THE IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS AND CORE SELF EVALUATION ON EMPLOYEES ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT

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1 THE IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS AND CORE SELF EVALUATION ON EMPLOYEES ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT Naimatullah Shah, University of Sindh, Jamshoro Sindh, Pakistan Abdul Wahid, University of Sindh, Jamshoro Sindh, Pakistan Abstract Changing demographics, new trends of communications, technological change, globalisation and work environment changes the role of employees into the organisation. These rapid changes are having serious impact on employee attitudes and behaviours. To date there is increasing concern of the researchers about the employee commitment towards the organisation. In this regard existing literature is indeed valuable and recently big five personality traits and core self-evaluation factors have separately been examined with organisational commitment. So for, however, no research about the relationships through dispositional affectivity has been tested. In view of this shortcoming and is becoming increasingly important to develop a conceptual model and empirical testing. The primary aim of this study is to examine the relationship between employees organisational commitment and personality traits along with core self-evaluation through dispositional affectivity. This conceptual model is going to be tested in a public sector organisation of a developing country. This study may contribute to the literature of human resources management, human resources development and organisational behaviour in general and for developing country context in particular. Keywords: Personality Trait, Core self-evaluation, organisational commitment, dispositional affectivity 1. INTRODUCTION Changing demographics, new trends of communications, technological change, globalisation and work environment changes the role of employees into the organisation. Now a day, managers, employers and researchers are anxious to increasing the employee efficiency, employee retention and employee satisfaction. This could be possible to know the factors that might affect to employee attitudes and behaviors with their work performance as well as the organisational performance. The idea that increasing employee performance can play positive role to develop attitudes and behaviors towards the organisation has long been recognised in the literature (Cropanzano et al., 1993; Chiu and Francesco, 2003). Literature witnessed that employee attitudes and behaviours is very important for his or her satisfaction, commitment, retention empowerment, turnover intentions, job characteristics, big five, and affective dispositions (Wu and Norman, 2006; Panaccio and Vandenberghe, 2012). Among these factors commitment has largely been considered as a dominant factor for developing attitudes and behaviours. Employees organisational commitment refer attitudinal and behavioral approaches in which employee Shah, N. and Wahid, A. 1

2 think about their relationship with the organisation and the process by which individuals become locked into a certain organisation and how they deal with this problem. Existing research on employee organisational commitment is indeed valuable. Researchers like Gaertner (1999); Suki and Suki (2011) inferred positive relationships between job satisfaction and organisational commitment. In a study Payne and Huffman (2005) found that mentoring was positively related to affective commitment and continuance commitment and negatively related to turnover behavior. Erdheim, Wang and Zickar (2006) reported in a study Linking the Big Five personality constructs to organisational commitment. Results showed that Extraversion was significantly related to affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience were all significantly related to continuance commitment. Lastly, Agreeableness was significantly related to normative commitment. In a recently, Panaccio and Vandenberghe (2012) showed that extraversion and agreeableness were positively related to affective, normative, and continuance sacrifices commitments via enhanced positive affect. Agreeableness was also positively linked to affective commitment and negatively associated with continuance alternatives commitment through reduced negative affectivity. Neuroticism was negatively linked to affective commitment, and positively related to continuance alternatives commitment, through increased negative affectivity. According to Joo et al. (2012) little research has focused on the relationship between core self-evaluations and organisational commitment. To date research on organisational commitment through big five personality traits along with core selfevaluation is limited. So for, however, no research about the relationships between organisational commitment and personality traits and core self-evaluation through dispositional affectivity has been tested. There is therefore a need to develop such a conceptual framework to investigate these relationships. To the knowledge of the authors, none of the previous researchers developed such conceptual framework. First time such type of study has been conceptualised with the support of domain literature. The contribution of this study is based on the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework that examines the factors that influence the individual attitudes and behaviours employees commitment to the organisation. This study may contribute to the literature of human resources management, human resources development and organisational behaviour in general and for developing country context in particular. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW The history of commitment research is surprising because of the term conceptualisation and measures in many different ways. Number of researchers explained the concept of commitment like seeking to explain consistencies involving attitudes, beliefs and behaviors (Grusky, 1966 and Hrebiniak and Alutto, 1972). Researchers like Stevens, Beyer and Trice (1978) refer it as an employee's need to stay with the organisation and other researchers like Schneider, Hall and Nygren (1974) and Sheldon (1971) suggested that commitment is identification or the degree to which the employee identifies with the objectives and values of the organisation. According to Mowday et al. (1982, p.20) that researchers from various disciplines ascribed their own meaning to the organisational commitment, thereby increasing the difficulty involved in understanding the construct. However, as is often, sociologists use the term for both individual and organisational behaviour (Becker, 1960) and psychologist used it as a psychological state that characterizes the employee s relationship with their objects (Meyer and Allen 1997). Thus the term commitment is a multifaceted and complex construct that can be taken several different forms (Meyer, Allen and Smith 1993). Literature on commitment is extensive and comprehensive with respect to the theoretical and empirical work. Literature also identified a variety of different levels of commitment such that commitment towards Shah, N. and Wahid, A. 2

3 career, organisation, work and others. To assess the extent of the concept related to a process of identification with the goals of an organisation s is a large issue. At the heart of concept, commitment is involving attitudes, beliefs and behavior and together organisational commitment is in the centre of a web comprised of attitudes and behaviours for an identification or the degree to which the employee identifies with the objectives and values of the organisation. Employees positive response towards the organisation is imperative because of the large scale of individuals involvement who have different experience of life (Shah, 2010). Indeed, positive response indicates willingness towards their job and negative reflects turnover, uncertainty, frustration, lower efficiency, anxiety, and a decline in output and decreased organisational commitment. Thus, understanding employee commitment to the organisation is one of the important issues for human resource management experts and researchers. A larger body of literature has focused on the antecedents of organisational commitment with different correlations through the conceptual and empirical stream of research. An integrative review of literature reveals that organisational commitment is positively related to job satisfaction, distributive justice, job characteristics, turnover intentions and Big five (Lee et al., 2001; Vandenberghe and Tremblay, 2008; Panaccio and Vandenberge, 2012). A wide variety of factors has been tested with organisational commitment like Cramer (1996) reported a study related to job satisfaction and organisational continuance commitment. Results inferred that correlation between job satisfaction and organisational continuance commitment was significantly positive. A longitudinal examination of the influence of mentoring on organisational commitment and turnover studied by Payne and Huffman (2005). Researchers found that mentoring was positively related to affective commitment and continuance commitment and negatively related to turnover behavior. Recently, Panaccio and Vandenberghe (2012) reported in a study Five-factor model of personality and organisational commitment through the mediating role of positive and negative affective states by applying survey questionnaire in multiple organisations. Results showed that extraversion and agreeableness were positively related to affective, normative, and continuance sacrifices commitments via enhanced positive affect. Agreeableness was also positively linked to affective commitment and negatively associated with continuance alternatives commitment through reduced negative affectivity. Neuroticism was negatively linked to affective commitment, and positively related to continuance alternatives commitment, through increased negative affectivity. Additionally, Joo et al., (2012) reported in a study The effects of core self-evaluations and transformational leadership on organisational commitment by applying survey questionnaire in Fortune Global high-tech industry. Results inferred that core self-evaluations and transformational leadership positively influenced employees organisational commitment. In terms of effect size, organisational commitment was more related to transformational leadership than core self-evaluations. As for transformational leadership, employees exhibited the highest organisational commitment when their leaders articulated the vision, promoted group goals, and provided intellectual stimulation. Existing research on employee organisational commitment is indeed valuable and large amount of research has been found with different correlations. In the literature, little research has been conducted with the relationship of organisational commitment, big five personality traits and core self-evaluation. Literature witnessed that little research has focused on the relationship among personality traits, core selfevaluations and organisational commitment and research on organisational commitment through big five personality traits along with core self-evaluation is limited. This study filled this gap and conceptualised that employee organisational commitment can be influenced through big five personality traits along with core self-evaluation directly or through mediation of dispositional affectivity. Based on the research gap, the aim of this study is to investigate the impact of personality traits and core self-evaluation for employee organisational commitment and objectives are to investigate the impact of five big personality traits core self-evaluation traits on employee organisational commitment. Shah, N. and Wahid, A. 3

4 3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT Today organisations require highly committed, competitive and loyal employees as to pace in the product and labor market, such an era of global competition. Various researchers assumed that more committed employees are inclined to and unwilling to leave organisation. Thus, managers of organisations are anxious to know about the worth and the importance of enhancing employees organisational commitment and understanding its antecedents (Neininger et al., 2010; Reiche, 2008). Organisational commitment refers to the individual s willingness to devote energy and showing loyalty to an organisation. In wide-ranging context, organisational commitment is seen a willingness and a strong belief of an employee acceptance of the organisation's goals and values and to utilize substantial effort to maintain organisational membership (Porter et al., 1974). Over the past few decades, organisational commitment has largely been researched with employee s job attitude. The purpose of investigation of job attitudes underlying on twofold related to the course of theoretical and empirical evidence. Theoretically, attitude related to psychological tendency (Shah and Irani, 2009) expressed through particular entity and on other hand empirically, the concept of job attitudes is the indication of individuals who might be conceptually preoccupied by his or her experience (Eagley and Chaiken, 1993; Staw and Ross, 1985). Most commonly researchers investigated the antecedents of organisational commitment related to environment rather than to dispositional sources. The dominant focus of dispositional sources of job attitudes is job satisfaction which is like an organisational commitment and to date, research on understanding the role of disposition in shaping organisational commitment of the employees is very limited. In human resource management domain personality refers to cognitive and behavioral patterns that show stability over time and across situations (Cattell, 1950). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that personality traits influence personal values and attitudes, as recent empirical research has demonstrated (Olver and Mooradian, 2003). However, organisational commitment is related to attitudes and behaviours of employee towards organisation and, hence, it must relate to personality traits, as earlier writers (Cropanzano et al., 2006) suggested. Literature witnessed that separate aspect of organisational commitment and personality has been investigated (Panaccio, and Vandenberge, 2012). Organisational behaviour scientist have large consensus of psychological aspects of individuals to describe the features of personality. In the literature personality traits have been identified in several areas of organisational psychology which studied for job performance. A wide variety of literature is available but majority of these studies focused on the relations between isolated facets of big five like Neuroticism and Extraversion. However the literature in organisational commitment lacks the research studies that have linked to complete taxonomy of five factor model of personality to organisational commitment (Erdheim et al., 2006). In these research positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) taxonomy of affective nature applied (Watson, Clark and Tellegen, 1988; Panaccio, and Vandenberge, 2012). However, positive affectivity and negative affectivity is not included to personality traits and organisational commitment is like a job attitudes that provide a more in-depth understanding of commitment development. In the literature, other dispositional factors like core self-evaluations have been found which refer to a higher-order concept of an individual s self-evaluation of his or her personal characteristics (Judge et al., 2002). As discussed in earlier that the dominant focus of dispositional sources of job attitudes is job satisfaction which is like a core self evaluation of employees. The concept of core self evaluation refers to an explanation of employee s attitudes and behaviours (Judge et al., 1997). Researchers like Law, Wong and Mobley (1998) refer the concept of core self evaluations as a concealed psychological concept Shah, N. and Wahid, A. 4

5 because it latent commonality the four other dimensions such as generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, self-esteem and neuroticism. According to Judge et al. (2003) core self-evaluations primarily is an instrument of a person s own assessment regarding his/her worth, efficiency and capabilities. Certainly these traits are more noticeable in the domain of psychology. By using the recent construct of core selfevaluations, a better understanding of the dispositional source of affective commitment can be provided. Accumulating evidence has indicated the contributions of various situational characteristics as key antecedents of organisational commitment (Kuvaas, 2006; Park and Rainey, 2007). Joo and Shim (2010) also asserted that future research would benefit from a more integrative approach that includes personal and contextual factors in a study. However, there has been less research conducted to explore the interaction effect of dispositional traits and situational factors on organisational commitment. On the evidence of literature, this research has been conceptualised on the dispositional traits and core selfevaluation factors towards the employee organisational commitment (see Figure 1). Joo and Shim (2010) stated that there has been less research conducted to explore the interaction effect of dispositional traits and situational factors on organisational commitment the future research would benefit from a more integrative approach that includes exploring the personal and contextual factors in a study. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Big Five personality traits and employees core selfevaluations along with PA/NA on organisational commitment. BIG FIVE Agreeableness Extraversion Neuroticism Consciousness Openness Dispositional Affectivity Organisational Commitment CORE SELF-EVALUATION Emotional stability Self - esteem Generalized self - efficacy Locus of control Figure 1: Proposed Conceptual Model Shah, N. and Wahid, A. 5

6 H1. Big five personality traits (agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, consciousness and openness) will be positively and significantly related to organisational commitment. H2: Core self-evaluation (emotional stability, self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy and locus of control) will positively and significantly related to organisational commitment. H3: Dispositional Affectivity will be positively and significantly mediated between personality traits and organisational commitment. H4: Dispositional Affectivity will be positively and significantly mediated between core self- evaluation and organisational commitment. 4. CONCLUSION Changing new trends of communications and technology, today the role of employees has been increased and changed into the organisation. In this situation increasing employee performance can play positive role to develop attitudes and behavior towards the organisation which has long been discussed and recognized in the literature. Additionally, employee attitudes and behaviours have been found very important for the employee satisfaction, retention empowerment, turnover intentions, and job characteristics. Apart of that commitment has largely been considered for developing employee attitudes and behaviours which links employee with the psychological attachment to the organisation. Existing research on employee organisational commitment is indeed valuable and recently big five personality traits and core self-evaluation factors have separately been examined and little research has focused on the relationship between commitment with the core self-evaluations and big five personality traits. This study proposes to investigate the effects of big five personality traits and core self-evaluation directly or through mediation of dispositional affectivity to the organisational commitment. In this regard, researcher proposed the hypotheses for investigation. This study possesses some theoretical and methodological limitations. This study is going to be conducted in a public sector organisation that may limit generalisability. It is possible that people who seek employment in private organisations react differently. Second limitation is usage of limited number of variables. The use of single source data is another limitation. Finally, this is a cross-sectional design of the study that may not be inferred proper results because data would be collected at a single point in time, one is unable to establish cause-and-effect relationships among the variables of interest. This study contributes to the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework and also may contribute to the literature of human resources management, human resources development and organisational behaviour in general and for developing country context in particular. References Becker, H. S. (1960). Notes on the concept of commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66, Cattell, R. B. (1950). Personality: a systematic theoretical and factual study. New York: McGraw-Hill. Shah, N. and Wahid, A. 6

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