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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of psychological hardiness, social judgment, and “Big Five” personality dimensions on leader performance in US military academy cadets at West Point.

Army cadets were studied in two different organizational contexts, i.e. summer field training and during academic semesters. Leader performance was measured with leadership grades (supervisor ratings) aggregated over four years at West Point.

After controlling for general intellectual abilities, hierarchical regression results showed leader performance in the summer field training environment is predicted by Big Five extroversion, and hardiness, and a trend for social judgment. During the academic period context, leader performance is predicted by mental abilities, Big Five conscientiousness, and hardiness, with a trend for social judgment.

Results confirm the importance of psychological hardiness, extroversion, and conscientiousness as factors influencing leader effectiveness, and suggest that social judgment aspects of emotional intelligence can also be important. These results also show that different Big Five personality factors may influence leadership in different organizational contexts.

The study identifies personality factors related to leader performance in different types of work environments or contexts. Results can be used to improve leader selection and development programs.

This is the first study to examine the influence of psychological hardiness together with Big Five personality factors on leader performance. It identifies hardiness as an important predictor of leadership, while also showing that organizational context makes a difference for what Big Five personality factors influence leader performance: extroversion appears to be more influential in highly social and active work environments, whereas conscientiousness has greater salience in academic and business settings.

This paper aims to examine whether Andersen’s audit quality in the five years preceding its collapse lagged that of other Big-Five auditors.

This paper compares Andersen’s audit quality and the other Big-Five auditors using five methodologies, namely, earnings response coefficients, magnitudes of abnormal accruals, propensities to issue going-concern opinions, usefulness of going-concern opinions in predicting bankruptcy and the frequency of Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases. The comparisons are based on both pooled samples of all observations and propensity-score-based matched-pairs.

The preponderance of evidence shows that Andersen’s audit quality did not differ materially in audit quality from other Big-Five auditors prior to its failure. However, it was found that Andersen’s independence was compromised in the year leading to its collapse (2000), as indicated by the lower likelihood to issue going-concern opinions.

This paper complements and improves on Cahan et al. (2011) by using more measures of audit quality, as no one measure is perfect, showing that their results using discretionary accruals are sensitive to the model used and showing that there is a more powerful direct measure of audit quality, namely, going-concern opinions.

This paper investigates the relationship between audit quality (as measured by auditor size and industry specialization) and earnings management (as measured by unexpected accruals) for Taiwan IPO firms.

First uses unexpected accruals in the modified Jones model to measure earnings management in the IPO process. Then uses auditor type (big five versus non‐big five) and industry specialist to measure audit quality. The hypothesis predicts that Taiwanese firms with higher quality auditors engage less in earnings management in the IPO process. The sample consists of 367 new issues between 1999 and 2002 from the Taiwan Economic Journal database.

It is found that big five auditors are related to less earnings management in the IPO year in Taiwan. This shows that higher quality auditors constrain earnings management for Taiwan IPO firms.

The finding shows that high quality auditors constrain earnings management and provide more precise information. This is important, given that management has incentive to engage in earnings management in the IPO process to garner greater proceeds and at‐issue earnings management is negatively related to post‐issue earnings performance and stock returns.

The research might be of interest to investors in IPO firms, given that at‐issue unexpected accruals are opportunistic.

The study contributes to the literature in that it shows that audit firm size is an important determinant in earnings management for Taiwan IPO firms.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence for a “leadership big five”, a model of leadership behaviour integrating existing theories of leadership and conceptually aligned with the most established model of personality, the big five. Such a model provides researchers and practitioners with a common language to describe leadership behaviour in a field with a plethora of leadership models. The model also describes a wider range of leadership behaviour than other models of leadership, and presents dimensions that correlate with important organisational outcomes as demonstrated in this study.

In total, 1,186 employees completed the Voice Leadership 360, a survey designed to measure the leadership big five, collectively rating 193 managers from a range of different sectors and industries, using a 360-degree survey methodology.

Confirmatory factor analyses and internal reliability analyses provide evidence for 22 lower-order factors of leadership behaviour that aggregate into five higher-order factors of leadership aligned with the big five personality descriptors. Further evidence for the validity of the model is indicated by significant correlations between 360-degree survey ratings and raters’ judgements of leaders’ personality, and significant correlations between 360-degree survey ratings and both work unit engagement levels and manager reports of work unit performance.

The cross-sectional design is the main limitation of the present study, limiting conclusions that changes in leadership behaviours will lead to changes in organisational outcomes. The primary research implications of this study include the support for an integrating model of leadership behaviour that aligns with a large body of psychological research, as well as the development of a survey that can be used for future exploration of the model.

Practitioners may use the results of the study to rethink how they develop competency frameworks and measure leadership behaviour in organisation development contexts. This broad model of leadership and the familiarity of its dimensions could increase the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions, and the presented survey provides a reliable and valid tool for 360-degree assessments.

The study provides evidence that leadership can be described in a structurally similar way to human personality. It presents a leadership model that consists of a broader range of leadership behaviours related to organisational outcomes compared with previous models of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible relationship between novice vs experienced EFLs teachers’ Big Five personality traits, ambiguity tolerance and risk taking. To this purpose, 30 teachers of TEFL courses were randomly selected, and three instruments of NEO Five-Factor Inventory, Ambiguity Tolerance Scale and Risk-taking Propensity Measure were employed to measure their Big Five personality traits, their ambiguity tolerance and risk taking, respectively.

The study was a quantitative ex post facto study. The first phase of the study was to investigate the relationship among variables of the study. On the other hand, the second phase of the study examined the impact of experience of teachers on their risk taking and ambiguity tolerance.

The results showed that the more experienced the teachers are, the less risk they take and the more ambiguity tolerant they are. On the other hand, the less experienced the teachers are, the more risk they will take and the less they can tolerate ambiguity. The findings of this research can have useful implications for teacher training programs as well as teaching practices.

This study can add to the circle of knowledge and enhance theoretical assumptions of the field. Moreover, considering the Iranian context, a few studies have focused on the importance of uncovering relationship between five big personality traits and teachers’ personality factors. Therefore, this study is an attempt to investigate the relationship between the Big Five personality traits of teachers and their ambiguity tolerance and risk taking.

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 exploratory study profiles the career drivers of junior auditors in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Specifically, the study identifies what “drives” a junior auditor in a public accounting firm. Comparative examinations of the career drivers are also performed using the gender and size of firm variables. The results identify the presence of statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) between male and female junior auditors in the career drivers of material rewards, search for meaning, and affiliation. When the size of auditing firms – big‐five firms versus non‐big‐five firms – is used as a basis for comparison, there are significant differences found in the career drivers of material rewards, power/influence, search for meaning, expertise, autonomy, and security. Significant gender‐firm interaction effects are found in the career drivers of expertise, autonomy and security. Implications for both the profession and academic educators and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study is an empirical examination of Australian auditors' interpretation of selected key uncertainty expressions such as virtual certainty, expected, reasonable assurance and possible, contained in Australian accounting and auditing standards. The results showed three major findings. First, auditors demonstrated a reasonably high degree of variability in the interpretation of uncertainty expressions. In view of the proliferation of uncertainty expressions within international and Australian accounting and auditing standards, this lack of consistency in interpretation of uncertainty expressions raises some serious concerns. Second, compared with the less experienced auditors, the more experienced auditors demonstrated greater variability in their interpretations of uncertainty expressions. Third, contrary to expectations, this study did not find any difference in judgements between auditors in big‐five and non‐big‐five firms. In aggregate, the findings of the study have implications for standard setting.

This paper seeks to explore and explain the dramatic organizational changes that took place over a relatively short time period in the five largest global professional networks, or GPNs – a group of organizations that were originally global accounting firms and traditionally accustomed to relatively gradual change.

Begins by describing the background of divestiture and diversification in GPNs. The data were collected from the firms' web sites, interviews with GPN managers, e‐mail requests for information via Big Five web sites, and from reports in the newspapers and business press over the two‐year period to June 2001. Uses neo‐institutional theory to study the context, precipitating dynamics, and enabling dynamics of large‐scale organizational change, including the part played by governmental and regulatory forces.

Explains the extent to which changes have occurred in a sample of countries in which these organizations operate, noting that the firm effects seem to be stronger than the country effects in the consulting area, while country effects are more pronounced in the law area.

This paper is an original study of mainly secondary data – including those collected from firms' internet sites – analyzing change in an institutionalized environment. It is one of the first studies to make use of the GPN concept. Researchers and practitioners interested in professional service firms in general will find a unique combination of data, analyses, and conclusions.

Researchers have been focusing on the predictors of expatriates adjustment and job performance at different levels (individual level, organizational level, and societal level) but still some of the predictors have been ignored or unclear in the expatriate literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of personality traits (big five) on expatriates adjustment and job performance.

In this regards, data were collected from 201 expatriates working in Malaysia and analyzed by using structural equation modelling with Amos 16.

The findings of this study indicated that personality traits (big five) which include extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism positively influence expatriate adjustment which further influence expatriate performance rated by peers. In other words, expatriates adjustment (work, interaction, and general) mediate the relationship between big five personality traits (extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) and expatriates job performance (task, relationship building, and overall performance).

The findings of this study will help the researchers to further understand the importance of personality traits required for successful completion of international assignment. Furthermore, the findings also suggest human resource professionals to consider these personality traits before selecting an individual for international assignment. Finally, future research directions have been proposed.

Literature on expatriate adjustment and job performance is still at developing stage. This paper shed light on the individual characteristics which work as predictors for expatriates adjustment and job performance.