Abstract
Employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are important drivers of organizational effectiveness. Yet, there exist no established tools for selecting employees with a propensity to engage in OCB. Given that personality traits describe typical behavioral tendencies and are established OCB predictors, we propose that personality assessment is a useful approach for selecting employees who are likely to exhibit OCB. To test this proposition, we developed a structured job interview measuring the Big Five traits and then compared this interview to a personality self-report measure to determine which method of personality assessment works best for selecting organizational citizens. Employees (N = 223) from various occupations participated in the structured job interview and completed the personality self-report in a simulated selection setting. We then obtained supervisor ratings of employees’ OCB. Results supported the assumption that structured job interviews can be specifically designed to assess the Big Five personality traits and, most importantly, to predict OCB. Interview ratings of specific personality traits differentially predicted different types of OCB (i.e., OCB-compliance, OCB-helping, and OCB-initiative) and explained incremental variance in OCB over and above personality self-reports and verbal cognitive ability. Taken together, these findings expand our knowledge about dispositional predictors of OCBs, personality assessment in selection, and the design of job interviews.
Highlights
Employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are important drivers of organizational effectiveness
We predict (a) that structured job interview questions will be useful tools for assessing manifestations of the Big Five personality traits, (b) that employees who are high in specific personality traits (i.e., Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Intellect/ Openness) will be likely to engage in specific OCBs (i.e., OCB-compliance, OCB-helping, and OCB-initiative), (c) that personality-based interview ratings will explain variance in OCBs above and beyond other measures such as a personality
Addressing the limitations of previous research on personality traits and structured interviews as predictors of OCB, the present study has four consecutive purposes: We aim to establish (a) construct-related validity evidence for a structured job interview assessing the Big Five, (b) criterion-related validity evidence for this interview by carefully linking the Big Five traits to supervisor ratings of specific OCBs, (c) incremental validity evidence of personality-based interview ratings over and above personality self-reports and verbal cognitive ability in predicting OCB, and (d) evidence that interview ratings are more proximal to OCB as compared to traditional personality self-reports because interview questions capture specific manifestations of personality
Summary
Employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are important drivers of organizational effectiveness. Given that personality traits describe typical behavioral tendencies and are established OCB predictors, we propose that personality assessment is a useful approach for selecting employees who are likely to exhibit OCB To test this proposition, we developed a structured job interview measuring the Big Five traits and compared this interview to a personality self-report measure to determine which method of personality assessment works best for selecting organizational citizens. Interview ratings of specific personality traits differentially predicted different types of OCB (i.e., OCB-compliance, OCB-helping, and OCB-initiative) and explained incremental variance in OCB over and above personality self-reports and verbal cognitive ability Taken together, these findings expand our knowledge about dispositional predictors of OCBs, personality assessment in selection, and the design of job interviews. Employees are likely to “bring” their personality with them when they start a new job (see Sackett, Lievens, Van Iddekinge & Kuncel, 2017), and this can make it viable to assess personality in order to identify those employees who possess a predisposition to engage in OCB
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