Exploring The Impact Of Personality On Performance: How Time-On-Task

Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 823–828

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Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Exploring the impact of personality on performance: How time-on-task moderates the mediation by self-efficacy
Filiz Tabak *, Nhung Nguyen, Tom Basuray, William Darrow
Department of Management, College ofBusiness and Economics, Towson University, Towson, MD 21252, United States

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Despite the widely acknowledged impact of dispositional traits on performance, little is known about how personality affects performance. We address this gap by investigating the relationships between the Big Five personality traits, self-efficacy, and academic performance ina moderated mediation model using time-on-task as the moderating variable. Results indicate that self-efficacy partially mediates the conscientiousness–performance relationship and that time-on-task moderates the mediating effect of self-efficacy. Time-on-task moderates the indirect effect of conscientiousness on course performance through self-efficacy such that the indirect effect is not significantat low levels of time-on-task, but becomes significant and stronger at higher levels of time-on-task. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 28 November 2008 Received in revised form 24 June 2009 Accepted 26 June 2009 Available online 30 July 2009 Keywords: Self-efficacy Conscientiousness Emotional stability Extraversion Performance Time

1. Introduction Thedispositional approach to understanding and explaining performance outcomes has recently attracted considerable research attention. Even though meta-analytic reviews providing support for the personality–performance relationship have emerged (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001; Judge, Jackson, Shaw, Scott, & Rich, 2007), further research is clearly needed to investigate the ‘‘nature” of the relationship(Judge & Ilies, 2002) and find out how these traits exert their influence (Gerhardt, Rode, & Peterson, 2007; Tay, Ang, & Van Dyne, 2006). If we can answer the ‘‘how” question, then we can make sense of why in certain contexts some personality dimensions relate to performance and in others they do not. Our paper attempts to fill in this gap by exploring the relationship between personality and performancethrough the mediating mechanism of self-efficacy and the conditions under which a mediation effect may vary. Regarding the conceptualization of personality, impact of the five factor model is widely accepted, and an impressive body of research attests to its influence as an important area of investigation (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 2005). Recently, Judge et al. (2007) explored the relationships betweenthe five factor (Big Five) model personality dimensions and self-efficacy through a meta-analysis providing support that personality differences are at least as important as

self-efficacy in predicting performance, after taking into factor several moderators such as task complexity, feedback, and goal setting among others. Our study contributes to literature in this area by investigatingtime-on-task as a moderator not included in the Judge et al. (2007) meta-analysis. 2. Theoretical framework The five factor model consists of the personality dimensions of conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness. There is an impressive amount of research examining the relationships between the five factor model personality dimensions and work-relatedbehaviors like performance (e.g., Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002). Researchers have noted that distal predictors of performance like dispositional traits will exert their impact through more proximal mechanisms such as self-management or goal setting (e.g., Gerhardt et al., 2007; Klein & Lee, 2006) which are integral to the concept of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy, defined as an individual’s...