To What Extent Does Personality Predicts Employee Performance - Essay Example

26 May “Personality and Job Performance” “Personality and Job Performance” “To what extent does personality predicts employee performance?” As per Barrick & Mount (2005), many past empirical studies have found that employee personality traits impact job-associated behaviours and may impact the business value. When many past empirical studies have found that there exists linear relationship between employee personality and his job performance, Ones et al (2007) study suggests that the relationship between employee’s personality, and his job performance may not be linear. Murphy (1996) found that some personality features are likely to be curvilinear related to job performance. The correlation between job performance and personality traits are often accepted to be linear. Le et al., (2011) found that there exists the curvilinear associations between personality traits, which include emotional stability, conscientiousness, job performance scopes, including counterproductive work behaviours, organisational citizenship behaviours , task performance and job performance (Le et al. 113). Nomothetic Approach By using this approach, the researchers study some features of personalities of different people, and then compare those people in an attempt to draw some conclusion about general rules about personality. Thus, this method involves assessing some interesting variable in a large group of individuals and then arrive out some general rules about personality. Thus, nomothetic approach can be used to find how heredity or genetic plays a pivotal role in job performance of an employee. However, nomothetic approach has some drawbacks. It is to be noted that extrapolations from group outcomes may not be applicable to an individual, and this may offer shallow understanding. (Ashton xxiii). Idiographic Approach: Psychologist like Erikson (1950) & Rogers (1959), Kelly (1963) gives a different explanation of personality as they visualise it from the interface with the environment and the impact of cultural and social processes. Thus, an individual’s personality is open to change and flexible, and each individual has a unique personality that cannot be grouped or classified into any classification. This nurture approach to personality does not make itself to the measurement of personality, as each individual is considered to be unique. From the company point of view, it is less likely to form part of an evaluation process. Nonetheless, some organisations do use the concept of self-concept as part of their development and management training programmes, and it could form part of the performance management process, especially, if a 360-degree feedback approach is used (Smith , Farmer & Yellowley 3.5). However, this approach has many disadvantages; in case of wider population, the findings cannot be generalised; methods employed under this process proved to be unstructured, subjective and also unscientific. This method cannot be employed for the estimation and control of human behaviour and it cannot be employed in the statistical analysis also. Big five” personality types As per Nathan Bowling (2007) study, an employee’s performance in job is directly associated with many major personality traits like emotional-stability, self-esteem, conscientiousness and extroversion. As per Bowling, successful employees seem to be trustworthy, sociable and well-organized. The “big five” personality types detailed as under are found to be indispensable for the professional success. Conscientiousness- It refers to the employee’s capability to remain organised, on-schedule and paying attention to major goals and tasks of the business. Successful employees will always have a high score in the job’s “conscientiousness”.(Mullins 71). Openness: It refers to how employees are open to new experiences and goals. Employees who do not have openness are likely to avoid things that are not familiar with. Extroversion: Employees under this category will be talkative, sociable and are likely to excel in their job. Extroverts enjoy talking and to have been close working with the people and hence, they are likely to perform well in their job by taking all the people with them. Agreeableness: Employees with this quality will attempt to get along with other employees, and will try to avoid fighting with the fellow employees (Wilson 72). Neuroticism- Employees with this trait will have often spells of anger, sadness, anxiety, irritability and depression, and hence they will be found to be less productive in their jobs (Naturalknowledge247.com). “Trait and Type Theories:” The most famous psychological assessment for employee development is the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. (MBTI). About 2 million individuals are regularly taking MBTI test in the USA every year. Footed upon the research of Carl Jung, the MBTI recognises individual inclinations for energy (extroversion vs. introversion); collection of information (intuition vs. sensing), taking of decision (feeling vs. thinking), and lifestyle (perceiving and judging). The MBTI has been employed for understanding the things like motivation, communication, work styles, teamwork and leadership. As per Hirsch (1992), MBIT can apparently help to establish teams by matching job assignments with the team members that permit them to exploit on their job performance and to assist them to understand how the diverse behaviour types of team members can result in resolving the issues in an useful manner. On taking the MBTI, the individuals react positively by stating that it helps them in transforming their behaviour. However, as per Druckman & Bjork (1991), the reliability, validity and efficacies of the MBTI are questionable. One disadvantage with the MBTI is that personality types of individuals may not be stable over time. Test-retest reliability evaluation of the MBTI has exposed that as less as 24% of the individuals who perused the MBTI were identified as the same type and this exposes that 76% of them have different personality as compared to their earlier MBTI test. Rationality studies of the MBTI carried over to date have analysed the correlation between behaviour in experimental scenarios and MBTI scores, variance in MBTI profile by profession or occupation, association between self-typing and instrument, and connections with the other instruments. The research base corroborating the validity of evaluation centers for employee selection is well established. Apart from recruitment, evaluation centers are supposed to employ a significant development function by offering the assessees with reaction on interpersonal and administrative traits which are considered to be the main reason for managerial success (Ford 160). Psychometric Test A psychometric test is a test that evaluates the one’s soul or that evaluate in a structured way some traits of an individual’s capability or behaviour. There are tests of typical performance and tests of maximum performance. A business may use both or either categories of tests for selection decisions, and for the employee personality development objectives based upon the nature of the jobs. Majority of business organisations are using both personality questionnaires and ability test. Tests of maximum performance are intended to evaluate the best performance that a person can accomplish in a given scenario, and these are normally timed and will have right or wrong answers. Ability test is meant for testing one’s IQs or to test special abilities like verbal, numerical or spatial reasoning. An attainment test evaluate learning instead of one’s ability. An attainment test is employed to denote what an individual has learned and what he can do now. Thus, an organisation is likely to rely more on the ability test instead of attainment test for selection of personnel (Moutafi & Newcombe 50). Projective test A projective test will involve presenting the aspirant with an equivocal stimulus, like a picture of two persons interacting and then enquiring the aspirant to detail what he thinks to be going on between the two persons in the picture. The theory of projective test is dealing with personality structure as it wields influence on the manner the individual thinks, organise and interpret their experiences and environment. Stimuli are planned to distinguish among aspirants as per their methods of deducing the given atmosphere. On the other hand, objective assessments are aimed to find personality more straightly, normally through a chain of questionnaires, values and demeanours. (Lowman 201). The problems for those who try to measure personality and fit people to jobs? In U.S., lawyers filed a case for the use of cognitive ability test for the selection of employees since some minority groups are placed at a disadvantaged position as they may not be able to score good marks. Further, individual-job test is being criticised that they are not able to forecast job performance accurately. Further, it is claimed that cognitive tests can be easily counterfeited since there are many bad tests which are flooded in the market and there is a strong criticism that test does not forecast job performance. It is alleged that there are thousands of publishers who are marketing cognitive tests, which are poorly designed, which connotes that they will not forecast an employees’ performance correctly using this test . Conclusion Carl Jung employed two dimensions to identify individuals to decide their personality trait namely thinking –feeling, and the other is sensation and intuition. The nomothetic approach is the study based on the statistical study of groups. Barrick & Mount (2005) found that conscientiousness is positively correlated to job performance. Judge and Ilies (2002) found that highly conscientious individuals seem to be more inspired to perform well on the job as they are likely to attain higher performance through methodological planning , persistence and goal-setting. Moscoso and Salgado (2004) found that extreme magnitude of conscientiousness may not be advantageous to job performance. As per Rotundo & Sacket (2002), organisational citizen behaviour (OCB) is regarded to be set of behaviours that are not task associated but contribute to the objectives of the business by enhancing its psychological and social environments. Counterproductive work behaviour is one that probable to create injury to the well-being of the business. Thus, highly conscientious persons are more probable to perform extra role demeanours benefiting the organization and to shun deviant conduct detrimental to the organisation. As per Tett & Christiansen (2007), the personality is found to be useful in personnel selection. Thus, the knowledge about curvilinear association between job performance and personality can be conceivably employed to enhance personal recruitment practices, thereby increasing the utility of personality treasures. Le et al. (2011) study found that there is a credible corroboration for the curvilinear association between personality and job performance. Thus, emotional stability and conscientious are more helpful in estimating job performance in high-complexity jobs instead of low-complexity jobs. Works Cited Ashton, M C. Individual Differences and Personality .New York: Academic Press, 2013. Ford, J K. Improving Training Effectiveness in Work Organisations. New York: Psychology Press, 2013. Le H, Robins SB, Holland E, Oh I, IIies R & Westrick, P. “Too Much of a Good Thing. Curvilinear Relationships between Personality Traits and Job Performance.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 96(1) 2011:113-133. Lowman, R L. The California School of Organisational Studies Handbook of Organisational. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Moutafi & Newcombe. Perfect Psychometric Test Results. New York: Random House, 2009. Mullins , L J. Management and Organisational Behaviour. New York : Prentice Hall , 2007. “Naturalknowlege247.com”. Is Personality Key to Better Job Performance? 26 May 2014 http://naturalknowledge247.com/worker-pearsonality-and-job-performance/ Smith P, Farmer M & Yellowley, W. Organisational Behaviour. New York: Routledge, 2013. Wilson, F M. Organisational Behaviour and Work. Oxford : Oxford University Press ,2013. Read More