Extraversion and job performance: How context relevance and bandwidth specificity create a non-linear, positive, and asymptotic relationship

The Gray Nine and Parallel Personality Patterns: Big Five, Dark Tetrad, and a "Well-Rounded Personality"

The vast literature on personality psychology generally focuses on neutral or socially beneficial personality traits such as the Five-Factor model (e.g., agreeableness, conscientiousness) or "dark" traits such as Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism. However, the current synthesis of the literature indicates that the distinction between benign, malign, and neutral personality traits and facets is partly misguided. In fact, there are many objective and subjective measures that indicate that high agreeableness is not beneficial, while moderate grandiose narcissism is. Many, if not all of the traits are rather gray and socially and personally desired outcomes indicate that people who aim for a well-rounded personality should typically be clustered in the middle of the various personality spectrums. In addition, many of the personality traits are characterized by parallel patterns of good/bad relations to social and personal outcomes.

Predicting employee telecommuting preferences and job outcomes amid COVID-19 pandemic: a latent profile analysis

In this two-study research using latent profile analysis (LPA), we investigated intra-individual combinations of conscientiousness, autonomy, self-regulation, and extraversion. Based on these combinations, we designed profiles and explored telecommuting preferences and job outcomes of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, we recruited 199 participants (77 females, ages ranging from 18 to 65). Results of this study revealed three profiles. One profile scored high on all of the variables and displayed preferences for working on-site more than the other profiles. Additionally, this profile showed higher work engagement, job satisfaction, and perceived productivity than the other two profiles. To validate these findings, we conducted a second study with a sample of 492 participants (169 females; age ranged from 18 to 65). The results yielded five profiles, one scoring high on all of the variables. Similar to Study 1, this profile exhibited higher work engagement, job satisfaction, and perceived productivity than the other four profiles. Individuals in this profile preferred to work on-site compared to individuals in other profiles. Our findings add to the research demonstrating the importance of personality characteristics for telecommuting preferences and work-related outcomes.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-02496-8.

Political Skill and Manager Performance: Exponential and Asymptotic Relationships Due to Differing Levels of Enterprising Job Demands

Political skill, a social competence that enables individuals to achieve goals due to their understanding of and influence upon others at work, can play an important role in manager performance. We argue that the political skill–manager performance relationship varies as a nonlinear function of differing levels of enterprising job demands (i.e., working with and through people). A large number of occupations have some enterprising features, but, across occupations, management roles typically contain even greater enterprising expectations. However, relatively few studies have examined the enterprising work context (e.g., enterprising demands) of managers. Specifically, under conditions of high enterprising job demands, we argue and find that, as political skill increases, there is an associated exponential increase in enterprising performance, with growth beyond the mean of political skill resulting in outsized performance gains. Whereas, under conditions of low (relative to other managers) enterprising job demands, political skill will have an asymptotic relationship with enterprising job performance, such that the positive relationship becomes weaker as political skill grows, with increases on political skill beyond the mean resulting in minimal performance improvements. Our hypotheses are generally supported, and these findings have important implications for managers, as the performance gains in managerial roles were shown to be a joint function of manager political skill and enterprising job demands.

The Too Little/Too Much Scale

This article describes the too little/too much (TLTM) scale as an innovation in rating scale methodology that may facilitate research on the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect. Two studies demonstrate how this scale can improve the ability to detect curvilinear relationships in leadership research. In Study 1, leaders were rated twice on a set of leader behaviors: once using a traditional 5-point Likert scale and once using the TLTM scale, which ranged between –4 ( much too little), 0 ( the right amount), and +4 ( much too much). Only linear effects were observed for the Likert ratings, while the TLTM ratings demonstrated curvilinear, inverted U-shaped relationships with performance. Segmented regressions indicated that Likert ratings provided variance associated with the too little range of the TLTM scale but not in the too much range. Further, the TLTM ratings added incremental validity over Likert ratings, which was entirely due to variance from the too much range. Study 2 replicated these findings using a more fine-grained, 9 -point Likert scale, ruling out differences in scale coarseness as an explanation for why the TLTM scale was better at detecting curvilinear effects.