Personality characteristics and job involvement as determinants of job performance a study in select knowledge process outsourcing companies of Chandigarh Punjab and Haryana

Abstract

Management is concerned with obtaining the right kind and right number of people necessary to accomplish organizational goals and objectives. Organizations today face a multitude of challenges such as a change in personal values of workforce and managing the dynamic expectations of employees. Personality traits are extremely important to take into consideration in today s competitive and diverse organizational setting whether at the recruitment level or at the broad structuring of the organization. This research is conducted to look at the impact of personality traits on job performance in the Knowledge Process Outsourcing companies of Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana. It also analyses the mediating effect of job involvement on the relationship between personality characteristics on job performance. Four Hundred (400) employees from the middle managerial levels of these Knowledge Process Outsourcing companies were used as a sample for the study. First verified with Exploratory factor analysis, Zero order and First confirmatory factor analysis is used for validating the constructs of the study. The study revealed that Conscientiousness and Extroversion were the major predictive factors which have a positive correlation with job performance. The data analysis supported that Personality characteristics significantly predict the mediating variable- Job Involvement. It indicates that different personality characteristics of employees have different job performance levels. Personality tests can be made an essential part of the hiring process to determine the ability of an employee to act on certain personality characteristics that may be evoked by workspace circumstances.