Personality and career decisiveness. An international empirical comparison of business students' career planning
| Pages | 503-524 |
| Date | 08 June 2010 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481011045443 |
| Published date | 08 June 2010 |
| Author | Marjaana Gunkel,Christopher Schlaegel,Ian M. Langella,Joy V. Peluchette |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personality and career
decisiveness
An international empirical comparison of
business students’ career planning
Marjaana Gunkel and Christopher Schlaegel
Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
Ian M. Langella
John L. Grove College of Business, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg,
Pennsylvania, USA, and
Joy V. Peluchette
College of Business, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, the degree to which career adaptability, career
optimism, and career knowledge predict career decisiveness in China, Germany, and the US is to be
examined; second, the effect of the five personality traits on the determinants of career decisiveness, on
career decisiveness, and on the relation between career decisiveness and its determinants in the three
countries is to be investigated.
Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. The
sample consists of 555 business students from three countries: China (196), Germany (210), and the
USA (149). A two-stage OLS regression analysis was applied for assessing the relation between career
decisiveness, its determinants, and the personality traits.
Findings – The results show that personality traits have direct and moderating effects on career
decisiveness and its antecedents. In addition, the influence of personality and the antecedents of career
decisiveness differ in the three countries examined.
Research limitations/implications – The conclusions of this study may be subject to several
limitations that suggest further possibilities for empirical research, e.g. the study does not examine the
influence of cultural traits on career decisiveness, its determinants, and their relation.
Practical implications – The identified cross-country differences lead to the need for diverse career
counseling for students with different personalities in different countries.
Originality/value – So far research on students’ career decisiveness has focused only on national
samples. The explorative paper examines the influence of personality traits on business students’
career decisiveness in three countries.
Keywords Personality,Career development, Business studies,China, Germany,
United States of America
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The link between personality and students’ career planning has been researched for
decades. As Goldschmid (1967) already demonstrated, personality influences the
choice of college majors. Ja
¨rlstro
¨m (2000) showed that personality is related to the
career expectations of students. Newman et al. (1999) inspected the relation between
personality and Career Decisiveness and demonstrated a relationship between some
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Personality and
career
decisiveness
503
Personnel Review
Vol. 39 No. 4, 2010
pp. 503-524
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483481011045443
personality characteristics and Career Indecisiveness. In addition to this, Bacanli (2006)
underlined that personality characteristics may be seen as predictors for a student’s
Career Indecisiveness. These differences lead to the need for diverse career couns eling
for students with different personalities.
So far, the literature has focused on national samples and has not examined
international differences in students’ career plans. That is, the influence of culture on
Career Decisiveness has not been investigated even though recent studies (e.g. Church,
2000; Hofstede and McCrae, 2004) have shown that there is a link between national
culture and personality traits. As firms become more and more international and hire
students in various countries, it becomes of crucial importance for the human resource
management of international organizations to be able to anticipate the career planning
of students in the countries in which the firm operates. The objective of our explorative
study is to examine the influence of personality traits on students’ Career Decisiveness.
Using empirical data, we will examine if the Five Factor Model personality traits have
a similar influence on students’ career planning in China, Germany, and the USA, or if
their effect is different in the three countries hinting at an influence of national culture
on Career Decisiveness as well.
2. Theoretical background
Personality tests are a widely used selection method for employees used by firms given
the connection between personality and job performance. For example, Barrick et al.
(2003) showed that there are personality traits, which predict success in jobs, and
others which are correlated with specific occupations. For testing the personality of
employees, various tests can be used. Personality Inventories, which define the Five
Factor Model (FFM) of personality, are tests used by organizations to collect
nonperformance related information about the applicants (Costa and McCrae, 1995). At
the end of the twentieth century, the FFM was also established as the most commonly
applied model in empirical studies regarding the determination of personality traits
due to its stability, reliability, validity, and universality (see for example, John and
Srivastava, 1999). The five dimensions can be seen as representing personality at a
generalized broad level, in which each of the five dimensions encompasses a large
amount of separate, more specific personality facets. According to Costa and McCrae’s
(1992) model the factors and facets are described as presented in Table I.
The Big Five personality traits have emerged as predictors for significant outcomes in
life, e.g. job-related outcomes. It is assumed that personality traits are associated with a
broad range of career belief and performance variables, irrespective of occupation and
nationality. Conscientiousness was found to predict job performance, while
Agreeableness relates to more particular features, such as performance in teams.
Extraversion appears to act as an indicator for successful sales and management
employees. Thus, high values in Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness
appear to be associated with positive career-related outcomes, whilst Neuroticism is
linked with maladjusted behavior regarding the career (Tokar et al., 1998). Tokar et al.
(1998) showed that facets of personality, which underlie the factors neuroticism,
extraversion, and conscientiousness, might be related to certain vocational behaviors, e.g.
occupational interest, career indecision, and job satisfaction. They claim that the FFM
dimensions relate to the career exploration variables such as self-exploration, career
information seeking, stress regarding career exploration, and career search self-efficacy.
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