Personality as a Predictor of Teamwork: A Business Simulator Study

Personnel selection and placement systems are concerned with identifying valid predictors of team performance. This study attempted to identify variables that would predict team performance. Specifically, 78 college students worked in 10 long-standing teams competing in a business simulation. Extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, and predisposition to be a team player were analyzed for their effects on task performance and social cohesion. Analyses revealed no significant effects for extraversion and conscientiousness, while emotional stability predicted task performance and agreeableness predicted cohesion. Predisposition to be a team player predicted both task performance and cohesion. The implications of these results for researchers and practitioners are discussed. ********** Personality variables have been shown to predict some variability in team performance and outcomes (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998; Barry & Stewart, 1997; Brandstatter & Farthofer, 1997; deJong, Bouhuys, & Barnhoorn 1999; Driskell, Hogan, & Salas 1987). Yet, researchers continue to ask questions about how personality factors, especially the big five as a conglomerate, can be used to predict team performance and outcomes. The present study contributes to the ongoing clarification of how personality might predict team performance and outcomes. In addition to including four of the big five personality dimensions, we assessed team members' predisposition to working in a team environment (Kline, 1999a) on performance and outcomes. Work teams are groups of individuals who have a common purpose, interact to accomplish organizational goals, and share responsibility for team outcomes (Johns & Saks, 2005; Kline, 1999b). The classic framework for understanding team effectiveness is the input-process-out-put model (IPO; Driskell, et al., 1987). The model suggests that both input (individual, environmental, and group-level) and process (e.g., communication patterns, personal disclosure, conflict, influence) variables affect teams' output capabilities (Barrick et al. 1998). We adopted this framework in considering the team composition variable of personality as contributing to team effectiveness. A substantial mass of research has accumulated in the study of personality, although as noted by Kichuk (1999), most of it is in the clinical domain. The use of personality in performance prediction was initially slow to develop because of the lack of a common conceptual classification scheme prior to Barrick and Mount's (1991) validation of the "big five" model (Barry & Stewart, 1997). Ever since, the Five Factor Model (FFM) has been the dominant viewpoint of personality measurement in psychological research (Arthur, Woehr, & Graziano, 2001; Costa & McCrae, 1985, 1992; Hough & Oswald, 2000; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991). Extraversion, openness to experience, emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are the agreed upon five factors. In the present study we did not include openness to experience because of the lack of previous research findings associated with this variable (Kline, 1999b), and other compelling evidence about potential construct confusion (Griffith & Hesketh, 2004). Extraversion is the extent to which an individual is gregarious, outgoing, lively, and sociable (Lee & Ashton, 2004). Intuitively, these facets appear to be important in effective team interactions but they have nonetheless been very inconsistent in predicting team outcomes. Conscientiousness is characterized by diligence, achievement motivation, and organization. It is a well-established predictor of individual work performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991), but may not be as important in a team setting (Barry & Stewart, 1997). People high in emotional stability tend to be brave, self-assured, and deliberate. This trait has been cited as one of the most important predictors of team cohesion among the big five (Barrick et al. …