The power of personality at work: Core self‐evaluations and earnings in the United Kingdom

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12162
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The power of personality at work: Core self‐

evaluations and earnings in the United Kingdom

Mark Williams

1

|Elliroma Gardiner

2

1

Department of People and Organisations,

Surrey Business School, University of Surrey

2

Centre for Work, Organisation and

Wellbeing, Mt Gravatt Campus, Griffith

University

Correspondence

Mark Williams, Department of People and

Organisations, Surrey Business School,

University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2

7XH, UK.

Email: m.t.williams@surrey.ac.uk

Abstract

Organisations are increasingly taking an interest in personality as

certain traits purportedly predict desirable attitudes and behaviours.

We examine the relationship between one increasingly popular con-

struct—core self‐evaluations (CSEs)—and earnings. We argue that if

high levels of CSEs really are valuable traits, then high CSE individ-

uals should be observed to earn more than those with moderate or

low levels of CSEs. Using the nationally representative British

Household Panel Survey, we find little evidence that individuals

with very high CSEs earn more than those with only moderate

levels. However, we do find the existence of a pay penalty for indi-

viduals very low in CSEs. Similar patterns emerge for the Big Five

model of traits. Although the exact mechanisms remain unclear,

our findings imply that organisations should play a greater role in

the career development of employees scoring lowly in “desirable”

traits—especially in a context of increasing career fluidity.

KEYWORDS

Big Five, core self‐evaluations, job satisfaction, pay, personality

1|INTRODUCTION

Organisations are increasingly taking an interest in personality. Indeed, the use of psychometric testing has been

steadily increasing (for a discussion, see Wolf & Jenkins, 2006), and the administrationof personality assessment tools

is often thought to be an indicator of the quality of an organisation's HR department (Guest, Michie, Conway, &

Sheehan, 2003; Guest, Michie, Sheehan, Conway, & Metochi, 2000). The increasing interest by HR is largely driven

by the ever‐expanding body of research that has identified certain traits that are purportedly predictive of desirable

organisational outcomes such as creativity, motivation, turnover intentions, responses to organisational change, and

voluntary work behaviours (Avey, Luthans, Hannah, Sweetman, & Peterson, 2012; Caldwell & Liu, 2011; Greenidge

& Coyne, 2014).

1

Although positive work attitudes, job performance, and organisational performance are important

aims of HRM, much less research has established the power of work‐related personality constructs in shaping “harder”

elements of success from the perspective of employees such as pay.

Although we acknowledge that how much a specific individual employee earns may not, on the surface, appear to

be within the remit of HRM research, we believe there are at least three reasons why HRM scholars should take an

Received: 19 August 2015 Revised: 2 May 2017 Accepted: 1 June 2017

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12162

Hum Resour Manag J. 2018;28:45–60. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 45

interest in this question. First, given that human capital is one of the key domains of strategic HRM (Wolf & Jenkins,

2006; Wright and McMahan, 1992) and the centrality of personality to human capital (Ployhart and Moliterno,

2011; Wright, McMahan, & McWilliams, 1994), we contend that if traits such as personality constructs really are indic-

ative of valuable attitudes and behaviours for organisations, we expect to see them recognised and rewardedby orga-

nisations in the labour market through a persistent earnings premium for those possessing them. Second, there have

been recent calls within the HRM literature to make the issue of job quality a central normative aim for HRM research

and practice (Guest, 2017). If such calls are to be seriously addressed, then understanding how these softer elements of

human capital translate into capacity to achieve objective indicatorsof job quality such as pay is well within the remit of

HRM research, as well as how they impact organisational outcomes. Finally, a recent YouGov survey reports that 50%

of U.K. employees now believe pay to be a more important reason for working than their job satisfaction (YouGov,

2014) in contrast to the received wisdom with previous HRM research. In an era of stagnant earnings growth, the issue

of how much a particular job pays as an indicator of its quality will only heighten in future HRMscholarship.

In this article, we contribute to understanding the power of personality for shaping success at work for employees

by examining the relationship between one increasingly popular personality construct—core self‐evaluation (CSE)—

and earnings using nationally representative panel data for the United Kingdom. CSEs have been shown to be a pow-

erful predictor of both employee work behaviours, such as job satisfaction and work performance (Judge, Hurst, &

Simon, 2009; Wu & Griffin, 2013), as well as organisational‐level factors, such as a firms' entrepreneurial orientation

(Simsek, Heavey, & Veiga, 2010). Given that CSEs predict “desirable”attitudes and behaviours at work, we thus expect

that higher CSEs should translate into higher earnings in the labour market.

In what follows, we show that CSEs relate to earnings in the United Kingdom via lower earnings for those with

low CSEs vis‐à‐vis observationally equivalent individuals with moderate levels of CSEs, whereas individuals scoring

highly in CSEs earn similarly to those scoring moderately. We find low scores on dimensions of the five‐factor model

of personality known to predict that “desirable”work‐related attitudes and behaviours are also associated with lower

earnings. Nonetheless, we find relatively straightforward associations with job satisfaction. Our findings imply that

organisations need to be watchful of employees with low CSEs and other purportedly “desirable”personality dimen-

sions—especially in a context of increasing career fluidity.

2|THE POWER OF CSEs AT WORK

Introduced by Judge, Locke, and Durham (1997), CSEs are reflections of an individual's fundamental appraisals about

themselves, their capabilities, and their functioning in the world. CSEs are a higher order multidimensional personality

factor underlying several conventionally studied personality traits, namely, self‐esteem, locus of control, generalised

self‐efficacy, and (low) neuroticism (Judge, 2009). Individuals with high CSEs are confident in their abilities, have a

positive view of themselves, and believe that they can influence their environment through their actions (Judge, Erez,

& Bono, 1998). In contrast, individuals with low CSEs have a negative self‐concept, focus on their failures and short-

comings, and view themselves as susceptible to the forces of their environment.

In their seminal study, Judge et al. (1997) found that the combined traits of self‐esteem, locus of control, gener-

alised self‐efficacy, and (low) neuroticism were better predictors of job satisfaction than when considered separately.

This finding has been replicated several times (Judge, 2009; Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, 2003). CSE has been

extensively studied in relation to the other more‐established personality models such as the Big Five, and there is

some overlap between CSE and Big Five factors, specifically, extraversion (r= .28–.36) and emotional stability

(r= .34–.43; Judge et al., 2009).

Many studies have demonstrated a positive association between CSE and variables desirable to organisations,

namely, job satisfaction (Judge & Bono, 2001; Judge, Bono, Erez, & Locke, 2005; Judge, Bono, & Locke, 2000; Judge,

Heller, & Mount, 2002; Judge et al., 1997) and job performance (Erez & Judge, 2001; Judge, 2009). With respect to

job performance, prior research has found that high CSE individuals are more likely to seek complex and challenging

46 WILLIAMS AND GARDINER

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