Personality and Job Performance

Personality and Job Performance: Test of the Mediating Effects of

Motivation Among Sales Representatives (2002)

Murray R. Barrick

Michigan State University

Greg L. Stewart

Brigham Young University

Mike Piotrowski

Hartford Financial Services Group

• Barrick, Mount and Strauss (1993)

Autonomous goal setting / commitment – to mediate relationships between conscientiousness and two measures of job proficiency:

1. Supervisor rating of job performance

2. Sales volumes for sales reps

• Five Factor model (FFM) in relation to work performance:

1. Extraversion

2. Agreeableness

3. Conscientiousness

4. Emotional Stability

5. Openness to Experience

• Motivational model highlights the importance of cognitive processes and identify basic goals that regulate personal behaviour – in determining the arousal, intensity and persistence associated with the grade.

• Wiggins and Trappell (1996) and R. Hogan

Two broad motivational intentions focusing on social interactions:

1. Communion Striving – action directed towards obtaining acceptance in personal relationships and getting along with others

Excel at cooperation-based jobs: customer service, team production

2. Status Striving – actions directed towards obtaining power and dominant within a status hierarchy

Excel at competition based jobs and opportunity for advancement

However, these two might not reflect individual’s motivational intentions. Hence, Accomplishment Striving:

• Reflects an individual’s will to complete task and is characterised by a high task orientation
• Task oriented employees have a strong desire to complete task related goals as a mean to express individual attributes
• Innovates psychological needs for coherence
• Bales (1995), this is separate from social related behaviours (communion and striving). However, goals related to Accomplishment Striving may correspond with Communion and Status Striving
• E.g. Employees may accomplish tasks to obtain approval and acceptance (communion). They also completed task to excel above others (status)

FFM: Agreeableness (Communion Striving)

• Agreeable people – altruistic, sympathetic, eager to help others, kindness, selfishness, strive for cooperation, not competition
• During stress, cope with self-sacrifice rather than creating an image of superiority above others
• Communion Striving does not mediate relationships between sales performance and agreeableness

FFM: Extraversion (Status Striving)

• Social, assertive, active, bold, energetic, adventurous
• Desire to excel and obtain rewards (rewards obtained by excelling relative/getting ahead of others)
• Highly related with high performance in sales (when highly rewarded)
• Cognitive motivation in line with striving for status

FFM: Conscientiousness (Accomplishment Striving)

• Organised, reliable, hardworking, determined, self-disciplined and achievement oriented
• Desire to exercise self-control and then follow conscience
• Sales reps high in conscientiousness are more likely to set sales goals and be committed – higher sales goals, greater sales volume and higher supervisory ratings

FFM: Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience

Not expected to correspond with motivational measures for job performance

Emotional stability – anxiety and depressions (do not link to motivational goals)

Openness to experience – creativity, sophistication, curiosity (do not link to motivational goals)