The relationship between personality, organizational and interpersonal counterproductive work challenges in industry 4.0

Abstract

The current study is related to the empirical gap on the relation between personality traits and counterproductive behavior, which is especially important for literature concerning Central and Eastern post-transformation economies. Therefore, the main empirical goal of the article is to determine how the personality traits (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness to experience) influence the extent of organizational and interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors (CWB; CWB-O; CWB-I) and how this relation is moderated by the demographic and professional characteristics of employees (sex, age, seniority or type of work). The research objectives were met using a survey conducted in April 2020 among 454 professionally active people in Poland. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to analyze the empirical data. The proposed theoretical model was intended to determine how particular types of personality impact CWB. Based on the empirical results, we determined that personality traits strongly affect counterproductive work behaviors. The strongest predictors of organizational CWB proved to be Conscientiousness (negative relation) and Agreeableness (positive relation). There was no direct effect of personality traits on CWB-I. Moreover, the relationship between personality traits and CWB-O/I was significantly moderated by the demographic and professional characteristics of employees (sex, age, seniority, or type of work). The discussed result is reached based only on Polish employees' sample, which can be considered its important limitation. However, it still contributes significantly to international behavioral economics literature in the field. Due to many institutional characteristics and similar social context, the conclusions can be generalized and attributed at least for other Central European economies which are at the same level of development and which are characterized by many social and cultural similarities. From the practical perspective, the obtained results can be of special importance for human resource management in the reality of Industry 4.0 challenges.