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Taking Personality Seriously : The Five-Factor Model and Public Management
Christopher A. Cooper, H. Gibbs Knotts, David M. McCord and Andrew Johnson
The American Review of Public Administration 2013 43: 397 originally published online 21 May 2012
DOI: 10.1177/0275074012446509
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American Review of Public Administration
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ARP43410.1177/0275074012446509Cooper et al.The
Article
Taking Personality Seriously: The Five-Factor Model and
Public Management
The American Review of Public Administration
43(4) 397­–415
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0275074012446509
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Christopher A. Cooper1, H. Gibbs Knotts1,
David M. McCord1, and Andrew Johnson2
Abstract
This study documents the use of personality assessment in public administration and examines
the relationship between personality and job outcomes among public managers. The limitations
and problems with the most popular personality assessment framework, the Myers–Briggs Type
Indicator, are discussed. The authors then present the five-factor model of personality as an
empirically verified, theoretically sound framework that is widely accepted within the field of
psychology. Using a survey of public administrators in three states, it is demonstrated that public
managers are aware of personality assessment, use it in their jobs, and are generally convinced of
its efficacy. The authors also present the results of personality profiles of public managers demonstrating the usefulness of all five domains of the five-factor model of personality for understanding key outcome measures such as job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors.
Keywords
five factor model of personality, organizational citizenship behaviors, job satisfaction, Myers–
Briggs Type Indicator
Personality, a collection of stable individual characteristics and predispositions, is fundamental
to understanding human attitudes and behaviors. It is therefore not surprising that public administration scholars have long acknowledged that personality structures how public-sector employees understand and perform their jobs (Argyris, 1957), even arguing that “the core of the
bureaucratic politics mix is personality” (Allison, 1969, p. 709). In a similar vein, other scholars
have argued that there is a “bureaucratic personality” that draws some people toward work that
includes the rules, constraints, and predictability of bureaucratic organizations (Merton, 1940).
More recently, public management scholars have noted that an understanding of psychology and
temperament are keys to improving the “craft” of public management (Lynn, 2003, p. 17).1
Despite long-standing interest in personality and public administration, empirical work on
personality has been limited and overshadowed by other organizational behavior factors such as
1
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, USA
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
2
Corresponding Author:
Christopher A. Cooper, Department of Political Science and Public Affairs, Western Carolina University, Stillwell 358,
Cullowhee, NC 28723, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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team management (Yang & Guy, 2004), social networks (Mehra, Kilduff, & Brass, 2001), and
knowledge-based environments (Wiig, 2002). This research is clearly important, but personality
should interact with these factors to produce consistently different individual and organizational
outcomes. Mehra et al. (2001) acknowledge this, arguing that “adding personality theory to
structural analysis can help forge a powerful approach to understanding individual behavior in
the context of social structure” (p. 143).
Unfortunately for public administration scholars, most of the research on personality occurs
in the psychology and management literatures and not surprisingly the cases are drawn from
private instead of public organizations. For example, these studies have documented a connection between personality traits and job satisfaction (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002) and between
personality traits and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs; Chiaburu, Oh, Berry, Li, &
Gardner, 2011), but we do not know whether these linkages exist between personality and behavioral outcomes in the public sector. This is an important omission in the public administration
literature because personality may play a different role in public management than private management. Not only are public and private interests different but public officials are also “accountable to democratic values rather than to any particular group or material interest” (Lynn, 2003, p.
17). In addition, “the [United States] constitution requires equal treatment of persons and rules
out the kind of selectivity that is essential to sustaining profitability” (Lynn, 2003, p. 17). Simply
put, if public officials are going to use personality to guide decision making, then they must
know how personality affects job-related attitudes and behaviors in the public sector.
Personality assessment is rather scarce in the public administration literature, and when it has
occurred, scholars have relied almost exclusively on the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).2
As we will discuss below, despite its popularity in many applied settings, psychologists now
generally agree that the MBTI has critical theoretical and measurement problems (McRae &
Costa, 1989; Wiggins, 1989).
As an alternative to the MBTI, we highlight the advantages of using the five-factor model
(FFM) of personality, an empirically verified, theoretically sound measure that holds great promise for scholars and practitioners of public administration. To demonstrate its usefulness, we first
review the theory and literature on the MBTI as well as its theoretical and empirical limitations
and then introduce the FFM in more detail. Following this, we describe our data and methods and
document the current use of personality assessment in public administration through a survey of
local government managers in three states. Next, we demonstrate how dimensions of the FFM
can predict two important outcome measures among public managers: job satisfaction and organizational citizenship. We conclude by highlighting differences between our findings and previous studies and discussing how the FFM can provide a useful framework for both practitioners
and academics in public administration.
The MBTI and Public Administration
The MBTI, first copyrighted in 1943, is probably the most well-known and widely sold personality test in existence, with versions in dozens of languages. Despite its widespread success in
the popular market, it had rather unorthodox beginnings. Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine
Briggs created the test in an effort to better understand Myers new boyfriend. The pair based the
test on a 1923 translation of Carl Jung’s (1923) Psychological Types and ultimately produced a
test that had four dichotomous scales: Extraversion-Introversion (EI), Sensing-Intuition (SN),
Thinking-Feeling (TF), and Judging-Perceiving (JP). Complete crossing of these four scales
creates 16 personality types.
The MBTI soon became the most popular and prevalent personality assessment instrument in
many fields, and public administration is no exception. For example, there is some evidence that
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Cooper et al.
public administrators are trained in the use of the MBTI (Berman & West, 2008) and rely on the
MBTI to help guide hiring decisions (Lynch & McMahon, 1984), proactive planning (Mitroff,
Barabba, & Kilmann, 1977), and internal communication (Carpenter, Lynch, & McMahon,
1983). Coe (1991) compared MBTI profiles of public sector managers with private-sector managers and the general population, finding that the personality profiles of public-sector managers
differed considerably from the two comparison groups, noting that public-sector managers were
more likely to be introverts, thinkers, sensors, and judgers than their private sector counterparts.
Coe (1991, 1992) also suggests that it is important for public managers to understand their own
MBTI profile so that they can capitalize on their strengths and mute their weaknesses.
Despite its popularity, the MBTI is held in relatively low regard by mainstream academic
psychology. Most psychologists believe that Jungian theory, on which the test is based, lacks
empirical validation and is largely untestable in formal scientific terms (e.g., Stricker & Ross,
1964). Even among those who take a less critical view of Jungian theory, there is a consensus that
the authors of the MBTI substantially misrepresented Jungian theory when developing the instrument (Barbuto, 1997). The MBTI has also been criticized for focusing on these four specific
traits when thousands of personality descriptors exist.
Perhaps more important for those who wish to use the MBTI for practical purposes, the MBTI
does not fare well in terms of modern measurement criteria. For example, the MBTI places
people into one category or another—individuals are either introverts or extroverts, thinkers or
feelers. Extensive research has demonstrated, however, that most people do not fit neatly into
one category or the other and instead belong somewhere in the middle (McRae & Costa, 1989).3
In addition, many people fall in different categories when they retake the instrument (Wiggins,
1989).
The Five-Factor Model and Public Administration
The intellectual lineage of the FFM can be traced to Raymond Cattell who developed a 16-factor instrument intended to measure normal personality variation (as opposed to psychopathology). Cattell’s work with factor-analytically derived scales was eventually extended and
modified, and the “trait approach” steadily gained ground in the field. By the early 1980s several
lines of psychological research converged on a common classification of traits, resulting in what
is known today as the FFM (Goldberg, 1993).
The trait approach relies on the “lexical hypothesis” (Allport & Odbert, 1936), which assumes
that every personality trait of any significance must have a referent in a language. Thus, the dictionary contains a comprehensive listing of human personality traits. Extracting these terms and
then analyzing them in terms of actual frequency (which traits co-occur with which other traits,
which ones exist across languages, and so forth) ultimately yields a systematic model of the
structure of personality.
Efforts by Block (1961) and others to describe universal personality traits resulted in a very
similar framework, and more recent analyses of standard personality inventories have again
revealed a very similar five-factor structure. By the early to mid-1980s there was increasing
agreement that five broad dimensions could serve as a useful and valid overarching structure for
organizing human personality traits. In order of decreasing amount of variance accounted for,
these dimensions are Extraversion (E), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), Neuroticism
(N), and Openness to Experience (O).4 All five factors are conceptualized as continuous variables with a normal, bell-shaped distribution in the population.
The E factor (extraversion, enthusiasm, energy) includes traits such as talkative, friendly, outgoing, gregarious, and assertive. The A factor (agreeableness, altruistic, affectionate) refers to characteristics such as irritable versus good-natured, cooperative versus competitive, trusting versus
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Table 1. Domains of the Five-Factor Model of Personality.
Domain
Descriptors for low scores
Descriptors for high scores
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Neuroticism
Reserved, sober, aloof, retiring
Cynical, rude, uncooperative
Careless, lazy, unreliable
Calm, relaxed, unemotional
Sociable, active, talkative, optimistic
Trusting, helpful, good-natured
Organized, reliable, hardworking
Worrying, nervous, emotional
Openness to Experience
Conventional, unartistic
Curious, broad interests
Source. Adapted from Costa and McRae (1995).
distrustful. The high-end traits for the C factor include responsible, dependable, achievementoriented, and dutiful.
The fourth factor, N, stands for the traditional term Neuroticism, referring to anxiety, depression, and worry. Many researchers prefer to call this fourth factor “negative affect,” whereas
others take the inverse of the score and term the scale “emotional stability.” Although we use the
more common term Neuroticism throughout the article, practitioners applying the FFM to the
workplace may wish to use the less charged “emotional stability” terminology instead.
Finally, the fifth factor, Openness to Experience, refers to intellectual, artistic, and aesthetic
interests, imagination, nontraditional values, and general open-mindedness. The full model,
articulated most compellingly by Costa and McCrae (1995), refers to these five factors as broad,
overarching “domains.” Table 1 provides for an overview of the domains with brief interpretive
statements.
Over the past 25 years, the FFM has emerged as the dominant framework for personality
research in psychology, and a variety of well-developed, reliable, and valid test instruments
based on this model are now available (Gosling & John, 1999; Marsh et al., 2010). Despite its
growing popularity and generally accepted validity, public administration has been notably
absent in its use of the FFM. In fact, we can only find one article that uses the FFM to understand
public management. Jiang, Wang, and Zhou (2009) test whether Conscientiousness and
Agreeableness explain job performance in a sample of government workers in China. Consistent
with their hypotheses, they find that more conscientious employees perform better on both task
and contextual performance measures. Somewhat surprisingly, however, they find that
Agreeableness is negatively associated with job performance among Chinese bureaucrats, arguing that in the Chinese organizational culture, agreeableness “may give rise to the appearance of
being soft and indecisive, which may be viewed as ineffective” (Jiang et al., 2009, p. 452). They
admit, however, that they do not know whether these findings would translate to private employees in China, leaving open the question of whether their finding is a result of political culture or
the differences between public and private organizations.
In sum, the literature suggests that the predominant way to assess personality among practitioners and within the public administration literature, the MBTI, has considerable theoretical
and empirical limitations. Moreover, it seems that the FFM, the most popular, reliable, and theoretically sound theory of personality is at the periphery of the public administration literature.
Outcome Measures
There are many possible dependent variables that could represent public-sector job outcomes,
but we selected two well-vetted, theoretically sound, and empirically verified outcomes measures: job satisfaction and OCB.
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Cooper et al.
Job satisfaction, the “pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of
one’s job or job experience” (Locke, 1976, p. 1300; as cited in Wright & Davis, 2003, p. 70) is
an important outcome in the public management literature. Higher job satisfaction is associated
with employee retention and organizational productivity (Wright & Davis, 2003) and it is clearly
advantageous for both employees and managers to maximize job satisfaction. Organizational
psychologists studying private-sector employees have also found that some people are predisposed toward higher or lower job satisfaction (House, Shane, & Herold, 1996). This predisposition can be accurately summarized and operationalized using the FFM (Judge et al., 2002).
OCB, another important outcome variable, is defined as “individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization” (Organ, 1988, p. 4). Public
administration scholars have long recognized the significance of OCB for understanding public
management (Cohen & Vigoda, 1998; Vigoda & Golembiewski, 2001) and argue that these
behaviors “aggregated over time and people . . . enhance organizational effectiveness” (Vigoda,
2000, p. 191). Within the literature on OCB, many scholars distinguish between organizational
citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) and organizational citizenship behavior
directed at organizations (OCBO; Williams & Anderson, 1991).5
Chiaburu et al. (2011) suggest that OCBs are less dependent on formal job descriptions than
they are on individual traits (see also, Borman, 2004; Kumar, Bakshi, & Rani, 2009). In other
words, there will be greater variance in OCBs between two people holding the same job than
there would be between the same person holding different jobs at different times. Given that
OCBs vary by individual, there is considerable theoretical reason to believe that personality, an
innate, stable, and consistent trait, should predispose certain people toward higher or lower OCBI
and OCBO.
Hypotheses
In this section, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the FFM in more detail, present our
hypotheses for each of the factors and our three outcome variables, and then discuss some of the
nonpersonality factors we include in our model. To maximize clarity and readability, we refer to
our hypotheses formally after discussing each factor and denote them with their factor name and
a subscript 1, 2, or 3, with 1 always referring to the prediction for job satisfaction, 2 for OCBI,
and 3 for OCBO. For example, the hypothesis for the relationship between Extraversion and job
satisfaction would be HE1 and so on.
Extraversion
Extraverted people tend to be sociable and talkative and are more likely to draw pleasure from
interactions with others (Costa & McCrae, 1995). Judge et al.’s (2002) meta-analysis finds that
higher E predisposes people toward higher job satisfaction, arguing that this connection exists
because “extraverts are predisposed to experience positive emotions” and that “positive emotionality likely generalizes to job satisfaction” (p. 531).
The literature does not provide as clear a link to the relationship between Extraversion and
OCBs. Chiaburu et al.’s (2011) meta-analysis finds no correlation between Extraversion and
OCBI or between Extraversion and OCBO, although there is limited evidence in other studies
regarding OCBO (e.g., Kumar et al., 2009). In the end, however, the literature does not uncover
a consistent empirical relationship, nor is there sufficient theory suggesting that a link should
exist:
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HE1: People who score higher on E will report higher job satisfaction.
HE2: There will be no relationship between E and OCBI.
HE3: There will be no relationship between E and OCBO.
Agreeableness
Agreeable people are more trusting, cooperative, sympathetic, and altruistic. They are also more
likely to get along with others and to report higher levels of happiness and satisfaction, regardless of the situation (McRae & Costa, 1991). From this, we might expect that the relationship
between Agreeableness and job satisfaction would be a clear and empirically robust finding.
Judge et al. (2002) do find evidence of such a relationship, but they conclude that the correlation
is “relatively weak.” In fact, about 20% of the correlations in their meta-analysis were negative.
Nonetheless, the theoretical connection is clear and they conclude that the correlation is “nonzero” (Judge et al., 2002, p. 534).
Agreeable people generally want to please others, thus it stands to reason that they would
“chip-in” and display higher levels of OCBs. Not surprisingly, then, previous studies have documented a consistent link between Agreeableness and OCB (Chiaburu et al., 2011; Kumar et al.,
2009). This link exists regardless of whether one is considering OCBI or OCBO (Chiaburu et al.,
2011). This leads us to our next set of hypotheses:
HA1: People who score higher on A will report higher job satisfaction.
HA2: People who score higher on A will report higher OCBI.
HA3: People who score higher on A will report higher OCBO.
Conscientiousness
Conscientious people are more likely to be deadline-oriented, methodical, and to pay attention
to details. As a result, Conscientiousness is one of the strongest personality-related predictors of
job performance (Behling, 1988). Organ and Lingl (1995, p. 341) provide the theoretical connection to job satisfaction by arguing that Conscientiousness could lead to a “generalized workinvolvement tendency,” such as “a liking for rule-governed behavior that probably is more
characteristic of work in organizations than in other life domains.” They also argue that
Conscientiousness could result in job satisfaction because of a “virtue as its own reward ethic”
and from “informational rewards” such as the recognition, respect, and compliments from people they admire (Organ & Lingl, 1995, p. 341). Judge et al. (2002) confirmed this relationship
empirically, concluding that Conscientiousness is strongly correlated with job satisfaction.
Conscientiousness may also drive task performance and job dedication (Hurtz & Donovan,
2000) and has been consistently linked to OCB in virtually every study conducted on the subject.
Chiaburu et al. (2011) confirm this relationship, finding that Conscientiousness is a robust predictor of both OCBI and OCBO. This brings us to our next set of hypotheses:
HC1: People who score higher on C will report higher job satisfaction.
HC2: People who score higher on C will display higher levels of OCBI.
HC3: People who score higher on C will display higher levels of OCBO.
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is associated with anxiety, depression, vulnerability, and insecurity. Not surprisingly then, neurotic people are inherently unsatisfied—with their relationships, themselves, and
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their jobs. In their meta-analysis, Judge et al. (2002) confirm this relationship, concluding that
“Neuroticism emerged as the strongest and most consistent [negative] correlate of job satisfaction” (p. 534).
Existing studies demonstrate that Neuroticism is inversely related to a variety of other job
performance measures (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000), including OCB (Kumar et al., 2009). Chiaburu
et al. (2011) argue that the inverse of Neuroticism (Emotional Stability) represents a prosocial
orientation that predisposes people toward greater OCBI and OCBO. Although this relationship
is borne out empirically, they note that it is not as strong a predictor of OCBs as many of the other
factors:
HN1: People who score higher on N will report lower job satisfaction.
HN2: People who score higher on N will display lower levels of OCBI.
HN3: People who score higher on N will display lower levels of OCBO.
Openness
Openness to new experiences describes human traits such as curiosity, creativity, and the need
to avoid monotony (Costa & McCrae, 1995). Although the O factor is important in predicting a
number of important outcomes, there is little reason to believe that O should be associated with
job satisfaction. Judge et al.’s (2002) meta-analysis of personality and job satisfaction confirms
this, finding that the relationship between O and job satisfaction is “indistinguishable from zero”
(p. 533). In fact, of the 50 correlations examined in the study, 24 found that O had a small
negative relationship with job satisfaction and 26 indicated a small positive relationship.
Chiaburu et al. (2011) argue, “if citizenship behaviors revolve around contingencies created
in the social environment surrounding tasks, employees who are high in Openness may be at
an advantage due to their adaptability, ability to cope with change, and tolerance for ambiguity”
(p. 1149). After confirming this hypothesis in their meta-analysis, Chiaburu et al. speculate that
because O is strongly correlated with mental ability, “perhaps high Openness employees understand better the context surrounding the task, resulting in a positive impact on citizenship”
(p. 1149). Our hypotheses regarding the relationship between Openness to new experiences and
job satisfaction can be summarized as follows:
HO1: The O factor will not predict job satisfaction.
HO2: People who score higher on O will display higher levels of OCBI.
HO3: People who score higher on O will display higher levels of OCBO.
Non-Personality-Related Factors
In addition to personality measures, our models also include several other key independent
variables. These are primarily included in our model to control for relevant factors other than
personality, but many are important and theoretically interesting in their own right. For example,
we include a variable indicating whether or not the respondent is a town, city, or county manager.6
Given that these individuals have higher salaries than other employees, have achieved a relatively
high degree of success, and can be expected to follow the International City/County Management
Association Code of Ethics that mandates behaviors consistent with OCB, we expect that job
satisfaction and OCB measures will be higher for town, city, or county managers than for the
other public administrators in our sample. We also asked respondents how long they have worked
in their current organization with the expectation that individuals with longer tenure will have
higher levels of OCBs and job satisfaction. In addition, we accounted for each respondent’s
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gender and age although we have no specific expectations about the relationship between these
measures and our three outcome variables.
To determine whether there was a difference based on the type of government the respondent
worked for, we included a variable representing whether the respondent worked for city or town
or whether they worked for another government. We have no specific expectations here, but
include it as an important exploratory variable. To account for differences between states we also
included variables indicating whether the respondent lived in North Carolina or Virginia. To
avoid the “dummy variable trap” (Gujarati, 1995, p. 526) we treat South Carolina as the base
term, meaning that each state is compared with South Carolina.
Data and Method
To test these hypotheses, we first identified a sample of public managers. After considering a
number of possibilities, we decided to query members of the North Carolina City and County
Management Association, the South Carolina City and County Management Association
(International City/County Management Association), and the Virginia Local Government
Management Association. All three organizations are state-level affiliates of the International
City and County Management Association and provide a readily available list of members with
contact information on their websites. The majority of members of these organizations are city,
town, or county managers, but planners, budget analysts, and a variety of other public officials
are also members. After culling the member list of university professors, students, private contractors, and the like, we ended up with a list of 862 potential participants for our study—431 in
North Carolina, 151 in South Carolina, and 280 in Virginia.
We then created a five-section questionnaire and distributed it to all respondents based on
their e-mail address. The design and distribution of the questionnaire was implemented to follow
Don Dillman’s (2007) tailored design method. The questionnaire took an average of 12 minutes
to complete. A list of questions and response categories can be found in the appendix. The opening section included a series of questions assessing participants’ awareness and opinions of personality assessment in public management. The second section asked participants a series of
questions to assess OCBs. We measured OCB with a 16-item scale, developed from a pool of
items from previous OCB scales by Lee and Allen (2002). Participants were asked to rate how
often they engage in OCBs using a 7-point scale (1 = never, 7 = always). Within the broader
16-item scale, Lee and Allen’s instrument includes two 8-item subscales to measure OCBI and
OCBO. Each subscale can range from 8 to 56 and previous research shows that both factors have
acceptable internal reliability (Lee & Allen, 2002). In addition, an analysis of our data indicates
that both OCBI (Cronbach’s α = .84) and OCBO (Cronbach’s α = .86) scales are reliable indicators of the concepts.7
The third section asked respondents about job satisfaction. We measure job satisfaction
through responses to nine items assessing each manager’s satisfaction with differing aspects of
their job. We considered using an existing scale in its entirely, but given concerns about respondent fatigue and its effects on response rate and data quality instead decided to modify previously
existing scales to produce a shortened job satisfaction scale. We culled questions from existing
surveys to ensure that we covered six major domains of job satisfaction: (1) benefits/pay;
(2) supervisor satisfaction; (3) satisfaction with coworkers and relationships; (4) job enjoyment,
pride, and meaning; (5) organization rule and procedural justice; and (6) amount and reasonableness of work. We used one question each to represent Domains 1, 5, and 6, but needed two
questions per domain to measure each of the other three domains. After we developed the questions, we asked participants to respond to each item using a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = very
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Cooper et al.
dissatisfied, 5 = very satisfied). The job satisfaction scale ranges from 9 to 45 and proved to be a
reliable measure (Cronbach’s α = .85).
The fourth section of the questionnaire included our measure of the FFM represented by the
M5-50, a 50-item subset of the International Personality Item Pool item set. Each item in the
M5-50 asks the participant to indicate on a 5-point Likert-type scale how accurately the statement describes them. There are 10 items per factor, 5 of which are reverse-coded to ensure that
participants do not provide the same answer to each question. This publically available personality test is a valid and reliable indicator of the FFM of personality (Socha, Cooper, & McCord,
2010). The validity of self-report personality instruments such as these has been well established,
both in terms of rational and empirical support. Though people may not see themselves the way
others see them, it is very clear that their responses to self-statements may be reliably correlated
to other more objective and accurate trait ratings (Hogan, 2005; McRae & Costa, 1996).
Given the survey length and the time commitment involved in filling out a personality profile,
the respondent burden on our survey was considerably greater than it is for many other surveys
in the literature. To incentivize participants to respond to the survey, we programmed the webbased questionnaire to calculate and report back to the individual participant their personality
profile, based on the answers they gave in the questionnaire. The final section of the questionnaire included a series of demographic questions about the respondent.
Once we created the questionnaire, we then e-mailed it to all 862 people in our sample and
later sent two follow-up mailings to nonrespondents. In the end, we received data from 29% of
the sample (n = 248). Approximately 30% of the potential participants in North Carolina, 34% in
South Carolina, and 27% in Virginia returned the questionnaire. The specific sample sizes vary
somewhat by question. The smallest number of responses for any single question (or series of
questions) was 197, or 23% of the 862 people who received the questionnaire. Using the
American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR, 2011) response rate definitions,
this means that we achieved a 29% response rate using the Response Rate 2 designation and 23%
using the Response Rate 1 designation. This response rate is comparable to recent published
work in public administration (Berman & West, 2008) and surpasses much published work on
organizational behavior (Hager, Wilson, Pollack, & Rooney, 2003; Jang & Feiock, 2007). Table
2 presents data describing the basic characteristics of the sample.
Results
To learn more about how personality assessment is viewed by public managers, we first present
the results of a series of questions about respondents’ awareness and opinions of personality
assessment. We present these results in a dot plot (Jacoby, 2006).
As Figure 1 suggests, respondents are favorably disposed to the use and usefulness of personality assessment in public management. More than half (62%) have used personality measures in
their capacity as a public manager. Furthermore, 75% would consider using personality measures
and 91% consider personality measures useful. Clearly, public managers are aware of personality
assessment, use personality assessment in their jobs, and consider it useful. In addition, public
managers report using personality assessment for the activities for which it is intended—team
building professional development and identifying strengths and weaknesses of employees. Only
about one fifth of the respondents have used personality assessment for hiring and promotion, an
activity that Coe (1992) warns against.
We also asked participants whether they had heard of the MBTI personality inventory. Not
surprisingly, virtually all the respondents (96%) have heard of the MBTI, reinforcing Coe’s
(1991, 1992) previous work on the subject. Far fewer (29%) have heard of the more theoretically
grounded and empirically verified FFM of personality.
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Table 2. Descriptive Statistics.
Age in years (n = 197)
Mean = 49, SD = 9.9
Males, % (n = 197)
White, % (n = 200)
State, % (n = 258)
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia
Type of government, % (n = 258)
County
City or town
Other
How long at organization, % (n = 197)
<1 year
1-5 years
5-10 years
>10 years
How long at current job title, % (n = 197)
<1 year
1-5 years
5-10 years
>10 years
Personality factors (n = 197)
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Openness
Organizational citizenship behavior directed at
individuals (n = 215)
Organizational citizenship behavior directed at
organizations (n = 215)
Job satisfaction (n = 215)
82
92
51
20
29
30
62
8
6
30
25
39
6
38
26
30
Mean = 40.42, SD = 4.74, α = .74
Mean = 41.62, SD = 5.51, α = .84
Mean = 34.50, SD = 7.40, α = .87
Mean = 19.33, SD = 6.09, α = .84
Mean = 37.98, SD = 5.54, α = .72
Mean = 44.46, SD = 6.57, α = .84
Mean = 51.68, SD = 4.04, α = .86
Mean = 38.00, SD = 5.49, α = .85
The question remains, however, whether the FFM has practical applications in public administration. After all, if the FFM does not predict public-sector employees’ attitudes or behaviors,
then it has limited utility for public managers. To find out whether the FFM is connected to jobrelated outcomes we next estimated three models assessing the influence of personality along
with a host of other independent variables on job satisfaction and OCBs. All three dependent
variables include a minimum of 21 values and appear appropriate for ordinary least squares
regression. The only violation of the best linear unbiased estimator assumptions is that the
Breusch–Pagan test indicated some heteroscedasticity in the original model. We correct this
problem using Huber–White robust standard errors. The job satisfaction model is presented in
the left-hand column of data in Table 3 with the OCBI and OCBO models following in order.
Entries in the table are unstandardized regression coefficients and numbers in parentheses are
Huber–White robust standard errors.
Overall, the job satisfaction model reinforces the importance of personality and largely conforms to our expectations. Consistent with Hypotheses HA1, HC1, and HN1, public managers who
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Cooper et al.
Figure 1. Opinions and awareness of personality measures in public management.
score higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and those who score lower in Neuroticism
have higher job satisfaction. As expected in HO1, we also find no evidence that Openness predisposes people toward more or less job satisfaction, controlling for other factors.
To better understand the substantive influence of personality on job satisfaction, we used
CLARIFY (Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2001), a program that simulates the predicted value of an
outcome variable, at each level of the statistically significant independent variable in question.
We held all other independent variables at their sample means for this simulation.
The least neurotic person in the sample has a job satisfaction score of 24, compared with a
predicted score of 16 for an extremely neurotic person. A person who is not agreeable has a predicted job satisfaction score of 35, compared with a score of 41 for an extremely agreeable person. Predicted scores for job satisfaction range from 30 for a person low in Conscientiousness to
34 for a person high in Conscientiousness. Clearly, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and
Conscientiousness have important influences on job satisfaction.
Contrary to HE1, we find no evidence that Extraversion is associated with job satisfaction
among public-sector employees. This is a notable departure from work on private-sector managers that finds a consistent, positive, and statistically significant influence of Extraversion on job
satisfaction. We speculate on the reason for this difference in the “Discussion” section of the
article.
Consistent with previous research (Kim, 2002) our model also suggests that people who have
spent more time in the organization are more satisfied with their jobs. After all, most people who
are not satisfied with their jobs will choose to leave. We are more puzzled by our final finding—
working for a city or town (instead of a county) is correlated with higher levels of job satisfaction. This could be because of potential differences between electoral rules in government type
or because of other systematically different organizational norms, culture, and practices.
The results of the OCBI model are presented in the middle column of data in Table 3. As
expected in HC2, people who are more conscientious are likely to display high levels of OCBI.
The predicted OCBI is about 13 for a person with the lowest recorded Conscientiousness score
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Table 3. Modeling Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Openness
Female
Age
Time in organization
Manager
City or town
Other government
North Carolina
Virginia
Constant
F
Adjusted R2
n
Job satisfaction, Β (SE)
OCBI, Β (SE)
OCBO, Β (SE)
0.24** (0.09)
0.13* (0.08)
−0.04 (0.06)
−0.22*** (0.07)
0.02 (0.08)
−0.84 (1.05)
−0.01 (0.04)
0.82* (0.47)
0.41 (0.82)
1.85** (0.93)
1.00 (1.25)
0.51 (1.07)
−0.92 (1.33)
25.77*** (5.67)
6.06***
.21
0.11 (0.11)
0.33*** (0.09)
0.22*** (0.07)
0.15* (0.08)
0.14 (0.09)
0.12 (1.06)
0.11** (0.05)
−0.28 (0.44)
0.36 (0.98)
−0.32 (1.02)
0.79 (1.78)
−0.56 (1.27)
0.87 (1.45)
6.09 (6.87)
5.51***
.19
0.09 (0.06)
0.23*** (0.05)
0.03 (0.03)
−0.01 (0.05)
0.10** (0.04)
0.61 (0.61)
0.02 (0.03)
0.17 (0.29)
2.35*** (0.55)
0.12 (0.58)
2.27* (1.26)
−0.38 (0.55)
−0.38 (0.77)
30.69 (3.84)
4.74***
.24
188
188
188
Note. OCBI = organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals; OCBO = organizational citizenship behavior
directed at organizations. Entries are unstandardized regression coefficients. Numbers in parentheses are Huber–
White robust standard errors. Shaded area indicates the five-factor model.
*p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
in the data set, compared with a predicted value of more than 20 for a very conscientious
person.
Surprisingly, the other relationships do not conform to our expectations. For example, we find
that Neuroticism is positively associated with OCBI, changing from 35 to 39 as one moves from
the lowest to the highest recorded point on the scale. This finding is inconsistent with HN2 as we
explore in the “Discussion” section.
We had not anticipated that Extraversion (HE2) would influence OCBI, but we find that in our
sample of public managers, people who score higher on Extraversion report higher OCBI. In
fact, the predicted OCBI scores move from 26 to 33 moving from the low end to the high end of
Extraversion. Our data also show that contrary to HO2 and HA2, Openness and Agreeableness
have no influence on OCBI, at least in our sample of public managers.
Moving to our nonpersonality variables, as expected, older employees are more likely to display high levels of OCBI. Gender, time in the organization, and the type of government an individual works for, however, have no influence on OCBI. Institutional factors, such as the state a
person lives in and whether the respondent is a city or county manager have no influence on
OCBI.
The OCBO model, presented in the right-hand column, tells a slightly different story. As
expected in HC3 and HE3, Conscientiousness is a statistically significant predictor of OCBO, and
Extraversion is not. Here, someone at the low end of Conscientiousness has a predicted OCBO
score of 36, compared with a score of 43 at the opposite end of the scale, holding all other variables constant.
Although, as HO3 suggests, we had not expected a relationship between Openness and OCBO,
we did find an empirical relationship between the two. The influence of Openness is important,
but substantively smaller than it is for Conscientiousness, moving from 46 to 49. We had
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Cooper et al.
hypothesized in HN3 that Neuroticism would be negatively related OCBO, but we did not find
such a relationship. Finally, we expected in HA3 that agreeable people would score higher on
OCBO, but we found no relationship. Distinct from the finding on the OCBI model, we discover
that city or county managers have higher levels of OCBO, perhaps because of their adherence to
the International City/County Management Association Code of Ethics, than do other publicsector employees. Although there has been some debate in the management literature on this
point, we find that OCBO and OCBI are different concepts with different predictors.
Discussion
This article makes a number of contributions to the study of public administration. First, we
document the use of personality assessment in public management. Although there has been
some anecdotal evidence, until now, there has been scant empirical data on how and when public managers use personality assessment. More than 60% of our respondents consider personality measures useful and rely on personality measures in their job. Clearly, personality assessment
is popular among public administrators and we believe that this finding is good news for those
who wish to maximize effective and professional public management.
We also demonstrate that all five factors of personality can help explain public-sector
employee behaviors. We feel confident in this conclusion not only because of the empirical
results but also because of the theoretical basis for the concept of personality. Personality is
mostly inherited, and therefore “hard-wired” into a person (Riemann, Angleitner, & Strelau,
1997), as opposed to concepts such as job satisfaction, and OCB, which are much more contextually determined. As a result, it stands to reason that personality precipitates job satisfaction and
OCB, and not the other way around (see, Heller, Judge, & Watson, 2002).
Although all factors are important, only Conscientiousness emerged as statistically significant
in all contexts. Clearly practitioners who wish to select employees for future satisfaction and
organizational citizenship would be well-advised to consider Conscientiousness. Many of the
other relationships we found, however, are inconsistent with psychology and management literature. For example, Judge et al. (2002) find that Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion
are the most important correlates of job satisfaction. Our results differed slightly, finding that
Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were significant predictors of job satisfaction among publicsector managers but not Extraversion. Chiaburu et al. (2011) discovered that all the FFM traits
except for Extraversion were related to OCBI and OCBO. In our study, we found relationships
between three of the traits (Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism) and OCBI and
two of the traits (Conscientiousness and Openness) and OCBO.
We also found a positive correlation between Neuroticism and OCBI. Although this is inconsistent with our hypothesis and may apparently seem at odds with the job satisfaction model
(where Neuroticism moves in a positive direction), it may be consistent with how people high in
Neuroticism think about and perform in their jobs. Neurotic people are unlikely to be satisfied,
but do work hard and contribute to the organization—particularly, to other individuals in the
organization.
What explains the differences between our findings and extant literature? We cannot be sure,
but we suspect that they may be explained in part by the differences in the nature of public-service motivations. The public-service motivation literature documents that public and private
employees are motivated by different factors so it makes sense that different personality types
would interact with these organizational structures in different ways. In addition, our study
includes a multivariate model with controls for many organizational and individual factors apart
from personality. Although this is a common approach in the public administration literature, it
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is less common within psychology. It is therefore, possible that some of the differences might
disappear with similar modeling strategies.
Of course this article, like all research, has limitations. Our sample is drawn from three states
in one region of one country. As Jiang et al. (2009) suggest, political and organizational cultures
vary across countries, thus we cannot be sure whether our findings would translate to other countries and other organizational cultures. We also rely on self-reported job satisfaction and OCBs.
Although these self-reports are common in the field, they are the subject of some criticism as
some scholars suggest that they are inferior to other measures that are less susceptible to social
desirability effects (Donaldson & Grant-Vallone, 2002). We also rely on a sample of public managers, which does not allow us to conduct a direct empirical comparison with the private sector.
As a result, we can only speculate on the differences in personality across public- and privatesector employees.
Despite these limitations, the implications of this article for practitioners are clear: The FFM
can help managers understand why some employees perform differently and are motivated differently than others. Knowing one’s own personality can help managers better understand how
to combat their own foibles and perhaps even help select employees (Tett & Christiansen, 2007).
Much as a football coach might want to know which players are fast and which of them are
strong to use them to make the team better, a manager may benefit from knowing the personality
profile of his or her employees. Moreover, as managers consider contracting for employee selection systems or team-building programs, they should inquire into the underlying theoretical
framework that the consultant is using. One example of a commercially available instrument
based on the FFM and focused on work-related issues is the Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan
& Hogan, 1995). In contrast to the MBTI, the FFM offers a number of publicly available, free
assessment tools, such as the M5-50,8 making it feasible for use by even the most financially
strapped governments and researchers.
We hope future studies will continue to examine core personality traits, perhaps focusing next
on the interactions between personality and organizational environment in the public sector.
Bozeman and Rainey (1998) argued that “little is known about the interaction between personality, structure and bureaucratic behavior” (p. 167) and a systematic examination of the interactions between the FFM and organizational environment could help address this problem. It
stands to reason that different personality types might respond differently to various organizational structures, but this hypothesis has, to our knowledge, never been formally tested. Similarly,
future studies might examine the relationship between personality, organizational outcomes, and
person–organization fit (Bright, 2008), as well as between personality, public service motivation,
and emotional labor.
Although the public administration literature is rife with concepts meant to summarize a person’s fitness for public service, academics should allow basic personality theory to play a larger
role in this discussion. It has been demonstrated across ages, cultures, and even across species
that personality is derived from an innate pattern of traits. Scholars interested in a more systematic understanding of how public employees behave would be well advised to supplement the
public administration literature with core personality traits. We believe that the FFM holds great
promise for scholars and practitioners in public administration and we hope future work will
continue to discover where, when, and how personality assessment can improve the practice of
public management.
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Appendix
General Questions About the Use of Personality-Based Psychological
Measures
1. Have you ever used any personality-based psychological measures in your capacity as
a public manager?
2. Have you ever used any personality-based psychological measures for any of the following reasons (check all that apply)?
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Hiring/promotion decisions
Team building
Professional development
Identifying employee strengths and weaknesses
Other (specify)
3. Would you consider using any personality-based psychological measures as a part of
your organizational decision making?
4. Do you consider personality-based psychological measures useful or helpful?
5. Have you ever heard of the Myers–Briggs Personality Inventory?
6. Have you ever heard of the five-factor model of personality?
Job Satisfaction Scale
How satisfied are you with . . .
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Your pay and work benefits (based on your responsibilities)?
Your supervisor caring and responding to the issues of most importance to you?
The amount and frequency your views/contributions are valued and recognized?
The professionalism of the people with whom you work?
The relationships and cooperation between you and your coworkers?
The amount of pride or enjoyment you have doing your job?
The amount of meaning and personal accomplishment you get from your job?
The rules/procedures/policies at your company?
Reasonableness of your work responsibilities/amount of work assigned to you daily?
• Respondents were asked to indicate their answers to the above questions on a 1 to
5 scale that included options for the following: very satisfied, somewhat satisfied,
neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale (adapted from Lee and Allen, 2002)
Organizational Citizenship Behavior Directed at Individuals
1. Help others who have been absent.
2. Willingly give your time to help others who have work-related problems.
3. Adjust your work schedule to accommodate other employees’ requests for time off.
4. Go out of the way to make newer employees feel welcome in the work group.
5. Show genuine concern and courtesy toward coworkers, even under the most trying
business or personal situations.
6. Give up time to help others who have work or nonwork problems.
7. Assist others with their duties.
8. Share personal property with others to help their work.
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(continued)
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Appendix (continued)
Organizational Citizenship Behavior Directed at Organizations
9. Attend functions that are not required but that help the organizational image.
10. Keep up with developments in the organization.
11. Defend the organization when other employees criticize it.
12. Show pride when representing the organization in public.
13. Offer ideas to improve the functioning of the organization.
14. Express loyalty toward the organization.
15. Take action to protect the organization from potential problems.
16. Demonstrate concern about the image of the organization.
• Respondents were asked to indicate their answers to the above questions on a 1 to 7
scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always).
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Dan Bromberg and Roger Hartley for many helpful comments on this project.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. There are fruitful research agendas examining similar concepts such as public service motivation (e.g.,
Perry, Brudney, Coursey, & Littlepage, 2008) and emotional labor (Guy, Newman, & Mastracci, 2008)
but we should note that these concepts, although valuable, are orthogonal to personality—an inborn trait
that has been verified across people, cultures, and species.
2. For example, Berman and West’s (2008) question ascertaining the frequency of training on personality
assessment asks about “personality assessment (e.g., Myers–Briggs).”
3. Said differently, the MBTI measures personality as a nominal concept when most scholars agree that
the concept is, at least theoretically, an interval one.
4. Some people also refer to these as the “OCEAN” or “CANOE” factors.
5. A further distinction is made between prosocial behaviors (OCBI and OCBO) and proactive “changeoriented” behaviors (Chiaburu et al., 2011).
6. We recognize that it might be better to include variables representing more variation in job title and
responsibility, but limitations in our mailing list, data, and sample precluded including more than the
manager/not manager dichotomy.
7. These reliability indicators are strikingly similar to Cronbach’s alphas of .83 (OCBI) and .88 (OCBO)
reported in Lee and Allen (2002).
8. The M5-50 can be downloaded at http://paws.wcu.edu/mccord/M5-50/
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Cooper et al.
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Author Biographies
Christopher A. Cooper is an Associate Professor and Department Head in the Department of Political
Science and Public Affairs and Associate Professor of Psychology (by courtesy) at Western Carolina
University. His research interests include political psychology, state politics, southern politics, and public
administration.
H. Gibbs Knotts is a Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs and Interim Dean of Arts and
Sciences at Western Carolina University. His research interests include public administration, southern
politics, and political behavior. Beginning in July, 2012, he will be Professor and Department Chair in the
Department of Political Science at the College of Charleston.
David M. McCord is a Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology at Western Carolina
University. His research interests focus on personality theory and assessment, including the five-factor
model of personality and the MMPI.
Andrew Johnson is a PhD student in the Social-Personality Program at the Graduate Center, City
University of New York. He studies the moral and psychological origins of ideology and political
opinions.
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