The relationship between personality traits and leadership styles: The employee s perspective

Transcription

1 The relationship between personality traits and leadership styles: The employee s perspective Bachelor Thesis Faculty of Economics and Business February 27, 2012 Pascal Putman Supervisor: Toon Meulemans

2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction Theoretical review of literature Defining leadership Leadership styles Leadership profiles Personality traits Research design Results Sample and measurement Validation Regression analyses Transformational leadership characteristics Transformational leadership profile Team-orientated leadership characteristics Team-orientated leadership profile Transactional leadership characteristics Transactional leadership profile Discussion Conclusion.. 26 References Appendixes. 30

3 1. Introduction Everybody has a different view or different perspective on certain events in life. These differences exist because of differences in personality characteristics. Our behavior in a working environment is also related to these characteristics and leaders act upon these. But leaders have their own leadership style and behavior which sometimes result in a mismatch between manager and employee. It should therefore be in the interest of the organization to minimize the mismatches, so that the leadership in the organization is as effective as possible. Leadership has been an ongoing topic for the last few decades. The last decade, transactional and transformational leadership has been a hot topic for every researcher (Bass, 1999, p.9). The change from reward systems to creating a connection with your employees had a huge impact on, not only organizations, but also scientific research. After that change, multiple studies have shown how leadership changed over time and what type of leadership is best in certain conditions (Bass, 1985; De Vries, Roe and Taillieu, 1999; Stoker, Looise, Fisscher and de Jong, 2001; McColl-Kennedy and Anderson, 2002). Although these researches have been successful in creating the leadership view, there is still a lot that remains to be researched about the connection of leadership with other fields. One of these areas that need some deeper investigation is the relation between leadership and human resources. In this article, the relation between personality characteristics and leadership behavior will be examined more closely. Some research has already been done on the relation between leadership behavior and different personalities, but most of them are focusing on the managerial part of this relation (Church and Waclawski, 1998, p.99). Their research made four different profiles of leader characteristics and checked which personality profiles used transformational leadership and which profiles did not. This research therefore focuses itself more on the employee view in this relation. The research will provide a better insight in matching employees and managers. Managers can play a huge role in the performance of their employees (McNeese- Smith, 1997, p.48). Improving matches between employees 1

4 and managers will enhance job satisfaction, production and organizational commitment (Rich, 1997, p ; Sy, Tram and O Hara, 2006, p.462). It will also decrease employee turnover (Dittrich and Carrell, 1979, p.29). Therefore it is relevant to organizations to focus themselves on a good matching principal between employees and managers. The employees view will help to get a better view of this matching principal. The personality characteristics of the employee, which will help us to create the employee s view, will be gathered by the big five personality test. This test will create five personality traits; extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness (Judge et al., 2002; Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann, 2003; Bono and Judge, 2004). These will give us a good overview of what type of person the employee is. This new perspective brings up the main research question; in what way does personality characteristics of employees affect the choice of leadership behavior? What type of manager would be most attractive for certain employees? Which personality characteristics will strongly relate to a certain leadership behavior? These questions will try to be answered in this research. First, the existing literature will be introduced. A short overview of the definition of leadership and the changes within leadership will be examined. On top of that, literature about the big five personality tests will also be brought forward, so the concepts of the five personality traits will be clear and the reliability of this test will be shown. With these personality traits, multiple hypotheses will be set-up. Secondly, the research design will be introduced. Not only will the big-five personality test be included in the research. There will also be some questions about leadership characteristics. Next to that, leadership profiles will be created to define the preferences of the employees. The next part is the results section. Here the results will be examined and will be summarized so that the results will be clear. After that, the discussion will try to answer the hypotheses and research question and show the limitations and possibilities for future research. To conclude this research, the conclusion will summarize the whole article. 2

5 2. Theoretical review of literature 2.1 Defining leadership There are multiple definitions of leadership that previous research has brought forward. Leadership is a broad definition that is hard to capture just in a few sentences. All of the definitions make sense in some way and therefore it is hard to neglect any of them. Rost (1991) for example, defined leadership as an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes. With this definition he showed that the definition of leadership was transforming. Rather than the basic principle that a leader does something to the group, he now mentions that leaders and followers are engaged together in a relationship (Burns,1996, p.150). Northouse (2004, p.2-3) identified four common themes in the way leadership tends to be conceived in his time; leadership is a progress, leadership involves influence, leadership occurs in a group context and leadership involves goal attainment. He therefore defined leadership as a progress whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2004, p.3). Bass (2008) shows all types of definitions of leadership in his handbook of leadership. One definition came from Tead (1935) leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate towards some goal which they come to find desirable (Bass, 2008, p.18). Another definition from Bellows (1959) leadership is the progress of arranging a situation so that various members of a group, including the leader, can achieve common goals with maximum economy and a minimum of time and work (Bass, 2008, p.20). Although all these researchers try to define leadership, there are also people who believe leadership cannot be defined. Rowe (2006, p.1529) suggests that leadership cannot and should not be defined as it should be considered as a process. He compares and contrasts management and leadership to three organizational processes; time, culture and change in order to confirm that leadership should be seen as a process. With his arguments, he shares the same vision as Northouse. Both researchers see leadership as a process, although Northouse mentions the 3

6 involvement of an individual. All this research on leadership gave a lot of insights in leadership, but not one strict definition. Therefore in this article we see leadership as a process where an individual cooperate with its followers and influence them to achieve a common goal. 2.2 Leadership styles Now that we have seen multiple definitions of leadership, the different leadership styles will be brought forward. There are also a lot of different leadership styles and there are too many to handle them all. One of them is authentic leadership. Recent research that has been done on authentic leadership, show that it is related to many different characteristics of the manager (Eigel and Kuhnert, 2005, p.358). But to create structure in this article we will only discuss the transactional style and the transformational style. These styles will define the behavior of the manager towards the organization and his employees. Therefore it is important to take a better look at these two. The transactional leadership theory recognizes the reciprocal deterministic nature of leadership (Deluga, 1990, p.192). This theory suggests that subordinates and/or leaders can exercise considerable power and influence by engaging in a mutually beneficial exchange process with their leaders. Kuhnert and Lewis (1987, p.649) mention that transactional leadership occurs when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange or something valued. Leaders approach followers with an eye toward exchanging. Deluga (1990, p.192) also cites the Bass (1981). Bass suggests in his research that there are two characteristics that constitute transactional leadership. The first is contingent reward. It is a pay influencing arrangement where there is an explicit or implicit agreement on the goals to be reached in order to obtain the desired rewards. The second is management-by-exception. It characterizes how leaders monitor negative subordinate deviations and use corrective action only when subordinates fail to meet the objectives. The transformational leadership theory also acknowledges the importance of power and influence like the transactional theory. Only with the transformational theory 4

7 sees the leader-subordinate relationship as one of the intense emotions where subordinates place a great deal of trust and confidence in the leader (Deluga, 1990, p.193). Bass (1990, p.21) mentions charisma, inspiration, individual consideration and intellectual stimulation as four characteristics that form transformational leadership. Kuhnert and Lewis (1987, p.649) show in their research that transformational leadership is more than the compliance of followers. It involves shifts in the beliefs, the needs and the values of the followers. They cite Burns (1978) to get a clear context of transformational leadership; the result of transforming leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders in moral agents. These researchers made clear what the difference is between the two leadership theories. To conclude the part of differences between transactional and transformational leadership, exhibit 1 will be represented. This table has been setup by Bass (1990, p.22) to show the different characteristics of the two theories and will help to clarify this research. Figure 1 5

8 2.3 Leadership profiles Now that the styles have been clarified, we will take a look at previous research about leadership profiles. These profiles will help to get better vision of how some managers act according to their leadership style and how they differ from each other. These different profiles will also be used in this research. Dulewicz and Higgs (2004, p.114) investigated the new leadership dimensions questionnaire and a related framework for assessing an individual s leadership style in relation to the context in which the leaders works. Therefore they reviewed the literature covering different leader behaviors in different contexts of change. Due to that review they identified three distinct leadership styles; Engaging leadership; a style based on a high level of empowerment and involvement appropriate in a highly transformational context. Such a style is focused on producing radical change with high levels of engagement and commitment. Involving leadership; a style that is based on a transitional organization with the use of empowerment, which faces significant, but not necessarily radical changes in its business model. Goal leadership; a style that is focused on delivering results within a relatively stable context. This is a leader-led style aligned to a stable organization delivering clearly understood results. Koopman e.a. (1999, p.514) investigated different cultural groups that may have a different conception of what leadership should entail. They therefore did research to what extent there are cultural differences. They found series of attributes and behaviors are universally accepted and seen as effective. These attributes and behaviors can be linked to the three leadership styles that have been made by Dulewicz and Higgs (2004). Charismatic/value-based attributes can be related to the engaging leadership style. These attributes are visionary, inspirational, integrity and decisive. This can be seen as a transformational profile. Involving leadership can be related to the team-orientated attributes. These attributes are team orientation, team integrator and diplomacy. Therefore this can 6

9 be seen as a profile with a high involvement team leader. Last, goal leadership can be related to the autonomous attributes. These attributes are individualistic and independent. Therefore this style can be seen as a transactional profile. 2.4 Personality traits After focusing at the leadership part of this research, it is important that we now focus on the personality traits that will have to define the personality of the employees. The big five theory will be used, to get the best insight into the personality of the employee and to increase the validity of the research. Multiple researchers already used the big five model and have proven that this test is reliable and will create valid results. Due to the short amount of time, the article of Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann Jr. (2003) came forward. They developed a very brief measure of 5 and 10-item inventories of the big five and evaluated it. They found out that the 10-item measure of the big five dimensions can be used for short measures where personality is not the primary topic of interest (Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann Jr., 2003, p.525). Therefore this short version of the big five is not usable for this research as personality is one of the primary topics here. John and Srivastava (1999) also did research about the big five theory. They investigated the history, the measurements and the theoretical perspectives of the big five theory. In the end, they came up with a big five test of forty-four questions which are reliable and valid. This big five test will be used for the research as this is the most reliable and valid way to investigate the different personalities. Now that the reliability of the big five is validated, the results that will come out of the big five test will be explained. The big five test will generate five personality traits or dimensions. These are Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness. All these dimensions are linked to different personality characteristics and can therefore be measured by the questions in the big five test. The dimensions will be explained below. Extraversion according to Barrick and Mount (1991, p.3) is the dimension which included personality traits as being a social person and being very active and 7

10 talkative. They mention that Hogan (1986) also adds ambition and initiative to this dimension. McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987, p.85) and Klein, e.a. (2004, p.953) validate these personality traits and also add multiple other traits like being passionate about something and someone who shows affection. These personality traits have a lot of similarity with the characteristics of a transformational leader. Therefore, the first hypothesis will be the following; Hypothesis 1: People with a high score in the Extraversion dimension will have the preference for a transformational leader. Barrick and Mount (1991, p.4) relate the dimension Agreeableness with personality traits like flexible, good-natured and forgiving. McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987, p.85) and Klein e.a. (2004, p.953) also add the traits trusting and selfless to this dimension. These traits seem to indicate a relation with the team-orientated leader. Therefore the second hypothesis can be set-up. Hypothesis 2: People with a high score in the Agreeableness dimension will have the preference for a team-orientated leader. For the third dimension, Conscientiousness, Barrick and Mount (1991, p.4) give the personality traits careful, responsible and organized. But they also mention the traits hard working and being achievement-orientated. McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987, p.85) Klein e.a. (2004, p.953) add the traits self-disciplined, punctual and practical. These traits seem to relate with both the team-orientated leader and transactional leader. Therefore, the next hypotheses can be set up. Hypothesis 3a: People with a high score in the Conscientiousness dimension will have the preference for a team-orientated leader. Hypothesis 3b: People with a high score in the Conscientiousness dimension will have the preference for a transactional leader. 8

11 The fourth dimension is Neuroticism. This dimension is the only dimension which relates to negative personality traits. Barrick and Mount (1991, p.4) mention the traits anxious, depressed, angry and emotional. McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987, p.85) and Klein e.a. (2004, p.953) add insecure and nervous. These personality traits do not seem to relate to any of the leader types. Hypothesis 4: The Neuroticism dimension will not relate to any of the leadership styles The last, and fifth, dimension is Openness. Barrick and Mount (1991, p.5) found that the personality traits imaginative, cultured, curious and original all relate to this dimension. McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987, p.85) and Klein e.a. (2004, p.953) add the following traits; broad interests, creative and analytical. These traits could relate to the team-orientated leader and transactional leader. Hypothesis 5a: People with a high score in the Openness dimension will have the preference for a team-orientated leader. Hypothesis 5b: People with a high score in the Openness dimension will prefer not to work with a transactional leader. 3. Research design This research will be done to get a better insight in the relation between personality characteristics of employees on one side and managerial behavior on the other side. Getting a better insight in this relation has advantages for existing research, as it establishes and extents the connection between leadership and human resources. This research will also be very helpful for organizations to minimize the mismatch between employees and managers, which will reduce employee turnover (Dittrich and Carrell, 1979) and increase job satisfaction (Rich, 1997, p ; Sy, Tram and O Hara, 2006, p.462). These relations between managers and employees are used in 9

12 every sector and every organization and are therefore the reliability of this research is very high and can be generalized. The best way to find this data is to collect quantitative data so we can analysis the data to see if there are any correlations between the different variables. With the quantitative data, regression analyses can be made. On top of that, we want to get to know the personality characteristics. Therefore we need to use the big-five test, which can be implemented into a questionnaire. This big-five test will result in more quantitative data. The big-five test exists out of forty-four statements about the how the respondent sees itself. For every statement, the respondent can answer with a likert-scale with 1 (disagree strongly) till 5 (agree strongly). The likert-scale has proven to be reliable and valid and will therefore be a good measure method (Raubenheimer, 2004, p.59). There are also some reversed questions which will improve the validity of the test. The statements all relate to one of the personality traits. The points will be measured and will result in an overview of which personality traits best describe the respondent. John and Srivastava (1999) made such a personality test which has been proved to be successful. Therefore their big-five questionnaire will be used for this research. Aside from this data, we need some control variables to increase the reliability and the validity of the research. Control variables as gender (male/female), nationality (Dutch/non-Dutch), age (0-20, 21-30, 31-40), education (MBO, HBO, WO), Income ( , , ) and work experience (0, 1-2, 3-4, 5+) will be included into the data so we can increase the explained variance (R-squared) and identify possible correlations between the dependant and independent variables (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009, p.461). Gender will identify the possible differences between men and women. Age will show possible differences due to generation difference and life-stage. Education will possibly show differences in preference of type of leaders. You could assume that lower educated people would like more help or control with their job, while high educated people do not. Work experience will be included, so we can see if the interviewee possibly has experienced different leader behavior. 10

13 To answer the second part of the research question, we will have to ask something about the leadership styles and what type best suits the respondent. Therefore three profiles will be brought forward, that have been created by investigating the existing literature. These profiles are; engaging leadership (transformational), involving leadership (team-orientated) and goal leadership (transaction). The interviewee will be asked to answer the profile with a likert-scale from 1 (strongly disagree) till 5 (strongly agree), so that we can see which profile would fit best with the interviewee. To make these profiles more reliable and valid, we ask the respondent to give their opinion about certain characteristics of leaders. There will be three characteristics for every category of leadership and these will be used to get a better and reliable overview of the relations. They will be asked how much they value these characteristics by a likert-scale from 1 (do not value) till 5 (highly value). With these results we can match them with the answers they give to the profile and see if the regression analyses are similar, to see if the results are reliable and valid. One of the limitations of this research is the time scale. The time scale for this research is very limited and because of that it is possible that the respond rate is not really high. So because of the short time, the research will be used to make a start in this new direction of looking through the employee view. The results may indicate relations on which future research can focus and build up upon. The results of the research may be a bit biased with a low response rate, but is therefore not unreliably as the questionnaire is valid and reliable on its own. Summarizing this research design, the research question will be answered by using a questionnaire. First, by identifying the personality characteristics by using the bigfive test with forty-four questions which will show which personality traits are dominant for the respondent. After that, four different leader profiles will be set up. The interviewee will then be asked to answer which profile matches the best using likert-scaling. The control variables included in the questionnaire will increase reliability and validity of the results. The questionnaire can be found in the attachment. 11

14 4. Results 4.1 Sample and measurement There are 68 respondents used in this research. To get reliable and significant results, control variables have been set up to get some background information about the respondent and explain some of the variance. The first control variable is the gender of the respondent. In this sample, the respondents are well spread between male (49 percent) and female (51 percent). The same applies to work experience (25,24,24 and 28 percent). The skewness in the sample can be seen for the other variables. There are more Dutch respondents (82 percent) than Non-Dutch (18 percent). The age is not evenly divided, as 84 percent of the sample is between twenty-one and thirty years old. Also the high education at the university percentage is high (60 percent) and the income level is low. Eighty-four percent has an income between 0 and euro on a yearly basis. These statistics can be found back in the table below. Table 1 N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Male ,49,503 Female ,51,503 Dutch ,82,384 Non-Dutch ,18,384 Age_ ,10,306 Age_ ,84,371 Age_ ,06,237 Edu_VMBO ,18,384 Edu_HBO ,22,418 Edu_WO ,60,493 Income_ ,84,371 Income_ ,13,341 Income_ ,03,170 Exp_ ,25,436 Exp_ ,24,427 Exp_ ,24,427 Exp_ ,28,452 12

15 Now that we have seen that the different control variables in this sample will explain the differences between the respondents, the next step is to check the reliability of the other variables. The reliability of the personality dimensions and the dependent variables will be checked to make sure the results are reliable and valid. 4.2 Validation To check the reliability of the variables and the dimensions used for the big five, the Cronbach s alpha will be calculated. To increase the reliability of the dimensions, a factor analysis will be used to discover items that can be excluded to increase the Cronbach s alpha. Because of that factor analysis, Two items of the dimension Agreeableness have been excluded to increase the Cronbach s alpha from 0,619 to 0,680. These values are shown in the table below. Table 2 Cronbach's Alpha N of Items Extraversion,776 8 Agreeableness,680 7 Conscientiousness,805 9 Neuroticism,803 8 Openness, Next the dimensions of the three leadership characteristics will be checked. Again, the Cronbach s alpha will be calculated to see whether the dimensions are reliable and if these can be improved by excluding items. To increase the reliability, an item has been excluded in both the team-orientated dimension and transactional dimension. The former changed from 0,469 to 0,639, the latter from 0,286 to 0,413. The values can be found below. 13

16 Table 3 Cronbach's Alpha N of Items Transformational characteristics,385 3 Team-orientated characteristics,639 2 Transactional characteristics, Regression analysis To search for the relations between the leadership characteristics and personality dimensions, I will continue with the regression analysis. These analyses will be performed for every characteristic category and every profile category. Therefore, there will be six which contain information about the relationship of that category and the personality dimensions. For all the models, the control variables that will be excluded are; Male, Dutch, Age_21-30, Edu_WO, Income_0-20 and Exp_0. These will be the constant factors in the models. The collinearity statistics have been checked in every model and did not show any problems. The first regression analysis will be the transformational characteristic category. The table will represent the relevant results of the regression analysis Transformational leadership characteristics Table 4 R R Square,682,465 Anova Model 1 Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression , ,003 a Residual ,274 Total

17 Coefficients The model is significant at a 5 percent level with a p-value of 0,003. The R-square is 0,465 which explains the variance in the model. The main focus of the tables is to see if there are any significant results for one or more personality dimensions. In this model we can see that the dimensions Extraversion (0,003) and Conscientiousness (0,047) are significant at a 5 percent level and that the dimension Openness (0,060) is significant at a 10 percent level. They all have a positive relationship with the preference of a transformational leader. Another thing which can be good to mention is that the control variables Non-Dutch (0,028) and Age_0-20 (0,026) are positively related and both significant at a 5 percent level. Model 1 Unstandardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error (Constant),628,997,630,532 Female -,197, ,265 Non-Dutch,590, ,028 Age_0-20,531, ,026 Age_ ,009,341 -,025,980 Edu_VMBO -,248,321 -,773,443 Edu_HBO -,175,182 -,962,340 Income_ ,355, ,257 Income_40-60,109,469,232,817 Exp_1-2 -,205, ,303 Exp_3-4 -,072,218 -,332,741 Exp_5+ -,120,201 -,599,552 Extraversion,359, ,003 Agreeableness,102,138,735,466 Conscientiousne ss,255, ,047 Neuroticism,137, ,273 Openness,232, ,060 15

18 The second model is also based on the transformational leader, but this time with the results from the profile that has been setup before. The results are shown below Transformational leadership profile Table 5 R R Square,440,194 Anova Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression ,539,766,714 Residual ,704 Total Coefficients This model is not significant and has a high p-value of 0,714. There is also low factor of the variance explained (R-square of 0,194). Because this model is highly insignificant, we can assume that the results are not reliable either. On top of that, no personality dimension is significant at a 5 or 10 percent level. Model 1 Unstandardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error (Constant) ,111 Female -,097,280 -,347,730 Non-Dutch,469, ,266 Age_0-20,296,370,799,428 Age_ ,901, ,105 Edu_VMBO -,522, ,315 Edu_HBO -,290,291 -,996,324 Income_20-40,290,496,585,561 Income_ ,507,751 -,675,503 Exp_1-2 -,038,315 -,121,904 Exp_3-4 -,204,349 -,583,562 Exp_5+,031,322,095,925 Extraversion,220, ,243 Agreeableness -,076,222 -,342,734 Conscientiousness,155 16,201,770,445 Neuroticism,093,199,470,640 Openness,198, ,309

19 The third and fourth model will do the same as what happened before with the transformational category. First, the results from the research on team-orientated characteristics of leadership will be shown and after that the same will happen for the profile of team-orientated leadership. The results for the team-orientated characteristics of leadership can be found below Team-orientated leadership characteristics Table 6 R R Square,608,369 Anova Model 1 Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression ,047 Residual ,551 Total Coefficients Model Unstandardized B Std. Error t Sig. 1 (Constant) -, ,094,925 Female -,434, ,086 Non-Dutch,319,369,866,390 Age_0-20,431, ,194 Age_31-40,359,483,743,461 Edu_VMBO,199,455,437,664 Edu_HBO,053,258,205,838 Income_ ,460, ,299 Income_ , ,016 Exp_1-2,288, ,306 Exp_3-4,165,309,533,596 Exp_5+ -,119,285 -,417,679 Extraversion,195, ,241 Agreeableness,232, ,242 Conscientiousness,388, ,034 Neuroticism,364, ,043 Openness,223, ,198 17

20 This model is significant at a 5 percent level with a p-value of 0,047. The R-square is 0,369. There are two personality dimensions that are significant at a 5 percent level. These are Conscientiousness (0,034) and Neuroticism (0,043). Both of these dimensions are positively related to the preference of a team-orientated leader. It seems like the control variables Female (0,086) and Income_40-60 (0,016) both have a negative relationship and are significant at a 10 percent level. Income_40-60 is even significant at a 5 percent level. The next model is related to the team-orientated profile that has been setup in this article Team-orientated leadership profile Table 7 R R Square,578,334 Anova Model 1 Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression ,103 Residual ,630 Total

21 Coefficients Model Unstandardized B Std. Error t Sig. 1 (Constant) -, ,607,547 Female,207,265,783,437 Non-Dutch,214,394,543,589 Age_0-20,129,350,368,714 Age_31-40,462,517,895,375 Edu_VMBO -,181,487 -,372,711 Edu_HBO,522, ,064 Income_20-40,103,469,219,827 Income_ ,878, ,222 Exp_1-2,209,298,701,487 Exp_3-4 -,153,330 -,464,645 Exp_5+ -,027,305 -,089,929 Extraversion,113,176,642,524 Agreeableness,591, ,007 Conscientiousness,354, ,069 Neuroticism,169,188,899,373 Openness,312, ,093 This model is just out of the boundary of the significance at a 10 percent level. This will make the results slightly off, but would not show really weird statistics and can therefore still be trusted. The R-square of this model is 0,334. There is one personality dimension that is significant at a 5 percent level. That is the dimension Agreeableness (0,007). On top of that, there are two dimensions that are significant at a 10 percent level. These are Conscientiousness (0,069) and Openness (0,093). Again, all of these dimensions have a positive relationship on the preference of a team-orientated leader. There is also one control variable that is significant at a 10 percent level. This variable is Edu_HBO (0,064). It seems that people with a HBO education are positively towards a team-orientated leader. The last two models will focus themselves on the transactional leadership category. The fifth model will show the results for the transactional leadership characteristics and the last, and sixth, model will show the results that came forward out of the 19

22 results from the profile of a transactional leader. The transactional leadership characteristics will be shown first below Transactional leadership characteristics Table 8 R R Square,602,363 Anova Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression , ,055 1 Residual ,462 Total Coefficients Model 1 Unstandardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error (Constant) ,281 Female -,362, ,117 Non-Dutch,652, ,059 Age_0-20,652, ,034 Age_31-40,194,442,438,663 Edu_VMBO -,245,417 -,587,560 Edu_HBO -,385, ,110 Income_20-40,218,402,541,591 Income_ ,476,609 -,781,438 Exp_1-2,191,256,746,459 Exp_3-4 -,024,283 -,085,933 Exp_5+ -,014,261 -,055,957 Extraversion,121,151,803,426 Agreeableness -,134,180 -,744,460 Conscientiousness,342, ,041 Neuroticism,105,161,651,518 Openness,297, ,064 20

23 This model is close to be significant at a 5 percent level (p-value 0,055), but is definitely significant at a 10 percent level. The R-square of the model is 0,363. The dimension Conscientiousness has a positive relationship with the transactional leadership characteristics and is significant at a 5 percent level (0,041). The other dimension that is positively related and significant at a 10 percent level is Openness (0,064). The control variables Non-Dutch and Age_0-20 are also positively significant. The former is significant at a 10 percent level (0,059), the latter is significant at a 5 percent level (0,034). Now the last model will be introduced, which contains the results for the transactional profile Transactional leadership profile Table 9 R R Square,547,299 Anova Model 1 Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression ,199 Residual Total

24 Coefficients Model 1 Unstandardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error (Constant) ,005 Female -,658, ,094 Non-Dutch -,103,574 -,179,859 Age_0-20,686, ,184 Age_ ,699,752 -,929,357 Edu_VMBO,288,708,407,686 Edu_HBO -,586, ,151 Income_20-40,340,684,498,621 Income_ ,180 Exp_1-2,361,434,832,409 Exp_3-4,146,481,303,763 Exp_5+,561, ,212 Extraversion,014,256,056,955 Agreeableness -,541, ,082 Conscientiousness -,125,277 -,450,655 Neuroticism,000,274,001,999 Openness -,472, ,082 The overall model is not significant and has a p-value of 0,199. The variance explained is also not really high (R-square of 0,299). Although these results are not really reliable, there are some results that can be mentioned. The dimensions Agreeableness and Openness are both significant at a 10 percent level (both p-value of 0,082). The difference is that they are both negatively related with the transactional leader. One control variable that is also negatively related and significant at a 10 percent level is Female (0,094). Now that all the results have been shown and all these models for the different categories have been summarized, this article will continue with the discussion of these results. The limitations of this research and the possibilities for future research will also be discussed. 22

25 5. Discussion This research focused itself on finding a relationship between employee personality traits and the preference for a leadership style. Identifying a relationship would answer the research question about which personality characteristics could play a role in choice a type of leader. On top of that, it would open up a new direction for researchers by looking from the bottom-up, instead of only looking top-down. To see if there are any relationships, multiple hypotheses have been setup. The results indicate that there are some possible relationship between different personality traits and preference of leadership style. It seems like there could be a possible relationship between the Extraversion dimension and transformational leadership, which confirms hypothesis 1. As Barrick and Mount (1991), McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987) and Klein e.a. (2004) have investigated every dimension of the big five, they show that personality traits of the Extraversion dimension show similarities with the characteristics of a transformational leader. Although the model of the transformational leadership profile (table 5) shows no relationship with any of the personality dimension, this is not relevant as the model is highly insignificant. The second hypothesis is not fully supported. The model for the team-orientated leadership (table 6) which is significant did not show any relation with the dimension Agreeableness. It showed significance for two other dimensions, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. Especially the relation with the dimension Neuroticism is not common. An assumption can be made that people who are more anxious and insecure like to work in teams, so that they will not be evaluated alone and do not have full responsibility. Therefore, we can also see that hypothesis 4 can be rejected. The model for team-orientated leadership profile (table 7) is less significant than the other model for team-orientated leadership, but shows some results that indicate relationships between the personality dimensions and leadership style. In this model Agreeableness and team-orientated leadership is positively related. Therefore we suggest that there could be a possible relation between Agreeableness and teamorientated leadership. 23

26 One of the dimensions that have been found significant for both the team-orientated leadership models is Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness relates to the personality traits responsible and hard working (Barrick and Mount, 1991; McCrae and Costa Jr., 1987; Klein e.a., 2004). Other research about the dimension Conscientiousness and the relation with team-work from Morgeson, Reider and Campion (2005, p.587) also show that people with who act conscientious will often be concerned with performing their required behavior and accomplishing the teams goals. Therefore we can assume that Conscientiousness plays a role with choosing a team-orientated leader and hypothesis 3a can be confirmed. The last significant dimension that has been found for team-orientated leadership is the dimension Openness. Although this dimension is only positively related in the team-orientated model, we cannot fully neglect this result. Barrick and Mount (1991), McCrae and Costa Jr. (1987) and Klein e.a. (2004) found personality traits that seem too related to a team-orientated leader. Therefore the hypothesis 5a can be rejected, but there may be a possible relation between openness and the preference for team-orientated leadership. The transactional leadership shows a lot of negative relationships with the personality dimensions. This therefore seems to be the least preferred leadership style. The dimension Conscientiousness is also negatively related (table 8). Hypothesis 3b can therefore be rejected. Although the dimension Openness shows significant results for both of the models, the results are also contradictory. The transactional leadership characteristic (table 8) shows a positive relationship, while the transactional leadership profile (table 9) shows a negative relationship. The overall model of the transactional leadership characteristics is more significant, but these results are not in line with the theoretical expectation, which the transactional leadership profile is. Therefore the hypothesis 5b can be rejected too, but there seems to be a possible relation between Openness and transactional leadership. Some of the control variables also showed significance too. It seems that the female respondents do not like to work in teams and also not to work only to achieve goals so they get a bonus. A possible explanation for this can be that the new female 24

27 generation wants to show what they got and be perceived the same as men are in the world. Another significance result was that respondents with a high income did not prefer to work in teams. This could possibly be explained by that people with a higher income, have jobs in a higher hierarchy levels. In these higher hierarchy levels, teams are not often used or applicable and therefore also not preferable. Although this study extends our knowledge about the relationship between personality traits and leadership styles, this research is not without limitations. As mentioned before, the time limit played a huge role in this research. Because of this time limit, the time to collect the data from all respondents was short and that is why the sample size is not really high (68 respondents). To still keep reliable and valid results we performed extra validity tests with the cronbach s alpha, to increase the reliability wherever possible. Another limitation is that the sample exists out of a lot of younger people with on average a low income. These results can therefore be more focused on this specific group instead of the whole population. Still these results show some indication towards the relation between personality traits and leadership styles and therefore offer several theoretical contributions and suggestions for future research. First, there seems to be a possible positive relationship between Extraversion and transformational leadership. Secondly, there seems to be a possible positive relationship between Conscientiousness and teamorientated leadership. These two results showed the strongest relationships and would therefore be very interesting to investigate more. Other possible relationships that can were not so obvious in this research, but could still be possible extensions for future research are; Agreeableness and Openness with team-orientated leadership and Openness with transactional leadership. By validating this research and its results, it offers practical implications for managers and organizations too. As said in the introduction, finding which personality traits are relevant for different types of leaders will help to improve matches between employees and managers. Getting a better match will enhance the production of the employee, the employees loyalty towards the organization and its job satisfaction (Rich, 1997, p ; Sy, Tram and O Hara, 2006, p.462). By improving these 25

28 matches the employee turnover, which will lower the employee turnover cost, and the production will be higher, which will eventually increase sales (Dittrich and Carrell, 1979). 6. Conclusion This research tried to extend the research that has been done for different leadership styles in combination with different personalities. Instead of focusing on how what type of leadership managers with different personalities use, we focus on how the employee perceives the different leadership styles. This by identifying personality traits that relate to the employee and see what type of leader this employee prefers above others. By doing that the question in what way the personality characteristics of employees affect the choice of leadership behavior have been answered. The dimensions of the big five indicate multiple possible relationships between different personality traits and leadership styles. Two relationships showed strong relationships and will be interesting to focus on for future research. The Extraversion dimension with personality traits like being social, being very active and talkative seem to relate with the preference for a transformational leader. On top of that, the dimension Conscientiousness with personality traits like self-disciplined, punctual and practical seem to relate with the preference for a team-orientated leader. With this identification of possible relations, the matching between employees and managers will be made easier and better. These results and other possible relations will provide possible extensions for future research to focus on. 26

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