Background: When a company is employing new salespeople, much is expected from these. The company is hoping that the new candidate is going to perform well and contribute to the fullest. One of the big questions that the organization has to face is how to evaluate and sift through sales candidates in order to find the best suited one. Previous studies have shown to some extent that a person's personality can be connected to how well they are performing in different occupations. One commonly used framework for assessing personality is the Five Factor Model (FFM) which is able to account for different traits without overlapping. One way to assess a person's personality traits is by the use of the big five inventory questionnaire (BFI). Purpose: To describe if there is a correlation between personality traits and sales performance in the Swedish car dealership market.Method: The research was a quantitative study of two Swedish car dealerships, where 60 out of 72 employees at Hedin Bil & Holmgrens Bil answered the BFI questionnaire. The response rate was 83%. The survey was sent out by mail to the two companies whose responsible managers divided their sales staff in three different groups (good performing, average performing and bad performing) according to the company's organizational goals.Conclusion: The conclusion of this study is that one of the hypotheses was supported and four rejected by the salespeople participating. The only hypothesis that was supported was that Neuroticism would correlate negatively with sales performance.

Andersson, B. (2014). Modernt Ledarskap. C-uppsats i Pedagogik. Högskolan i Gävle, akademin för utbildning och ekonomi Den undersökta myndigheten uttrycker sig sträva mot att utveckla ett modernt ledarskap och genom detta strävar myndigheten mot att bli utsedd till Sveriges modernaste myndighet vilket är en utmärkelse som samtliga statliga myndigheter kan erhålla. I teorier om ledarskap uttrycks vanligtvis att ledarskapet är en viktig faktor för en väl fungerande organisation. Det transformella- och kommunikativa ledarskapet, samt Big Five-modellen valdes efter en genomförd litteratursökning av nyare forskning om ledarskap som exemplifieringar av det som beskrivs som ett modernt ledarskap. Detta jämfördes sedan i studien gentemot hur personal på myndigheten själva uttryckte sin syn på ett modernt ledarskap med hjälp av en insamlad enkät. Syftet med studien var att undersöka om myndighetens ledarskap är "modernt" i den meningen att den har likheter med de ledarskapsteorier som beskrivs som moderna i nyare ledarskapslitteratur. Metoden var huvudsakligen kvantitativ i form av en enkät med kvalitativa inslag där fritextfält kopplades till utvalda frågor. Enkäten skickades ut till 200 chefer med personalansvar. Svarsfrekvensen blev cirka 46 procent där respondenterna svarade på ett antal frågor kring rådande chefspolicy, samt vilka färdigheter och egenskaper de menar att ett modernt ledarskap innehåller. Urvalet av respondenter begränsades till en specifik svensk myndighet och de medarbetare som där är chefer med personalansvar. Resultatet av undersökningen antyder att rådande chefspolicy har visst stöd i modernare ledarskapsforskning (exemplifierat genom likheter och skillnader gentemot det tranformella- och kommunikativa ledarskapet, samt Big Five-modellen). Cheferna känner till den rådande policyn. Cheferna på myndigheten pekar på aspekter som att kunna kommunicera, ta beslut, skapa dialog och delaktighet, stötta och skapa entusiasm samt ge feedback som de viktigaste färdigheterna för det de kallar ett modernt ledarskap. De personliga egenskaperna som lyfts fram som de viktigaste är att vara stöttande/coachande, ha självinsikt och en positiv människosyn. Både färdigheterna och egenskaperna har tydliga kopplingar till de valda moderna ledarskapsteorierna som myndighetens personals åsikter jämfördes gentemot.

Darbe tiriamas ryšys tarp vadovų asmenybės savybių, vertintų Didžiojo Penketo Asmenybės Klausimynu, bei jų turimų galios rūšių ir naudojamų įtakos taktikų, taip pat atsižvelgiant į demografinius kintamuosius bei kitas vadovų / pavaldinių charakteristikas. Tokiu būdu siekiama giliau perprasti galios ir įtakos pasireiškimo mechanizmus, kadangi jie labai svarbūs organizacijų veikloje, o ypač dėl to, kad gali nulemti vadovavimo efektyvumą. Tyrime dalyvavo 46 vadovai ir 246 jų pavaldiniai, iš savo perspektyvos vertinę savo vadovų galią ir įtaką. Dalyviai pildė anketas. Nustatyta, kad įtakos taktikos ir galios rūšys – susiję konstruktai. Daugiausiai vadovai naudojasi racionaliomis įtakos taktikomis ir ekspertine galia, tačiau asmenybės savybės yra susijusios su kietomis įtakos taktikomis (su jomis koreliavo sąžiningumas ir ekstraversija) bei pozicijos galia (su ja koreliavo intelektualumas ir sąžiningumas). Tuo tarpu racionalios įtakos taktikos yra susijusios su emociniu stabilumu ir intelektualumu. Darbe aptariamos ir vadovų lyties, užimamo statuso bei kitų charakteristikų sąsajos su galia bei įtaka. / The relationship between manager‘s Big Five personality traits and their power bases and influence tactics was investigated, also taking into consideration demographic variables and other characteristics of managers and their subordinates. In that way an attempt to go deeper into mechanisms of power and influence was made – these are very important in organizational practice, especially because they may determine leadership effectiveness. The participants were 46 managers and 246 subordinates who evaluated their manager‘s power and influence. All of them filled in questionnaires. The results showed that power bases and influence tactics are interrelated constructs. Most frequently used were rational influence tactics and expert power, however, manager‘s personality characteristics mostly were related to hard influence tactics (those had correlations with conscientiousness and extraversion) and position power (it had correlations with openness to experience and conscientiousness). Rational influence tactics had correlations with emotional stability and openness to experience. The effects of managers‘ gender, status and other characteristics on power and influence use were also discussed.

Leadership studies and leadership development have become increasingly popular in recent years. However, much of this popularity has been focused on leadership in adults. This thesis explores the emergence and development of leadership skills in children as they gain experience from play, athletics, and school. The definition of leadership is examined as well as the skills needed for proficient leadership. The skills are structured around the Big Five personality factors. Each of the areas discussed – play, athletics, and school – gives children many opportunities to interact with their peers allowing for valuable development. Overall, this thesis asserts that leadership and its development can occur at the beginning of an individual’s lifetime and does not need to be restricted to adulthood.

The psychological benefits of self-compassion, a construct associated with adaptively dealing with emotional suffering from life's problems appear to overlap with those of trait resiliency in terms of theoretical underpinnings and outcome research. This study investigated the relationship between self-compassion, personality, and gender in order to shed light on the construct's relevance to an existing framework of resiliency personality research. One hundred and twenty-three college students completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and Self-compassion Scale (SCS). A cluster-analysis of the BFI scores yielded three cluster prototypes consistent with overcontrolled, undercontrolled, and resilient personality prototypes identified in previous studies of children and adult community samples. Analyses revealed resilient individuals reported significantly higher overall Self-compassion (M = 3.08, SD = .25) compared to both overcontrolled (M = 2.85, SD = .20, t = -4.32, p <= .00) and undercontrolled types (M = 2.90, SD = .25, t = 3.53, p <= .00). Interestingly, there were no significant differences between overcontrolled and undercontrolled types or between men and women, on overall Self-compassion. A two by three MANOVA of gender and personality prototype on the SCS revealed a significant interaction on overall Self-compassion score (F = 3.92, p <= .02) and the Common Humanity subscale (F = 3.81, p <= .03). Post hoc analyses were conducted to examine the nature of the gender and personality interactions. The theoretical issues raised by these results are discussed and recommendations are made for utilizing self-compassion in treatment and future research.

The aim of this study is to increase our knowledge about the correlation between personality andself-esteem. A survey containing two instruments was spread through Facebook. The first instrument was a translation of Rosenberg's self-esteem scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965) that measured the degree of self-rated self-esteem. The second instrument was a self-formulated personality test that measured the degree of extraversion and every facet of this personality trait.The questions answered in this study are (1) if there is a correlation between self-esteem and extraversion, (2) how strong the correlations are between self-esteem and the individual facets of extraversion, (3) which facets that have a significant impact on self-esteem and lastly (4) how high the internal consistency of the instruments used in this study is. All data was processed in SPSS and to answer the questions correlation- and regression analyzes as well as Cronbach's alpha were used.The study reports two results - one that includes all questions in the survey and one that only includes questions that were considered to have high internal consistency according to Cronbach's alpha. Both results show a correlation between extraversion and self-esteem. The first result showsa correlation between self-esteem and the facets activity level, warmth, assertiveness and positivefeelings, but to different degrees. The second result shows a correlation between self-esteem and every facet. Both results show that the facets positive feelings and assertiveness significantly correlateswith self-esteem, but the second result shows that the activity level also significantly correlates withself-esteem. Both instruments showed high internal consistency measured with Cronbach's alpha. / Syftet med denna studie är att öka kunskapen kring sambandet mellan personlighet och självkänsla.En enkät innehållande två instrument spreds via plattformen Facebook. Det första instrumentet var en översättning av Rosenbergs self-esteem scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965) som mätte graden av självskattad självkänsla. Andra instrumentet var ett egenformulerat personlighetstest som mätte graden av extraversion samt varje fasett inom denna personlighetsegenskap. De frågeställningar som besvaras i denna undersökning är (1) ifall det finns ett samband mellan självkänsla och extraversion,(2) hur starka sambanden är mellan självkänsla och de enskilda fasetterna inom extraversion, (3) vilka fasetter som har en betydelse för självkänsla samt (4) hur hög den interna konsistensen är hos de instrument som använts. All data behandlades i SPSS och för att besvara frågeställningarna användeskorrelations- och regressionsanalyser samt Cronbachs alfa. Studien redovisar två resultat - ett som inkluderar alla frågor i enkäten och ett som endast inkluderar de frågor som ansetts ha hög internkonsistens enligt Cronbachs alfa. Båda resultaten visar ett samband mellan extraversion och självkänsla. Första resultatet visar samband mellan självkänsla och fasetterna aktivitetsnivå, värme,bestämdhet och positiva känslor, men i olika hög grad. Andra resultatet visar samband mellan självkänsla och samtliga fasetter. Båda resultaten visar att fasetterna positiva känslor och bestämdhet har ett signifikant samband med självkänsla men andra resultatet visar även att aktivitetsnivån har ettsignifikant samband. Båda instrumenten visade hög intern konsistens mätt med Cronbachs alfa.

Self-determination theory (SDT) has been used to study motivation and motivational strategies within many different domains one of the most pertinent being academia. The theory emphasizes the importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs and places a strong emphasis on environmental factors as both fostering and impeding of motivational energies, while simultaneously giving less importance to intrapersonal determinants of motivation such as personality and attachment. This gap in the literature was addressed in this study by investigating that aspect of academic motivation which has not been of a salient interest to SDT. To test the hypotheses that Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and attachment styles are associated with Intrinsic Motivation, with attachment being a stronger predictor, 272 participants at a midsize university completed a survey including scales assessing personality traits, attachment style, and academic motivation. Data were analyzed using correlation, regression, and moderation analyses and as hypothesized, all three personality traits were significantly associated with Anxiety and Avoidance attachment dimensions, which in turn were related to Intrinsic Motivation, though only partially. Attachment Avoidance emerged as the most important dimension of attachment accounting for a significant amount of variance in Intrinsic Motivation beyond personality and illustrating the relatedness component of self-determination theory. Implications of these results include both theoretical (example, conceptualizing relatedness in terms of attachment Avoidance), and practical (example, suggestions for instructors on methods for increasing student Intrinsic Motivation) aspects.

Personality tests are often utilized in employment selection. Their wide use may be attributed to various studies which suggest that personality is related to job performance. Although personality is widely utilized in various assessment contexts including but not limited to personnel selection settings, both researcher and practitioners continue to criticize the use of measures due to faking behavior or response distortion. Furthermore, these criticisms are warranted because laboratory studies have consistently found that when instructed, respondents are able to alter their scores in order to appear more desirable. Additionally, there is also conforming evidence from field studies which suggest that 20 - 30% of real-world applicants fake in order to gain a competitive advantage in being hired. Faking studies generally define successful faking as the obtainment of the highest scores possible. This study used a recent and alternative conceptualization of successful faking. More specifically, faking is defined as successful if an applicant is able to match his or her responses on a personality test to the perception of what subject matter experts would consider critical traits for success to that job. Psychology and Business students were assigned to an `honest' or `faking' condition and asked to complete a personality test. Students in the honest condition were instructed to describe themselves honest, while students in the faking condition were instructed to describe themselves in the context of applying for a fictional customer service representative position. Additionally, all students completed a measure of emotional intelligence and cognitive ability. Subject matter experts were then surveyed on what they thought was the ideal characteristics for the fictitious position. This study found that business students who were given instructions to fake were able to fake better (obtain a greater match) than psychology students instructed to fake. Furthermore, individual characteristics such as job familiarity, cognitive ability, and emotional intelligence were examined in relation to faking success. Results indicated that only emotional intelligence was predictive of similarity. Moreover, the subscales of use of emotions and regulation of emotions were predicative of similarity. Finally, the limitations of the study and implications of results are presented and discussed further.

abstract: The five-factor model of personality is a conceptual model for describing personality, and represents five traits which are theorized to interact with each other to form personality. The Big Five Questionnaire-Children (BFQ-C) was developed by Barbaranelli, Caprara, Rabasca and Pastorelli (2003) specifically to measure the five factor model in children. The original version was in Italian, but it has subsequently been translated and used in Dutch, German, and Spanish samples. Given that the BFQ-C has support in Europe, obtained in four different languages it seems promising as an assessment of personality for English speaking children and adolescents. The BFQ-C was translated into English utilizing translation and back translation in order to maintain a high conceptual equivalency. The current study utilizes principal components analysis in order to examine the structure of the English language translation of the BFQ-C in a sample of American adolescents. Results indicate that in contrast to the Italian study, findings from this study suggest a six component solution as the most effective interpretation of the data. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Educational Psychology 2012

Sammanfattning Titel: Vilka egenskaper värdesätter rekryterare inom komplex tjänsteförsäljning? – En studie genomförd med personlighetsverktyget ”The Big-Five” Nivå: C-uppsats i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Philip Grabert och Philip Sandberg Handledare: Jonas Kågström Nyckelord: Big Five, recruiters, sales recruiters, recruitment matching, recruiting methods Datum: 2018 – Maj Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva och analysera vilken personlighetsprofil enligt Big-Five teorin, som rekryteringsansvariga verksamma inom komplex tjänsteförsäljning söker. Ansats/Metod: Studien utgår från en kvantitativ metod som via insamling av data från ett deduktivt förhållningssätt utgår från en positivistisk förutsättning. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in från webbenkäter, som skickades ut till 144 rekryterare över hela Sverige. Genom att tillämpa statistikprogrammet SPSS kunde insamlad data resultera i en deskriptiv analys, faktoranalys samt en klusteranalys. Teori: Den teoretiska utgångspunkten är baserad på teori kring rekrytering i allmänhet och forskning kring femfaktorteorin. Där fokus läggs på vilka faktorer som leder till en lyckad rekrytering och vad rekryterare inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen söker. Resultat &amp; Analys: Studiens analyserade material visar att rekryterare i branschen använder sig först och främst av traditionella rekryteringsmetoder och prioriterar underrepresenterad grupp. Personlighetsprofilen som rekryteringsansvariga söker inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen innefattar ett högt värde på extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness och openness. Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien ska öka kunskapen och förståelsen för vilken personlighet som rekryterare i fastighetsmäklarbranschen söker samt vilka faktorer som en rekryterar tittar på först. Studien ska även ge ett bidrag till liknande säljbranscher eftersom studien kan fylla forskningsgapet huruvida det finns en personlighetsprofil som rekryteringsansvariga inom komplex tjänsteförsäljning söker.