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Exercises are key components of assessment centers (ACs). However, little is known about the nature and determinants of AC exercise performance. The traditional exercise paradigm primarily emphasizes the need to simulate task, social, and organizational demands in AC exercises. This chapter draws on trait activation theory in proposing a new AC exercise paradigm. First, we develop a theoretical framework that addresses the complexity of situational characteristics of AC exercises as determinants of AC performance. Second, we argue for planting multiple stimuli within exercises as a structured means of eliciting candidate behavior. Third, we show how the new paradigm also has key insights for the rating part of ACs, namely, in selecting dimensions, designing behavioral checklists, screening assessors, and training assessors. Finally, the impact of this new AC exercise paradigm is anticipated on important AC outcomes such as reliability, internal/external construct-related validity, criterion-related validity, assessee perceptions, and feedback effectiveness.

Employees’ personalities towards occupational outcomes have significantly gained academic attention. Personality traits (PTs) of employees as the determinant of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) outcomes research domain is emerging. This paper aims to assess extraversion PT activation for CE outcome under the problem-solving conflict handling style (CHS) situational cue.

The survey was conducted in automotive manufacturing firms in Pakistan for cross-sectional data collection. Structural equation modelling was used to assess the hypothesised theoretical model from 376 employees.

Results revealed a positive and significant impact of extraversion on CE. Also, employees with high extraversion traits were found to prefer the problem-solving style in managing workplace conflicts. The extraversion trait was also found to be activated under the situational cue of the problem-solving style.

The present study draws implications on person-job fit conceptions at the workplace while hiring, promoting and appointing employees. Personality assessment at the workplace is still in infancy in developing countries. The benefits of employees’ personalities can positively impact organisational performance measures like CE.

The present study has proposed the theoretical model based on Trait Activation Theory (TAT) and contributed theoretically through empirically testing the theoretical model by investigating the employees’ CHS role in activating their PTs towards the CE outcomes. Theoretically, using TAT conceptualisations in entrepreneurship and CE is novel as previous knowledge on PTs activation towards CE outcomes is non-existent. CHS as situational cues will attract social science researchers towards studying its role in various predictor outcome links across multiple work settings.

Using trait activation theory (TAT), this paper aims to empirically assess that work drive (WD) personality characteristics of employees will express better towards intrapreneurial behaviour (IB) outcomes in higher levels of job autonomy (JA) at the workplace.

Using cross-sectional design, a total of 258 engineering employees from the automotive industry of Pakistan were surveyed. The partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) statistical method was used to evaluate the hypothesised theoretical model.

Statistical results revealed a significant and positive relationship between WD and IB. WD personality was also found to be activated with its interplay with JA for personality expression towards IB.

The present study offers a deeper insight into the interplay of organisational and individual factors as determinants of IB of employees. The study's findings suggested the importance of the rightful application of organisational situational cues in person–situation interaction for positive workplace behaviours by employees. Personality assessment of employees and their interplay with situational cues, as per conceptualisation of TAT, can assist the corporations towards enhanced levels of employees' behavioural tendencies towards intrapreneurship.

The application of TAT from the present study's perspective is novel theoretically as the literature on the activation of personality traits towards IB outcomes is non-existent. Also, the assessment of situational cues in JA will open avenues for organisational behaviour researchers to seek more organisational situational moderators for their assessment of various personality–outcome relationships in diverse contexts to activate personality traits.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of an employee’s consideration of future consequences (CFCs) in predicting employee task performance and its situational contexts (i.e. organizational support and supervisor support) based on trait activation theory.

Using a cross-sectional field study design, data were collected from 189 employees and their immediate supervisors in South Korea.

Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that employees’ CFC has a positive effect on their task performance. Furthermore, this study investigated whether this relationship would be varied by relevant situational factors. Consistent with the hypotheses, the relevance of CFC to employees’ task performance would be stronger when they perceive low levels of organizational support based on trait activation theory.

The findings suggest the importance of employees’ CFC on task performance. Also, organizations should pay more attention to the way of compensating for employees with low levels of CFC by fostering supportive environment.

Although researchers have been examined long-term perspectives in the business field, a few studies have examined its effect at the individual level. This paper identified not only the main effect of CFC on employee task performance but also the moderating role of organizational support on the aforementioned relationship.

The purpose of this study is to expand upon accounting literature that highlights the benefits of hardiness in the accounting environment. Accordingly, the relationship between hardiness and accounting task performance is investigated across two scenarios in the presence of conscientiousness, a well‐documented predictor of performance (Barrick and Mount).

Subjects completed a bank reconciliation task with either an immediate deadline or a non‐immediate deadline. The personality traits were measured with scales from prior literature.

The relationship between the commitment dimension of hardiness and task performance was positive and significant in the presence of the immediate deadline, but not the non‐immediate deadline. Conversely, the conscientiousness‐task performance relationship was positive and significant under the non‐immediate deadline, but not the immediate deadline. Additional analysis revealed a significant association between commitment and detection of errors.

Since task performance was measured in relation to one task, the generalizability of the results is limited. However, the results imply that hardiness serves as a relevant variable in cognitive performance models.

The hardiness trait appears to produce positive outcomes in the accounting environment. Accounting educators and firm leaders should understand how the trait is expressed and activated in order to train professionals on critical accounting and auditing tasks.

This paper provides new evidence about the benefits of the hardy personality in accounting settings. Additionally, the results offer a basis for researchers to incorporate hardiness as an individual difference in studies on auditor performance.

Purpose – This chapter focuses on individual differences in anxiety, by reviewing its neurobiology, cognitive effects, with an emphasis on decision-making, and recent developments in neuroeconomics.

Methodology – A review and discussion of anxiety and decision-making research.

Practical implications – This chapter argues that by making the step from emotional states to individual differences in emotion, neuroeconomics can extend its neurobiological roots and outreach its current clinical relevance.

Value of chapter – This chapter contributes to the literature on individual differences in emotion and their effects on decision-making, which is increasingly important in mainstream behavioral economics and neuroeconomics.

A key feature of performance in many professions is that of vigilance, carefully monitoring one’s environment for potential threats. However, some of the characteristics that may make someone successful in such work may also be more likely to make them fail in the long-term as a result of burnout, fatigue, and other symptoms commonly associated with chronic stress. Among these characteristics, neuroticism is particularly relevant. To exert the effort that vigilance work requires, sensitivity to threats, a core aspect of neuroticism, may be necessary. This is evidenced by higher rates of neuroticism in vigilance-related professions such as information technology (IT). However, other aspects of neuroticism could attenuate performance by making individuals more distractible and prone to burnout, withdrawal, and emotional outbursts. Four perspectives provide insight to this neuroticism–vigilance paradox: facet-level analysis, trait activation, necessary conditions, and job characteristics. Across these perspectives, it is expected that too little neuroticism will render employees unable to perform vigilance tasks effectively due to lack of care while too much neuroticism will cause employees to become overwhelmed by work pressures. Contextual and personological moderators of the neuroticism–vigilance relationship are discussed, as well as two behavioral styles expected to manifest from neuroticism that could explain how neuroticism may be associated with either good or bad performance-relevant outcomes.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have experienced career shocks, especially employees in the hotel industry. To address how to retain talent in the industry, this study aims to examine the joint impacts of employee resilience, work social support and proactive personality on hotel employees’ career change intentions.

A survey questionnaire was developed to test the proposed framework. Data from 339 current hotel employees in the USA was analyzed using the PROCESS model.

Results show a significant three-way interaction, indicating that for less proactive employees, resilience is negatively associated with career change intentions. However, for highly proactive employees, an additional situation cue in the form of strong work social support is required to activate the expression of resilience. Highly proactive and resilient employees who receive strong supervisor or coworker support during the pandemic have lower career change intentions. However, highly proactive employees who receive weak supervisor or coworker support exhibit similar levels of career change intentions, regardless of resilience level.

Hotel managers should consider helping employees enhance their resilience and overcome career shocks by providing training and resources and establishing a learning culture. More importantly, it is essential to offer strong supervisor and coworker support to promote resilience among proactive employees. Hotel managers should actively promote strong work social support, and offer training and counseling opportunities to promote employee retention during the pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine employee resilience in the hospitality field. This study contributes to the employee resilience literature as well as trait activation theory by examining situational cues that can activate employee resilience and by providing empirical evidence to reveal the boundary conditions of how employee resilience impacts career change intentions.

The five-factor model (FFM), a popular personality typology that identifies five key personality traits, has been used to predict use intention in various e-commerce applications, but the role of FFM in triggering certain evaluations of the various quality dimensions of e-commerce websites has not been examined, revealing a gap, i.e. the authors do not know how the five personality traits impact evaluations of the quality dimensions of e-commerce websites. The 3Q model—which comprises system quality (SysQ), information quality (IQ), and service quality (SQ), spanning 13 quality dimensions—is helpful for evaluating website quality, but the model neglects user characteristics and their impacts on quality evaluation, posing another gap, i.e. the authors do not know how user characteristics impact the user's evaluation of quality dimensions. Thus, the authors used the FFM to extend the 3Q model to explain how user personality predicts the evaluation of websites in the 13 quality dimensions.

The authors used an online survey to collect responses from 392 online shoppers. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The authors found that openness in a shopper predicts their favorable evaluation of a website in the quality dimensions of format and flexibility; conscientiousness predicts favorable evaluation in terms of completeness, accuracy, currency, timeliness, and service reliability; neuroticism predicts unfavorable evaluation in terms of reliability, accessibility, and assurance; and extraversion predicts favorable evaluation in terms of responsiveness; while agreeableness did not predict empathy.

In sum, the authors successfully used the FFM to theoretically extend the 3Q model, which clarifies the usefulness and pathways of personality in formulating strategies for e-commerce success.

This paper aims to examine the workplace team member self-reported social loafing (SL) in relation to the dark triad personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. The moderating effect of team member exchange (TMX), a social contextual factor, on each proposed dark trait-SL relationship was also examined. A person X situation interactionist perspective was adopted.

American employees were recruited to complete surveys consisting of previously published, validated and reliable scales. Correlations and hierarchical regressions were used to test the study hypotheses.

As hypothesized, all positive dark trait-SL relationships were supported. TMX moderated the Machiavellianism-SL and psychopathy-SL relationships, as hypothesized. Unexpectedly, TMX was not found to moderate the narcissism-SL relationship.

Findings imply increased managerial monitoring costs when supervising employees with elevated levels of dark traits. This is especially so when workers are assigned to team tasks and SL is a concern. To alleviate loafing tendencies, the nurturing of high-quality TMX relations among employees with elevated levels of traits Machiavellianism and psychopathy likely moderates the positive Machiavellianism- and psychopathy-SL relations. The emerging SL literature that accounts for both personality and situation, the dark trait-deviant workplace behavior literature stream and research evidencing the ability of TMX to remedy problematic characteristic behaviors are all extended by the present research.