Personality and Job Performance: the big five revisited – Hurtz, Donovan
What it is about: Personality tests and the BIG FIVE
Before the 1990, personality tests in employee selection were being looked down by specialists;
“personality tests have low validity”
In recent years, researchers have suggested that the true predictive validity of personality was obscured
in earlier research by the lack of a common personality framework for organizing the traits being used as
predictors. The big five as predictors of job performance may have some deficiencies.
The big five: Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Openness to
Experience.
After the study, Conscientiousness was found as the dimension that had the highest validity from the big
five.
In terms of theory rather than practice, the findings can be interpreted as indicating a pattern of
theoretically meaningful relations between the broad personality dimensions and job performance that
should be explored in future research, perhaps using facet scales of the Big Five dimensions.
Agreeableness also gains importance for those jobs that require interpersonal interactions, so that being
likeable, cooperative, and good-natured has a small but consistent impact on performance. Finally, being
Extraverted appears to influence sales and perhaps managerial jobs, and Openness to Experience
appears to affect performance in customer service jobs.
Psychological Contracts in the Workplace: Understanding the Ties That
Motivate- Rousseau, Melon
What it is about: Features, Types, Observations
Workers and employers need to agree on the contributions that workers will make to the firm and vice
versa. Understanding and effectively managing these psychological contracts can help organizations
thrive.
In essence, psychological contracts motivate workers to fulfill commitments made to employers
when workers are confident that employers will reciprocate and fulfill their end of the bargain.
Employers in turn have their own psychological contracts with workers, depending upon their individual
competence, trustworthiness, and importance to the firm’s mission.
Overall, to make realistic promises that can be kept, the psychological contracts which employers and
workers create should be consistent with a well-crafted human resource strategy.
Six features of the psychological contract:
- Voluntary choice
- Belief in mutual agreement
- Incompleteness – not all contingencies can be foreseen because of changing circumstances
- Multiple contract makers – top management, human resource representatives, immediate boss
- Managing losses when contracts fail – managing negative reactions when not fulfillment
- The contract as model of the employment relationship – the mental model provides a stable
understanding of what to expect in the future and guides efficient action.
Types of psychological contracts:
1) Relational psychological contracts (loyalty, stability)
2) Transactional psychological contracts (narrow duties, short term duration)
3) Hybrid or balanced psychological contracts (combine commitments on the part of the employer
to develop workers (both in the firm or elsewhere if need be), while anticipating that workers
will be flexible and willing to adjust if economic conditions change)
Observations:
 Agreement between worker and employer on what each owes the other is critical to the
employment relationship’s success.
 Managers who feel poorly treated by the employer are less likely to make extensive
commitments to their workers or to signal that the employer is trustworthy.
 Employers need to establish a clear meta-contract that can be used across the firm.
The problem of psychological contracts considered – Rousseau
By definition, a psychological contract is the perception of an exchange agreement between oneself and
another party.
What it is about: Misinterpretations and new boundaries of psychological
contracts
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responds to key misinterpretations and redresses their potential adverse effects on our
understanding of psychological contracts and the role they play in human behavior
addresses David Guest’s misconceptions about the psychological contract
The misconception:
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the psychological contract is based upon a metaphor inappropriately borrowed from law
The misconstructions in the statement:
1) that it is inappropriately borrowed from law
2) that it is a metaphor rather than a scientific concept
the psychological contract was never 'redefined' as a perception
Guest asserts that no one has yet researched or addressed the origins of an individual's
psychological contract
The boundaries:
First, by definition, a psychological contract exists at the individual level, in the form of a person's
beliefs regarding the terms of his or her exchange relationship with another. This concept is distinct from
an implied contract, which refers to a third party's interpretation of an exchange agreement involving
others
The second boundary specified by psychological contract theory is that individual beliefs comprising the
contract involve sets of reciprocal obligations-not expectations alone-to which both the individual and
the other party are believed to have committed themselves
The impact of personality on psychological contracts – Raja, Johns, Ntalianis
What it is about: Relationship between employee
psychological contract type, breach and contract violation
personality
and
Psychological contracts are defined as a person’s perceptions and expectations about the mutual
obligations in an employment exchange relationship (Rousseau, 1989).
Transactional contracts are short-term, have a purely economic or materialistic focus, and entail limited
involvement by both parties.
Relational contracts are long-term and broad, as they are not restricted to purely economic exchange
but also include terms for loyalty in exchange for security or growth in an organization (Morrison &
Robinson, 1997; Rousseau & McLean Parks, 1993).
“Perceived breach refers to the cognition that one’s organization has failed to meet one or more
obligations within one’s psychological contract in a manner commensurate with one’s contributions . . .
perceived breach represents a cognitive assessment of contract fulfillment that is based on an
employee’s perception of what each party has promised and provided to the other”.
Violation, however, refers to emotional distress and feelings of betrayal, anger, and wrongful harm
arising from the realization that one’s organization has not fulfilled a highly salient promise (Morrison &
Robinson, 1997; Rousseau, 1989).
Personality might affect psychological contract dynamics through three processes: choice, construal, and
enactment.
Choice refers to job-seeking behavior and is most pertinent to the type of contract sought after or
negotiated.
Construal refers to perceptions of contract type, breach, and violation.
The cognitive and affective implications of personality are most relevant to construal.
Enactment refers to the impact of personality on organization behavior and attitudes. Such behavior and
attitudes might influence the contract terms offered by an employer or the modification of a contract
over time.
Although no support was found for the prediction that extroverts would form relational contracts,
extraversion was negatively associated with transactional contract terms.
In addition, consistent support was obtained for the favorable impact of a relational contract on job
satisfaction, affective commitment, and intentions to quit and the unfavorable impact of a transactional
contract and breach of contract on these same outcomes.
Some support was found for the prediction that personality would moderate the translation of breach
into violation—as predicted, equity sensitives were more inclined, and externals were less inclined, to
respond to breach with feelings of violation.
The data did not bear out the hypotheses concerning the personality predictors of perceived breach. In
particular, extraversion, equity sensitivity, and self-esteem were unrelated to breach. More worrisome,
neuroticism was positively related to breach, as was external locus of control, while conscientiousness
was negatively related to breach, all directionally counter to expectations.