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Since the early 1980s, western governments are assumed to have been either moving toward post-bureaucratic models or transforming into so-called neo-Weberian bureaucracies. As different public-sector (reform) models imply different ideal typical personality traits for civil servants, the purpose of this paper is to ask the question to what extent personality requirements that governments demand from their employees have evolved over time in line with these models.

The authors analyzed the use of big-five traits in a sample of 21,003 job advertisements for local government jobs published between 1980 and 2017, applying tools for computer-assisted text analysis.

Using multilevel regression analyses, the authors conclude that, over time, there is a significant increase in the use of personality descriptors related to all big-five factors.

The authors postulate that governments nowadays are actively looking for the “renaissance bureaucrat” in line with the neo-Weberian bureaucracy paradigm. The authors end with a discussion of both positive and negative consequences of this development.

First, the authors explicitly link personality, public administration, and public management using the Abridged Big-Five-Dimensional Circumflex model of personality. Second, by linking observed trends in civil servant personality requirements to larger theories of public-sector reform models, the authors narrow the gap between public administration theories and practice. Third, the software tools that the authors use to digitalize and analyze a large number of documents (the job ads) are new to the discipline of public administration. The research can therefore serve as a guideline for scholars who want to use software tools to study large amounts of unstructured, qualitative data.

Cybersecurity vulnerabilities are often due to human users acting according to their own ethical priorities. With the goal of providing tailored training to cybersecurity professionals, the authors conducted a study to uncover profiles of human factors that influence which ethical principles are valued highest following exposure to ethical dilemmas presented in a cybersecurity game.

The authors’ game first sensitises players (cybersecurity trainees) to five cybersecurity ethical principles (beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, autonomy and explicability) and then allows the player to explore their application in multiple cybersecurity scenarios. After playing the game, players rank the five ethical principles in terms of importance. A total of 250 first-year cybersecurity students played the game. To develop profiles, the authors collected players' demographics, knowledge about ethics, personality, moral stance and values.

The authors built models to predict the importance of each of the five ethical principles. The analyses show that, generally, the main driver influencing the priority given to specific ethical principles is cultural background, followed by the personality traits of extraversion and conscientiousness. The importance of the ingroup was also a prominent factor.

Cybersecurity professionals need to understand the impact of users' ethical choices. To provide ethics training, the profiles uncovered will be used to build artificially intelligent (AI) non-player characters (NPCs) to expose the player to multiple viewpoints. The NPCs will adapt their training according to the predicted players’ viewpoint.

In the context of Portugal, this study examines the stereotypes of accountants held by laypeople and how they are influenced by financial crises and accounting scandals.

To better understand the social images of accountants, the authors adopt a structural approach based on the big five model (BFM) of personality. The authors test this approach on a Portuguese community sample (N = 727) using a questionnaire survey. The results are analyzed considering the socioanalytic theory.

The results suggest the existence of a stereotype dominated by features of conscientiousness, which is related to the superior performance of work tasks across job types. This feature comprises the core characteristics of the traditional accountant stereotype, which survives in a context challenged by financial scandals and crises. The findings highlight the social acceptance of accountants as an occupational group but do not suggest the possibility of accountants benefiting from the highest levels of social status when considered in relation to the traditional accountant stereotype.

By combining the BFM and the socioanalytic theory, this study provides a unique theoretical approach to better understand the social images of accountants. The findings demonstrate the suitability of using the BFM to study the social perceptions of accountants. They also indicate a paradox based on the survival of the traditional stereotype. This stereotype appears to be resistant to scandals and financial crisis, instead of being impaired, giving rise to another prototype with concerns about integrity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of five-factor model of personality on organizational commitment in the higher educational institutes of Pakistan.

Quantitative methodology was adopted to measure the impact of personality on organizational commitment. A structured questionnaire was e-mailed to the faculty members of the social science department of higher education institutes. SmartPLS software was used to run the structural equation modeling technique.

The findings showed that extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are positively linked to affective commitment (AC), and neuroticism and openness has negative association with AC. Furthermore, extroversion and agreeableness were found to be negatively linked to continuance commitment. A negative link between neuroticism and continuance commitment while no relationship between conscientiousness, openness, and continuance commitment was found.

Results have several implications for the personality and commitment literature. First, study provided comprehensive empirical evidence regarding the dispositional basis of organizational commitment notably; the authors found that the Big Five personality traits as a whole are significantly associated with organizational commitment. Second, the current findings underscore the role of agreeableness in shaping organizational commitment. Agreeableness was the strongest predictor of both AC and continuance commitment. Agreeableness may be especially relevant for predicting employee outcomes that are reliant on strong interpersonal or social exchange relationships. As such outcomes are becoming more and more critical in employee, group, and organizational effectiveness.

In general, findings show that Big Five traits play an important role in understanding employee commitment to the organization. Consistent with previous studies on personality traits in the workplace, practitioners will benefit from considering all of the Big Five traits in their selection systems.

Given the general consensus that creativity is a crucial driving force for innovation and progress, understanding how to promote it would benefit individuals, companies, society and academia. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the independent and contingent impact of individuals’ personality traits, team-member exchange (TMX) and gender on stimulating creativity.

The study uses a survey-sample of 639 university students (51.96% women) between the ages of 17 and 50. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated reliability and validity of its measures. To test hypotheses, using structural equation modeling, hierarchical regression analyses were performed.

Results show that four of the five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience) and TMX positively influence creativity. There are no significant differences between men’s and women’s creativity. High TMX reinforces the influence of extraversion on creativity, while low TMX harms this relationship. High extravert women are more creative than high extravert men, while low extravert men are more creative than low extravert women. Low emotionally stable women are more creative than low emotionally stable men, while high emotionally stable men are more creative than high emotionally stable women. There are differences in how women and men take advantage of their openness to experience when TMX is considered. That is, while women take advantage of openness to experience for any value of TMX, men only increase their creativity as openness to experience increases for low values of TMX.

Like all studies, ours has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research. First, care should be taken when generalizing these findings to other contexts. We use data from Spanish individuals, specifically university students. While they are suitable for testing our hypotheses, future studies should establish whether the general tendencies that we observe hold true for other kinds of people from Spain and other countries. Even more, this paper’s perspective might be biased by the authors’ country of origin (south Europe) in terms of gender. According to Hofstede (2001) south European and South American countries are more masculine than other cultures (Mensa and Grow, 2022). Therefore, analyzing these questions in different cultures (countries and settings) would facilitate the generalization of the results. Second, the data we use is mainly cross-sectional so strict causality cannot be inferred. The theory we use assumes specific causal directions, but alternative causal relationships cannot be ruled out. Finally, ideally, we should have controlled for additional variables that might influence the relationships in our model.

This paper has practical implications, as it demonstrates that neither gender is more creative than the other. It goes a step further, explaining how men and women can leverage their personality traits to be more creative. Moreover, since TMX could reinforce the impact of personality traits on creativity, this paper could help managers better organize teams and companies that want to be more innovative by taking into account the personality traits of their employees and how to get the best out of women and men.

Traditionally, women have considered creativity to be a man’s thing. The results of this work favor society, demonstrating that women are just as creative as men and that through personality traits and TMX, both men and women can be more creative. These results help to reduce the gender gap and may favor women’s place in today’s society.

This work offers academic and practical implications. The main contributions to the creativity and gender literatures are the following: (1) Women are as creative as men. (2) High extravert and low emotionally stable women are more creative than men. (3) High open to experience women with high TMX are more creative than men at any level of TMX. For practitioners, the understanding of what personality traits have higher impact on creativity depending on the levels of TMX for women and men could help companies and politicians in hiring the most suitable people, especially for those positions where creativity is needed. This would increase the quality of their human capital, allowing them to get the most out of their human resources, from the very beginning of the employment relationship.

Despite competition and supply-chain disruptions during Covid-19 pandemic (2019–2021), one grocery retailer consistently thrived and was ranked top. The sources of the sustained performances needed examination. Guided by self-congruity theory and integrating three models, the authors examined how much the retailer's brand performances (brand loyalty, equity, preference and repurchase intentions) were emanating from brand personalities and marketing offerings. The mediating roles of brand loyalty and equity were tested.

Cross-sectional data was collected from 480 frequent customers using an online questionnaire posted on the researchers' social media pages. Factor analysis was conducted to identify the dimension that best describes the grocery retailer. Partial least square–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test a conceptual model.

Factor analysis results show that brand sincerity (28.582% variance-explained; M = 4.1) was top (factor 1), followed by excitement (20.336% variance-explained; M = 3.9) and then trustworthiness (18.854% variance-explained; M = 3.87). PLS-SEM results revealed that two brand personalities (brand excitement and trustworthiness) and marketing offerings (price, place, product, promotion) impacted loyalty found to be a strong driver of brand equity. Repurchase intention and brand preference were influenced by brand equity. Brand loyalty mediated most of the relationships between brand personality dimensions, marketing offerings and brand equity. Brand equity also significantly mediated the relationships between brand loyalty, preference and repurchase intentions. The integrated model produced high explanatory powers with brand equity (67.8%), brand preference (71.7%), brand loyalty (63.2%) and repurchase intentions (54.2%).

The study extends a brand personality-loyalty model through integrating two other models that provided marketing offerings and brand equity outcomes. It demonstrates that a stream of profitable customers' responses awaits a retailer who holds both brand and customer mindsets by building admired brand personalities while providing desired marketing offerings.

This paper aims to investigate whether loan officers' risk taking in credit decisions are associated with their personal financial risk preference and personality traits or solely with bank-contextual and loan-relevant factors.

An online survey administered in six large Swedish banks to 163 loan officers responsible for assessing credit risk and approval of loan applications. The loan officers rated their likelihood of approving fictitious loan applications from business companies.

The loan officers' credit risk taking is associated with bank-contextual factors, directly with perceived organizational credit risk norms and indirectly with self-confidence in assessing credit risks through attitude to credit risk taking. A direct association is also found with personal financial risk preference but not with personality traits.

Increased awareness of that loan officers' personal financial risk preference is associated with their credit risk taking in loan decisions but that the banks' risk policy has a stronger association. Banks' managements and boards should therefore assure that their credit risk policy is implemented, followed and being aligned with their performance incentives.

Increased awareness of that loan officers' credit risk taking is associated with personal financial risk preference but more strongly with the banks' risk policy that motivate banks' managements and boards to assure that their credit risk policy is implemented, followed and being aligned with their performance incentives.

The first study which directly compare the associations of loan officers' risk taking in credit approvals with personal risk preference and personality traits versus bank-contextual factors and loan-relevant information.

Personality profiling in today’s business world has become an essential organisational development practice targeted at identifying a set of employees' traits, which differentiate an employee from one another. Given the assumption that personality traits form an essential indicator of developing the potential of an individual workforce, possible to establish how employees function in a certain job role and their suitability for the particular tasks in an organisation. This study aims to explore the relationship between personality traits, assessment centres (ACs) quality and management development in Nigeria telecommunication organisation among its managers.

The study employed multi-stage sampling techniques and further stratified the hierarchy of the management and finally used a simple random sampling strategy on each stratum. A combination of 482 managers in Nigerian telecommunication organisations participated in this study. The study investigated 12 hypotheses and 1 mediating postulation. Multiple scales were adapted to measure dimensions of endogenous and exogenous variables along the path of mediating variables of the study. The study employed a cross-sectional survey approach to administering the research instrument across all the departments among the managers of the organisations. A structural equation model of assessment was used to analyse the data collected from managers of the telecoms organisations.

The outcome of the study was significant, 10 of the postulated hypotheses were found to be significant while 3 were not significant. The study revealed that a combination of openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion personality have no significant relationship with the AC. Also, employees who are high in neuroticism like being emotionally unstable did not find a significant relationship with the AC. In a similar situation, the combined effect of all the big-five personalities was not significant in management development among the managers of the telecommunication industry. The AC is discovered to mediate between personality traits and management development. Individually, the big-five model finds a significant relationship with AC and management development, respectively.

The study is restricted to managers of the Nigerian telecoms industry alone and not all the entire workforce. It adopted cross-sectional analysis to make an inference on all the managers of the organisations. The implication is that the period of the view of a particular point in a sequence of the event may not be representative. Another implication is that the results from the cross-sectional design are for the relationship, and they do not indicate causation.

In practice, this study has shown that personality profiling is important to managing organisational behaviour to highlight a set of traits of employees suitable for peculiar roles. This study implies that personality elements constitute a vital signal of the potential development of the workforce. It helps to illuminate an individual functioning style in a certain task situation, therefore determining both professional and managerial suitability in performing a given role.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether the dark side of personality adds information beyond the bright side when predicting career success.

In total, 287 participants (150♀, M_age=37.74 and SD_age=10.38) completed questionnaires on the Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy) and the Big Five (emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness). They also provided information on their objective (salary and leadership position) and subjective (job satisfaction and satisfaction with income) career success. Regression analyses were used to estimate the Dark Triad’s incremental predictive value.

The results show that the Dark Triad only provides incremental information beyond the Big Five when predicting salary (ΔR²=0.02*) and leadership position (ΔR²=0.04*). In contrast, the Dark Triad does not explain unique variance when predicting job satisfaction or satisfaction with income.

The exclusive use of self-rated success criteria may increase the risk of same-source biases. Thus, future studies should include ratings derived from multiple perspectives.

Considering the Dark Triad in employee selection and development seems particularly promising in the context of competitive behaviour.

The results are discussed in light of the socioanalytic theory. This may help to better understand behaviour in organisational contexts.

This study is the first that simultaneously investigates all three traits of the Dark Triad and the Big Five in combination with objective and subjective career success. In addition, it extends previous findings by answering the question of whether the Dark Triad offers incremental or redundant information to the Big Five when predicting success.

This study aims to explore customer personality traits as an antecedent of customer citizenship behaviour which positively facilitates service providers.

This study follows the positivism research paradigm. Hence, primary data were collected from 250 homestay visitors who stayed at five selected homestays located at Mirissa homestay zone, Sri Lanka.

The present study's findings reveal that “agreeableness,” “extraversion” and “conscientiousness” personality traits promote customer citizenship behaviour. Furthermore, the openness to “experience” trait identified to have a statistically insignificant relationship with CCB and neuroticism recorded a positive impact on the relationship between CCB and personality, contrary to the existing literature.

This study comprehensively explains how service providers should arrange their service facilities to increase customer willingness to perform citizenship behaviour, which helps develop their services.

Previous research has investigated that customer personality in terms of prosocial and proactive nature impacts CCBs. In contrast, the effect of Big Five personality traits on CCB is highlighted in this study.