The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance by Ruthmann and Coetzer is a psychological articles based on studying the role of personality dimensions on employee performance. To study personality dimensions, the articles uses Big Five Personality Test, to understand the aspects of an individual in performing efficiently. The article starts with associating employee performance and its evaluation with personality traits of an individual. The author explains that conventional industrial psychologists criticize the use of psychological measures to study employee performance, but many studies reveal that the psychological factors help in objective prediction of the employee performance. The Big Five dimensions used in the research include Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. The method used to study the relationship between the employee performance and personality measures was a cross-sectional survey on these two factors in a pharmaceutical group. The paper also includes the observations on already present literature on the topic. In this regard, The NEO Personality Inventory Revised (NEO-PI-R) was used as a tool to measure the personality dimensions in terms of employee performance. The major hypothesis of the article is the relationship between employee performance and personality dimensions, studied under the light of big five personality traits (as explained above).
The article describes the five elements to draw a basic layout of the dimensions studied. It concluded that Neuroticism is a trait of an individual’s personality that expose humans to negative emotions such as fear, guilt, anger, sorrow, fear, or disgust. High level of this trait suggests a highly irrational individual, who have little control on his nerves, and cannot cope well with the anxiety. Extraversion is based on the social traits such as being introvert, extrovert, dominant or dominated, activity level, and the level of talking in public. Extroverts are known to have high energy levels with hope in them, whereas, introverts do not cooperate well with others but they have harmonious pace to work, and do not create many followers. The authors then take on the describe openness to experience as the ability to imagine. It involves creativity as well as aesthetic sense, attention to the inner voice, curiosity, a likeness for variety, and do not care about judgmental people. Such people are innovators and doers. Agreeableness of a person measures the sacrificing emotions in an individual. This includes studying sympathy, empathy, helpfulness, and return expectations of sympathy (Rothmann and Coetzer). Such people are not self-centered and do not doubt other people’s intentions. Such an individual have a competitive mindset. Lastly, conscientiousness means one’s control on his own emotions, and the organization level of an individual. Such people have aim, strong will, and determination to meet their goals. The organization of an individual helps in studying this trait. Such people may appear to be annoying to people with low levels of conscientiousness.
The study finds out that there are no significant associations between the two factors but a combination of some of these traits can give out some information about employees, their personality, and mindset that can eventually help in measuring employee performance. The article suggests to the pharmaceutical group that they should make use of personality traits in order to study employee performance in future as this can prove to be helpful in examining the role of their personality and identity in job performance. This is to say that some relationship between employee performance and personality traits exists, which can be exploited by the business organizations.
WORKS CITED
Rothmann, S., and E. P. Coetzer. "The Big Five Personality Dimensions And Job Performance". SA Journal of Industrial Psychology 29.1 (2003): n. pag. Web.
