Moderators of the personality-performance relationship: An investigation of job meaning and autonomy

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether job meaning and job autonomy moderate the relationship between emotional stability and organizational citizenship behavior.

In total, 190 supervisor-subordinate dyads completed three surveys. Linear and curvilinear analyses were used to assess the data.

Results indicate emotionally stable individuals are more likely to perform OCBOs in low autonomy and/or low job meaning situations than are employees low in emotional stability. Conversely, individuals who have high autonomy and/or high meaning jobs are likely to engage in OCBOs regardless of personality.

As a survey-based research study, causal conclusions cannot be drawn from this study. Results suggest future research on the personality-performance relationship needs to more closely consider context and the potential for curvilinear relationships.

Managers should note that personality may significantly affect job performance and consider placing individuals in jobs that best align with their personality strengths.

This study sheds light on factors which may have led to erroneous conclusions in the extant literature that the relationship between personality and performance is weak.