ABSTRACT
This study extends the literature on personality and job performance through the use of random coefficient modeling to test the validity of the Big Five personality traits in predicting overall sales performance and sales performance trajectories--or systematic patterns of performance growth--in 2 samples of pharmaceutical sales representatives at maintenance and transitional job stages (K. R. Murphy, 1989). In the maintenance sample, conscientiousness and extraversion were positively associated with between-person differences in total sales, whereas only conscientiousness predicted performance growth. In the transitional sample, agreeableness and openness to experience predicted overall performance differences and performance trends. All effects remained significant with job tenure statistically controlled. Possible explanations for these findings are offered, and theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.
Subject(s)
Commerce , Personality , Personnel Selection , Adult , Drug Industry , Efficiency , Female , Forecasting , Humans , Likelihood Functions , Male , Personality Inventory , Reproducibility of Results , Statistics, Nonparametric , United StatesABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was (a) to provide additional tests of C. E. Lance, Newbolt, et al.'s (2000) situational specificity (vs. method bias) interpretation of exercise effects on assessment center postexercise dimension ratings and (b) to provide competitive tests of salient dimension versus general impression models of assessor within-exercise evaluations of candidate performance. Results strongly support the situational specificity hypothesis and the general impression model of assessor cognitive processes in which assessors first form overall evaluations of candidate performance that then drive more specific dimensional ratings.
