Preferences for careers and organisational cultures as a function of logically related personality traits

Abstract

Expected consistency between personality traits and preferences for particular career anchors and for forms of organisational culture was examined in terms of differential conceptual alignment. In a large sample of British adults, associations were found to depend on the presence of logical overlap between a personality trait and a preferred outcome. When a career anchor or a cultural feature was logically related to a personality trait, between-person variations in that trait were significantly associated with career or cultural preferences. In other cases, personality was irrelevant. Findings support aspects of the attraction-selection-attrition model, and more precisely specify the basis of differential personality effects in that and similar models.