Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1996

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Major Professor

Robert T. Ladd

Committee Members

John Lounsbury, Robert Maddox

Abstract

This research proposed and tested a factorial model of the personality-job performance relationship. The factorial model for personality was based on the factor structure of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). There are some apparent conceptual similarities between the factors that emerge from the CPI and the five-factor model of personality. Specifically, two of the "Big-Five" factors, conscientiousness and extraversion, are conceptually similar to the two largest factors from the CPI and were so named in this study. A third Big-Five factor, openness to experience, bears some resemblance to flexibility, the third personality factor used in this study.

Job performance was operationally defined as performance in a managerial assessment center. Specifically, this research hypothesized the existence of four assessment center performance factors--influencing others, interpersonal effectiveness, decision making, and resource allocation. This is consistent with empirical research findings showing that assessors tend to cognitively reduce a larger number of assessment center dimensions to a more manageable number when rating assessment center performance (Schmitt, 1977). A measure of cognitive ability was also included in this study to enable an assessment of the incremental validity of the personality factors for predicting the assessment center performance factors.

This research was intended to overcome two major weaknesses in previous research in this area--the failure to operationally define both personality and job performance at the appropriate level of specificity, and the failure to hypothesize any theoretically meaningful relationships between these two variables.

Participants in this study were internal candidates for supervisory positions at four regional locations of a manufacturing organization. Data from 101 candidates, of whom 71% were male, was available for analysis. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software package was employed to test the proposed measurement and structural models. The results of the analyses failed to support the viability of the proposed factorial model of personality for predicting the assessment center performance factors. Post hoc regression analyses of the relationship between individual personality scales and individual assessment center dimensions revealed some significant relationships. Implications for future research in this area are discussed.

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