There is evidence in the literature recognising the role of personality in predicting different outcomes. Personality has been linked to leadership, leadership style, work behaviour, global leadership skills, performance across many levels, and
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achievement. Hogan and Kaiser (2005) found that personality predicts leadership style. Judge et al. (2002) found significant correlations between the Big Five and leadership. Judge and Bono (2000) and Bono and Judge (2004) found that some of the Big Five were specifically related to transformational leadership. Four of the Big five were found to be related to charismatic and transactional leadership (De Hoogh, Den Hartog, & Koopman, 2005). Dalton and Ernst (2004) also found that all five factors are related to different aspects of global leadership. Personality was also linked to leadership effectiveness and performance (Atwater, Dionne, Avolio, Camobreco, & Lau, 1999).
Personality has also been found to be directly linked to goal orientation (Wang and Erdheim, 2007; Bipp et al., 2008). In terms of outcomes, personality has been linked to major life outcomes, performance outcomes such as skill acquisition, task effectiveness, and managerial effectiveness, and other work behaviours (Hough & Oswald, 2008). Personality has also been found to predict organisational success and failure (Havaleschka, 1999). Conscientiousness, openness to experience, and
extraversion were linked to training performance (Dean, Conte, & Blankenhorn, 2006; Salgado, 1997), and openness to experience and extraversion were linked to training proficiency and performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991).
Evidence has also been found supporting the predictive role of personality with respect to job performance outcomes (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Salgado, 1997; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000). Furthermore, correlations have been found between the Big five and competencies such as planning, organising, and other leadership and
managerial competencies (c.f. Nyfield, Gibbons, Baron, & Robertson, 1995;
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performance (Hogan & Holland, 2003). Bartram (2005) found evidence of close concordance between Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and
Neuroticism (negative) on the one hand and a broad variety of competencies such as interaction, presentation, support and cooperation, organisation, execution, adaptation, coping strategies, leadership, decision making, analysis, interpretation, creation, and conceptualisation on the other hand. Bartram (2005) found that personality actually accounted for competencies more than ability.
Now performance is observable from people’s actions (Campbell, 1990), and actions reflect different competencies and capabilities. Personality has been linked to cognitive and meta-cognitive skills (Bidjerano & Dai, 2007). As can be seen from the studies discussed above, social competencies such as interaction, support, and
cooperation, cognitive competencies such as analysis and interpretation, emotional competencies such as adaptation and coping strategies, and behavioural competencies such as organisation and execution have been found to be related to or predicted by personality dispositions. It follows, then, that personality plays a role in predicting performance, and also predicts certain competencies and capabilities as well as the acquisition thereof.
Personality, though, seems to be a more distal (though pervasive) determinant of competencies (Bidjerano & Dai, 2007). It is suggested here that DR will further help us understand the effect of personality dispositions on competencies, and Developmental Readiness may be a more proximal predictor of competencies over and above the Big Five. What is further suggested here is that Developmental
Readiness may act as a mediator between personality dispositions and competencies. Although there are no studies suggesting the role of Developmental Readiness in
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mediating between personality and competencies, self-regulation has been proposed as a potential mediator between personality and academic performance (Pintrich, 2000), and self-regulated learning was found to mediate between Conscientiousness and Agreeableness and GPA (Bidjerano & Dai, 2007). Motivation has also been proposed to mediate between stable dispositional attributes and self-development (Boyce et al., 2010).
For a mediating role to be proposed, Developmental Readiness would be expected to also be directly linked to competencies. This is very likely since over the course of a career, people tend to develop work-related, managerial, and leadership competencies anyway, drawing from experiences and challenges faced on-the-job. Thus a natural learning curve already exists for most individuals. There is some variance, though, in the extent of learning and development that individuals actually acquire over their life/career-span. This is due to many factors, including various individual differences, some inherited and others acquired, but may also be due to differences in Developmental Readiness.
Development is a metamorphosis in actions, behaviours, and competencies (Boyatzis, 2008). It is an extension of capabilities (Van Velsor & McCauley, 2004). On the other hand, DR accelerates development, that is, DR enhances the learning curve, resulting in more development, more metamorphosis in competencies, and more capabilities. It follows, then, that a higher DR will be related to more
competencies in an individual’s repertoire and higher competency levels. This may actually explain why individuals on the same career paths exhibit different
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In summary, personality was earlier hypothesised to predict Developmental Readiness. Additionally, and based on the discussion above, it is expected to predict competencies. DR, on the other hand, is directly related to competencies. It is
proposed here that DR will further clarify the mechanisms through which personality affects competencies by predicting competencies over and above the Big Five. That is, DR will mediate the relationship between personality and competencies. Thus the hypotheses:
Hypothesis 6: Personality dispositions will predict the leadership competency level of individuals in the following manner:
Hypotheses 6a, b, c, d: Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience will be positively associated with the leadership competency level of individuals.
Hypothesis 6e: Neuroticism will be negatively associated with the leadership competency level of individuals.
Hypothesis 7: Developmental Readiness will mediate the relationship between personality (E, A, C, N, and O) and competencies. (7 a, b, c, d, and e respectively).
4.6 Students versus Executives
Based on the discussion in chapter 2 on the differences between novices and experts, the development of expertise, and student versus executive learning patterns and competencies, some differences are expected between students and executives regarding personality and values.
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Associations between personality dispositions and DR are not expected to differ significantly between students and executives, even though personality is not expected to stabilise before age 30 (McCrae & Costa, 1999; Costa & McCrae, 2002), which means that it is still changing especially in the case of students. But that does not have significant bearing on the relationships being studied in this case.
As for values, these tend not to be very salient for many people, since they work at a level just below consciousness (Meglino & Ravlin, 2002). One would expect that they would be even less salient for people younger in age as they are still being formed. Young adulthood seems to be a phase where a process of adoption or rejection of parental values, values emphasised by influential people in one’s life is activated, resulting in a choice of one’s own values as the process of maturation is undergone. Thus values are not expected to play as salient a role in the case of students as in the case of executives. Thus the hypotheses:
Hypothesis 8a: there will be no observed significant associations between values and Developmental Readiness in the case of students.
Hypothesis 8b: there will be observed significant associations between values and Developmental Readiness in the case of executives (same hypotheses as hypothesis 5 will apply).
4.7 Chapter Summary
This chapter started out with a discussion of individual differences and their role in predicting diverse outcomes, including developmental readiness. Two
individual differences, personality dispositions and individual value orientations, were suggested to be directly related to developmental readiness. Relationships between
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each of the Big Five personality dimensions, between each of the four broad value orientations (as well as two higher-order orientations) on the one hand and
developmental readiness on the other hand were proposed, where dispositions and orientations that depict more open attitudes and orientations were proposed to be positively associated with developmental readiness, and ones that depict more closed orientations and attitudes proposed to be negatively related to developmental
readiness.
Personality and its relationship to competencies was also discussed, and developmental readiness was hypothesised to mediate the relationship between the above two constructs. Finally, a brief discussion on the differences between students and executives was rendered, stemming from the discussion in the previous chapter.
The hypothesised relationships in this and the previous chapters beg an empirical investigation. The following chapters discuss the methodology, study design, and results from an empirical study conducted to test these hypotheses.
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CHAPTER 5: RESEARCH METHODS