Impact of Big Five Personality Traits on Organizational Commitment: Job Satisfaction as a Moderator

Abstract

This paper examines how the Big Five traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience influence organizational commitment and job satisfaction is used to moderate the effects of these characteristics. Organizational commitment has been widely known to be a key factor in employee retention, performance and organizational effectiveness especially in knowledge intensive industries like higher education. Within the framework of the public sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan, it is necessary to know how personality traits influence commitment in an effort to increase faculty involvement and productivity at the university.
The research design is quantitative with a structured questionnaire being used to gather data on a sample of 448 faculty members employed in the KP public sector universities. Personality traits, job satisfaction and organizational commitment were measured using standardized measurement scales. Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze data with descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, multiple regression and moderation analysis by use of interaction terms.
The results indicate that the Big Five personality traits have a significant impact on the organizational commitment. In particular, the following positive correlations between conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion and organizational commitment are strong, showing that responsible, cooperative, and socially active people have higher chances of developing a strong attachment to the organization. Openness to experience indicates a moderate positive relationship indicating that intellectually curious and flexible people have propensity to be aligned to organizational values. Conversely, neuroticism also exhibits a strong negative correlation with organizational commitment, the consequence of emotional instability on employee attachment and loyalty.
Additionally, the findings affirm that job satisfaction is a moderate factor in the relationship between organizational commitment and personality traits. The interaction analysis has shown that the positive impacts of favorable personality traits on commitment are reinforced by higher job satisfaction levels, although the negative impacts of neuroticism are reduced. This implies that workers whose personality dispositions might not favor them could have a higher level of commitment when they are contented with their job set up, the working environment, and the support of the organization.
The research paper is designed to complement the literature available since it incorporates personality and attitudinal variables in a single moderated model that provides a more detailed insight into the behavior of employees in the higher education sector of Pakistan. It also gives some practical implications to the university administrators and policymakers, i.e. the need to consider the personality traits when recruiting individuals and selecting them, the need to promote job satisfaction by creating favorable work conditions, equitable policies and career advancement opportunities.
Finally, the research highlights that job satisfaction, as well as, personality traits are major motivators of organizational commitment. Through a careful management of these factors, universities in the public sector can work to increase staff devotion, decrease turnover intents, and overall institutional effectiveness.