The indirect relationship between personality and performance through job crafting behaviour

Abstract

Individual personality is known to have a direct impact on job performance. Yet, little is known about the behavioural processes through which personality unfolds and ultimately affects employee performance.Research purpose: This study set out to investigate the indirect relationship between personality and performance through job crafting behaviour. Job crafting, the proactive changes employees make to their task, relational and cognitive job boundaries, has been shown to relate to a number of positive employee and organisational outcomes.Motivation for the study: Individual differences, such as personality, affect the manner in which employees approach their work, be it in the tasks they complete or the relationships that they build with others. It is thus imperative to understand how unique personality traits have an impact on important business outcomes such as job performance.Research approach/design and method: A quantitative cross-sectional research design was conducted amongst a sample of South African working individuals (N = 580). Structural equation modelling (SEM) was the primary statistical technique used to investigate the research hypotheses. Main findings:The study results showed that the 'Big Five' personality traits indirectly influenced job performance (i.e. in-role behaviour, organisational citizenship behaviour) through job crafting as a mediator.Practical/managerial implications: Organisations who take the initiative to truly understand their employees and their unique personalities have a greater chance of leveraging valuable employee and business outcomes such as job crafting and job performance. Incorporating valid and reliable personality measures in an organisation's recruitment and selection process may thus prove beneficial in predicting proactive work behaviours and overall employee performance. Contribution/value-add:This study contributes to the limited knowledge surrounding the individual antecedents of job crafting behaviour and further shows how one's predisposition (i.e. personality) can have an indirect impact on performance through the behaviours employees engage in, such as job crafting.

Effects of Big Five Personality Traits on Job Crafting among Private University Academic Staff

“…These inconsistent findings highlight the need to further explore the association between conscientiousness and job crafting behaviours. In terms of agreeableness, it appears that agreeableness does not predict job performance very well (Barrick, Mount & Judge, 2001) but is related to job crafting (Peral & Geldenhuys, 2020). This employee is eager to help others, is cooperative, modest, caring, kind and desires to maintain a good relationship with others (Ilies, Fulmer, Spitzmuller & Johnson, 2009;Mehmetoglu, 2012).…”

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“…Relational crafting: Relational crafting has to do with the change in the quality and quantity of social interaction at work, interpersonal relationship and teamwork among others. This is when an employee change work situation or structure as a result of deciding how he or she interacts with colleagues (Peral and Geldenhuys 2020).…”

“…This is because a healthy and engaged workforce tends to perform better, have higher levels of productivity and they are generally happier in their roles as well as get committed to the organization. Employees with negative feelings of well-being and low engagement tend to bring down company culture and profitability, counterproductive work behavior, and lack of organizational citizenship behaviour (Peral and Geldenhuys 2020). However, most employers are faced with the challenge of getting the ideal person to perform the required tasks within the organization.…”

The big five personality traits influencing habitual Facebook usage, life satisfaction and psychological well-being of Generation Y students

“…Neuroticism, or low emotional stability, refers to the tendency to experience negative emotions and the behaviours that accompany them (Peral & Geldenhuys 2020). Neurotic people have an anxious general predisposition and a tendency to worry (Mehroof & Griffiths 2010).…”

“…Extraversion is described as a person's propensity to seek stimulation and enjoy other people's connection (Ruzungunde & Mjoli 2020). Extraverts are energised by social interactions and are seen as outgoing, sociable and friendly people (Peral & Geldenhuys 2020). Previous scholars have discovered extraversion as an antecedent or predictor of mutual investment decision (Bindu 2020), self-reported competitiveness (Fong, Zhao & Smillie 2020), customer engagement and relationship duration (Itani, El Haddad & Kalra 2020).…”