Author Description

Although research has shown that personality traits (e.g., the Five Factor Model; FFM) are useful predictors of employee job performance, their criterion-related validities are moderate at best, with meta-analytic estimates typically below.30. Most existing studies focus on bivariate relationships between personality traits and job performance or its facets. This research neglects the fact that personality traits do not exist in isolation and they work in a synergistic way to affect work behaviors and outcomes. The recent development of the person-centered approach, particularly the use of Latent Profile Analysis (LPA, a person-centered data analysis technique) has provided an overarching perspective to the personality traits as a whole and efficiently captures higher order interactions among the personality factors. Drawing on existing personality profiles studies in the psychology literature and the personnel selection research in the management literature, this dissertation used the person-centered approach and meta-analysis to investigate: (1) What FFM personality profiles would emerge? (2) Do the personality profiles predict job performance and its facets (task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and counterproductive work behaviors)? (3) How well do the personality profiles predict job performance compared to the FFM traits? LPA results identified three profiles across 20 independent samples. These profiles predicted job performance and all of the facets above and beyond the FFM traits. FFM profiles are generally stronger than most single FFM traits in predicting job performance and its facets. These results help establish generalizable personality profiles, increase the predictive power of personality for employment selection, and advance our understanding about personality in general.