The Influence of Personality Characteristics on Individual Competencies of Work Group Members: A Cross-cultural Study

Abstract

In this article, we investigate how college students and graduates with diverse backgrounds experience working in groups by focusing on their perceptions regarding group work, attribution of leader coaching, and self-perspectives of personality traits. Moreover, this article explores relationships between personality factors (using the Big Five factors) and selected individual competencies from Bartram’s Great Eight Competencies (2005). We furthermore review current management research on competency management, personality, and also identify current trends for young professionals who are about to enter the job market. This study was conducted in an experimental setting at a large European business school. Participants were 80 business students from Austria, Turkey, China, and the United States of America with a fairly even gender split who had to work on tasks in homogeneous and heterogeneous settings. We assess participants’ ratings following Rammstedt and John’s Big Five Inventory (2007) and a modified version of Wageman, Hackman and Lehman’s Team Diagnostic Survey (2005) that we enhanced accordingly. Results are analyzed and discussed with relation to global challenges and developments regarding competencies, diversity, and group work.