Are conscientious workers adaptable?

Barbara Griffin and Beryl Hesketh

Abstract

Today's worker faces increasing demands to adapt to change and therefore organisations need to be able to identify people whose subsequent performance will be adaptable. Despite widespread acceptance that conscientiousness is a good predictor of performance, a review of the extant literature provides evidence suggesting that this relationship may not hold with performance that requires adaptability. The relationship between adaptability and conscientiousness is clarified in this study by examining adaptability in both the performance and predictor domains and by examining conscientiousness at a facet level. Results from three samples of employees suggest that only the achievement facets of conscientiousness relate to adaptability. The dependability facets are either unrelated or, in some cases, actually indicate a lack of adaptability.

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Keywords

ADAPTABILITY; CONSCIENTIOUSNESS; ADAPTIVE PERFORMANCE; FACETS.

Contact Details Barbara Griffin Department of Psychology The University of Sydney, NSW 2006. E-mail: barbarag@psych.usyd.edu.au Beryl Hesketh Department of Psychology The University of Sydney, NSW 2006.

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