A Field Study of The Relationship between Personality Traits and Job Performance of Clerical Workers in a Securities Firm

• Main Authors: Fang Kuan Pao, 房冠寶
• Other Authors: 蔡維奇
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81953899633483750948

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 管理研究所 === 88 === Abstract Over the past decades, many scholars had made many attempts to identify and explore the relationship between personality traits and work performance based on a wide range of personality assessment theories. Although many meaningful results had been induced from such exploration and experiment, lack of integration and a systematic approach had somehow diminished their effectiveness. Not until 1990s, academics, such as Digman, Hogan, Hough, John, and Kamp began to organize and review the past studies and proposed a milestone theory called “Big-Five”, which points out a clear direction for contemporary empirical research and study to follow in. The firm reviewed by our study had developed its own reference framework for personnel selection, subject to its unique set of organizational circumstances. Although these reference frameworks were given names, such as “three main categories” and “seven personality traits”, their implications did not depart from the fundamental principles of “Big-Five” very much. Our study was conducted based upon a group of 172 clerical workers in a securities firm. Our main considerations of using clerical workers as the study group were due to the fact that the majority of past studies had been conducted with a narrow focus on management and sales staff. As a result, there were only a handful of studies done over the past centering clerical workers. Regardless, we believe that a well-managed enterprise hinges a great deal not only on the wisdom of the management teams and aggressiveness of sales staff, but also on the fine performance of clerical workers and continuous improvements in overall effectiveness and efficiency of organizations. The outcome of our study indicated that the personality assessment test utilized in the study had fairly good predicting power in terms of its ability to faithfully assess personality traits of clerical workers that the performance indicators were designed to measure. Its predicting power could also be illustrated by its ability to forecast personality traits measured by incidental indicators ranging from job devotion, work satisfaction, commitment to the organization, tendency to stay on job, family well-being, to physical health. In sum, we hope the results of this study will provide a meaningful insight into the selection of clerical worker at the enterprise level as well as pave the way for further studies on the subject for the time being.