Conscientiousness and managerial performance

Recent research has provided clear evidence that personality factors are as sociated with job performance. The construct of conscientiousness has been shown to be a particularly promising predictor of overall job performance. Some authors have proposed that conscientiousness might be the 'g' of perso nality and predict performance in most occupational areas. The nature of th e construct of conscientiousness is reviewed and consideration given to the Likely behaviour associated with high conscientiousness. It is hypothesize d that, given the requirements of managerial work, the criterion-related va lidity of conscientiousness may not extend to all managerial jobs. Conscien tiousness score are derived for a sample of managers (N = 437), with the ai d of personality questionnaire data. In a concurrent validity design these scores are correlated with indicators of current job performance, promotabi lity and specific job performance factors. The correlation of conscientious ness with current performance is close to zero and the correlation with pro motability is -.20. The pattern of relationships between conscientiousness and the job performance factors is used to interpret the finding that consc ientiousness is not influential in determining managerial performance. The results suggest that there may be limits to the range of occupational areas in which conscientiousness is closely linked with job performance.