because some of the occupations need certain level of disagreeableness in order to achieve success (Mkoji Sikalieh, 2012) . In the same way Agreeableness is negatively connected with the leadership abilities, on the other hand it has positive correlation with the working with the teams (Noftle Robins, 2007) . Job Performance and Personality Job performance can be defined as the participation shown by employees in order to achieve the organizational goals (Awadh Wan Ismail, 2012) . One of the very crucial and dependent variables that have been researched for past many decades is the job performance. AS per the theory job performance is a multidimensional construct that ahs a contextual dimension as well as a task dimension (Bhatti et al., 2014) . The overall value that can be predicted and has been derived from the behaviour of employees carried out over a particular set of time period is called as the job performance (Motowildo et al., 1997) . The job performance of employees certainly impacts the organizational outcomes and it also makes sure that the organizational functioning is all right. Job performance also comprises of skills as well as knowledge that helps in guiding the employees to conduct several activities in the organization. The researchers have also argued that the relationship between the Big Five personality and the job performance are much more result of social aspects related to the workplace as compared to their ability (Neubert Taggar, 2004) . This indicates that the organizations need to cast positive impressions amongst the employees regarding themselves. Thus the behavioural pattern of any good leader in the form of a leader is one who provides full cooperation, speaks in favourable manner as well as provides support that goes beyond the job performance of the employees. Application of OB Knowledge by Leaders and Scholars People belonging to different kinds of backgrounds will be possessing different kinds of norms, values or attitudes, rather such people also have different cultural heritages. Definitely during their work environments they will show their personal cultural heritages. Such kinds of differences will definitely give rise to different personalities of any individual that finally helps in finding their behaviours or actions that finally impact the leader-follower interactions. So in some cases the leaders might be possessing strong or weaker personality that impacts other performances of the employees as well as it also determines the manner in which the organization will be performing (Alkahtani et al., 2011) . Thus the personality traits of the leaders are much reasonable in the sense to expect that it can also affect the personal attitudes as well as values as per the research done in the field (Olver Mooradian, 2003). Openness towards experiences is positively connected with very man y successful training activities. An open individual mainly shows optimistic attitude towards learning and he/ she really enjoys learning that casts a positive impact on the training outcomes . Conclusion The above analysis indicates that there exists a correlation between personality as well as job performance. However Agreeableness along with Openness towards experiences is found o show close relation with job performance. Research has also shown that Emotional stability as well as Conscientiousness is also found to be connected with job performance. Both Agreeablenesses along with Openness to experience show a stronger relationship with the various criterions used for training. The basic four variables of personality traits that is Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness have positive as well as significant connection with the job performance of the employees. On the other hand neuroticism has a negative correlation with job performance. It is crucial for the leaders and scholars of organizational behaviour to use this knowledge while doing personnel selections or hiring because job performance which is related to the personality traits of employee s also impacts the reputation as well as productivity of the organization. The personality of leaders plays vital role because it impacts the job performance of the employees. Thus some of the good determining factors that the leaders should consider regarding leadership personality includes agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience as it will help in increasing the job performance because personality is found to be linked with the performance of their followers. Bibliography Alkahtani, A.H., Abu-Jarad, I., Sulaiman, M. Nikbin, D., 2011. The impact of personality and leadership styles on leading change capability of Malaysian managers. Australian Journal of Business and Management Research, 1(2), pp.70-98. Awadh, A.M. Wan Ismail, W., 2012. The impact of personality traits and employee work-related attitudes on employee performance with the moderating effect of organizational culture: the case of Saudi Arabia. Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 1(10), pp.108-27. Barrick, M.R. Mount, M.K., 2000. The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A Meta-Analysis. Personnel Psychology, pp.2-50. Barrick, M.R., Mount, M.K. Judge, T.A., 2001. Personality and performance at the beginning of the new millennium: What do we know and where do we go next? International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9. Barrick, M.R., Stewart, J.L. Piotrowski, M., 2002. Personality and job performance: test of the mediating effects of motivation among sales representatives. Journal of Applied Psychology, pp.43-51. Beer, A. Brooks, C., 2011. Information quality in personality judgment: The value of personal disclosure. Journal of Research in Personality, 45(2), pp.175-85. Behling, O., 1998. Employee selection: will intelligence and conscientiousness do the job? Academy of Management Executive, pp.77-8612. Bhatti, M.A., Battour, M.M., Ismail, A.R. Sundram, V.P., 2014. Effects of personality traits (big five) on expatriates adjustment and job performance. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 33(1), pp.73-96. Chen, E., 2004. Why Socioeconomic Status Affects the Health of Children: A Psychosocial Perspective. A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 13(3), pp.112-15. Colquitt, J., LePine, J. Wesson, M., 2009.. Organizational behavior: Essentials for improving performance and commitment. New York: McGraw Hill. Daft, R.L., 2008. Leadership. Cincinnati, OH: Thompson/South-Western. Denissen, J.J., Van Aken, M.A. Roberts, B.W., 2011. Personality Development across the Life Span. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Dudley, N.M., Orvis, K.A., Lebiecki, J.E. Cortina, J.M., 2006. A metaanalytic investigation of Conscientiousness in the prediction of job performance: Examining the intercorrelations and the incremental validity of narrow traits. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, pp.40-57. George, J.M. Zhou, J., 2001. Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones dont: The role of context and clarity of feelings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, pp.687-97. Gerber, A.S. et al., 2011. Personality Traits and Participation in Political Processes. The Journal of Politics, 73(03), pp.692-703. Hogan, R. Shelton, D., 2006. A socioanalytic perspective on job performance. Humna Performance, 11(23), pp.129-44. Hough, L.M. Oswald, F.L., 2008. Personality testing and industrial-organizational psychology: Reflections, progress, and prospects. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, pp.272-90. Judge, T.A., Heller, D. Mount, M.K., 2002.. Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, pp.530-41. Judge, T.A. Hies, R., 2002. Relationship of personality to performance motivation: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psycholog, 87, pp.797-807. Judge, T.A. Ilies, R., 2002. Relationship of personality to performance motivation: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87. Kahn, W.A., 1990. Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, pp.692-724. Lim, B. Ployhart, R.E., 2004. Transformational leadership: Relations to the five-factor model and team performance in typical and maximum. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, pp.610-21. Louis, M.R., Posner, B.Z. Powell, G.N., 1983. The availability and helpfulness of socialization practices. Personnel Psychology, 36, pp.857-66. Maertz, C.P. Campion, M.C., 2004. Profiles in quitting: Integrating process and content turnover theory. Academy of Management Journal, , 47, pp.566-82. McCrae, R.R. Costa, P.T.., 1991. Adding Biebe und Arbert: The full Five-Factor model and well-being. Personality and Social Psychology, 17, pp.227-32. Meyer, J.P. Allen, N.J., 1991. A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1, pp.61-89. Mkoji, D. Sikalieh, D., 2012. The five-factor model of personality in the workplace. [Online] Available at: https://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/neubert.html. [Accessed 4 September 2016]. Motowildo, S.J., Borman, W.C. Schmit, M.J., 1997. A theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance. Human performance, 10(2), pp.71-83. Myers, D.G., 1998. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers. Neubert, M. Taggar, S., 2004. The impact of poor performance on team outcomes: an empirical examination of attribution theory. Personal Psycholog, 57, pp.935-68. Noftle, E.E. Robins, R., 2007. Personality predictors of academic outcomes: : Big Five correlates of GPA and SAT scores. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, pp.116-30. Olver, J.M. Mooradian, T.A., 2003. Personality traits and personal values: a conceptual and empirical investigation. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, pp.109-25. O'Reilly, C., 2004. Corporations, culture, and commitment: Motivation and social control in organizations. California Management Review. Ozer, D.J. Benet-Martinez, V., 2006. Personality and the Prediction of Consequential Outcomes.. Annual Review of Psychology , 57, pp.401-20. Robbins, S., Judge, T.A., Millett, B. Boyle, M., 2013. Organisational behaviour. Frecnhes Forest, NSW: Pearson Australia. Sackett, P.R., Gruys, M.L. Ellingson, J.E., 2002. Ability-personality interactions when predicting job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, pp.545-56. Schmidt, D. Ryan, K., 1993. A meta-analytic review of attitudinal and dispositional predictors of organizational citizenship behavior. Personnel psychology, 48(4), pp.775-802. Schulman, S., 2011. The Use of Personality Assessments to Predict Job Performance. Burlington: The University of Vermont. Silverthorne, C., 2004. The impact of organizational culture and personorganization fit on organizational commitment and job satisfaction in Taiwan. The Leadership Organization Development Journal, 25. Watson, D. Clark, L.A., 1984. Negative affectivity: The disposition to experience aversive emotional states. Psychological Bulletin, 96, pp.465-4910.