Managerial personality and performance: A semi-idiographic approach

Understanding the relationship between personality and behavior requires ac counting for a broad set of traits within each person and the demands of a specific role or situation. To address these requirements, we assessed the relevance or ordering of traits within an individual (an idiographic approa ch) and compared these orderings across individuals occupying similar organ izational situations (a nomothetic approach). We illustrate the utility of this semi-idiographic approach with a longitudinal study of Masters of Busi ness Administration (MBA) students. The MBAs whose personalities were more similar to a template of the successful young manager received more job off ers upon graduating and, subsequently, earned higher salaries, were more li kely to be working full-time, and had changed jobs less often than did thos e who fit the managerial template less well, (C) 1999 Academic Press.