An investigation of the relationship between Big Five Personality traits and job satisfaction in Chinese work context : using self-determination motivation as a mediator

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Master Thesis

An investigation of the relationship between Big Five

Personality traits and job satisfaction in Chinese work

context – using self-determination motivation as a mediator

University of Amsterdam

Faculty of Economics and Business

MSc Business Administration

Leadership & Management Track

Student: Xuejing Li

Student number: 10830421

Supervisor: Dr. Wendelien van Eerde

Date: 29-06-2015

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1

Statement of originality

This document is written by Xuejing Li who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

Xuejing Li declares that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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The current study examined the relationship of Big Five Personality traits of employees, their motivation pattern and job satisfaction by using a survey of 184 Chinese employees. The study revealed that Big Five Personality traits can predict job satisfaction by utilizing regression analysis. After the mediation analysis, we also found that self-determination motivation mediates the relationship of personality and job satisfaction. The results indicate that extrinsic motivation can mediate the positive relationship of Conscientiousness & job satisfaction and Extraversion & job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation can mediate the positive relationship of Extraversion & job satisfaction and Emotional stability & job satisfaction when it comes to Chinese employees.

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1. Introduction

Nowadays no one can deny the importance of employees who act as the foundation of nearly everything in the business world. As a core measurement of employee well-being, job satisfaction which was defined by Locke (1976) as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences" (p. 1304), emerged as an emphasis of many research. Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) study told us that there are variances in job satisfaction because of individual differences. Therefore, personality, as part of individual differences, possibly relates to job satisfaction. Some of the previous studies showed there is no strong or consistent relations between personality and job satisfaction (Furnham & Zacherl, 1986; Furnham, Petrides, Jackson, & Cotter, 2002), while others found only one or two of the big-five factors – Extraversion and Emotional stability predict job satisfaction (Furnham & Zacherl, 1986; Tokar & Subich, 1997; Judge, Heller & Mount, 2002; Bruk-Lee et al, 2009). With this contradiction in the literature, the current study is going to investigate how personality and job satisfaction are related, and whether there is a mediating effect of self-determination motivation.

In the following part of this thesis, we will first review the literature on the concepts of variables and their relationships, and then give an overview of the research gap and research questions. Following, the method section will introduce our hypotheses, sample and research procedure. After the method section, result of the current study will be revealed by analysing the data. By the end of this study, the

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5 discussion regarding the research result will be found, together with both theoretical and practical implications and limitation. Finally, there will be a conclusion briefly summarize this study.

First, the literature review is presented as below.

2. Literature Review

In this part, we will answer the question why are personality and job satisfaction related based on the existing literature. First, the concepts will be explained one by one.

2.1 Big Five Personality Traits

Although the acceptance of classification cannot reach universal, Big Five Personality probably is most well-established one with the most widely accepted conceptual structure among the numerous theories about personality. The five dimensions of individual personality are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Emotional stability, and based on these dimensions, Costa and McCrae (1992) constructed the Five-factor model (FFM). According to Barrick et al. (2013), these personality traits can be formulated as “Psychological mechanisms” which are significant to individuals’ ideas, feelings and mood, and behaviours. There are a considerable number of studies on the relationship of the Big Five traits and a variety of outcomes (Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006) in different contexts, for example to academic achievements (Komarraju, Karau & Schmeck, 2009) or job satisfaction

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and job performance (Judge, Jackson, Shaw, Scott & Rich, 2007; Li, Barrick, Zimmerman & Chiaburu, 2014).

2.2 Motivation in Self-determination Theory

Self-determination theory is built on the premise that there are three innate psychological needs for: 1) autonomy which represents the feeling of choice and discretion, 2) competence namely the feeling of capable and efficacious and 3) relatedness stands for the feeling of connectedness and belongingness to others (Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2010). In the current study we used the theoretical construct of Ryan and Deci (2010), namely, the continuum of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation. When an individual is motivated intrinsically, he or she would experience satisfaction from executing the behaviour and would be more likely to be intrinsically motivated and internalize external goals (making organizational goals their own goals) when these fulfil the three psychological needs. While when extrinsically motivated, individuals take part in a behaviour in achieving various external rewards (Grant & Shin, 2011). Finally, amotivation is neither intrinsically nor extrinsically motivated and with no regulation to their behaviours.

2.3 Job satisfaction

As a core predictor for employee well-being, job satisfaction has long been the focus of study. There are various definitions of job satisfaction. Among them the most widely recognized one in the organizational context is defined by Locke (1976) who

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7 described it as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences" (Locke, 1976, p. 1304).

There are different determinants of job satisfaction in work-related context (Herzberg et al., 1959), while studies on this topic can be traced back to the dispositional approach of job satisfaction which states that there are individual differences in preferences to be satisfied, namely, job satisfaction can be influenced by personal traits (Judge et al, 2002). This approach sheds light on the effects of individual differences such as personality on job satisfaction.

2.4 Relationship between personality and motivation

Nowadays in an organizational environment of numerous fast changes and decentralization, there are increasing demands for highly effective, initiative and proactive employee behaviours (Bindl & Parker, 2010). Thus, motivation, which has long been a focus of research emphasis, becomes imperative in human resources management as well as in organizational strategies. Being able to better motivate employees would be a way to win “the powerful weapon” in ensuring survival and prosperity.

It is a widely recognized view that individual differences exist in the context of motivation (Kanfer & Heggestad, 1999). There are possible explanations - for example, according to Kanfer & Ackerman’s research (1989), individuals vary in things such as the amount of effort or attention that they can control. They found that when two individuals were input with same levels of motivational effort however the output levels

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of performance can actually be different. However, indicators like attention are under the layer employee behaviour and hardly observable by supervisor or HR practitioner, recently there emerges another plausible explanation for individual differences in motivation: Personality.

Plenty of researchers have studied the relationship of Big Five Personality traits and self-determination motivation in different fields, for example, Ingledew et al. (2004) studied the link between personality and exercise behaviours under the construct of Deci’s self-determination theory and found that personality is a strong predictor for motivation of exercise behaviours. Moreover, Komarraju et al. (2009) found the significant role of personality in predicting academic motivation and performance. However, what’s important to the business world is to find out the application of this link in organizations and work behaviours. Judge and Ilies (2002) conducted a meta-analysis on the link between the Big Five Personality traits and work motivation on three core performance motivation scales (goal-setting, expectancy, and self-efficacy motivation). The finding of their research shows the Big Five Personality traits as a set has an average multiple correlation of 0.49 with the motivational criteria. This data indicates that the Big Five Personality traits are important sources of performance motivation, which targets at improving performance. According to Deci’s (2000) theory, the ultimate targets of self-determination motivation are actually in line with performance motivation, and what is different is that self-determination motivation focuses more on the needs satisfactory during the process. Therefore, we expect the Big

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9 Five Personality traits would relate to self-determination motivation (namely extrinsic and intrinsic motivation) as well.

There are some studies show that each of the Big Five Personality traits links to motivation respectively, however, for the detailed mechanism that how these five

personality traits predict self-determination motivation respectively, evidence is lacking.

Barrick et al. (2002) found that Conscientiousness was linked to achievement striving goals, which stand for the motivation and desire to finish tasks in an efficient way. Several researchers found that Conscientiousness positively relates to self-efficacy (Gellatly, 1996; Chen, Casper & Cortina, 2001). Judge et al. (2002) showed that Conscientiousness correlates strongly with three core theories of performance motivation. Moreover, according to McCrae & Costa (1985), Conscientiousness is a personality frequently being associated with descriptions such as being hardworking, responsible, careful and goal-oriented. Thus it is a personality closely associated with competence and autonomy, which are two essential factors for intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 2000). Therefore, we expect that Conscientiousness would positively relate to intrinsic motivation. For the relationship of Conscientiousness and extrinsic motivation, the evidence is lacking, however, the current study will still test if this relationship is significant.

Extraverted individuals are described as social, talkative, energetic and active (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and Extraversion was found associated with status striving, which represents the desire and motivation to obtain strong power, status and

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dominance in organization (Barrick et al., 2002). Thus, the current study expects that Extraversion would positively relate to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

According to Kanfer and her colleagues (1996), anxiety (which closely related to low Emotional stability) results in low self-regulation, thus, individuals who are low in Emotional stability have less control on their task-related attention. Namely, employees who are high in Emotional stability are easier to concentrate and focus on their work. Nevertheless, Emotional stability was shown to correlate most strongly with three core theories of performance motivation (Judge & IIies, 2002). Therefore, we predict Emotional stability would positively relate to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Agreeable individuals are easy to trust and cooperate with, and they have more tendency to follow task requirements and Agreeableness was believed to link to communion striving, which stands for individual motivation to gain respect and recognition from other people and keep a stable and good personal relationships with others. (Barrick et al., 2002). According to Reilly et al. (2002), Agreeableness is important for team productivity, thus it is more likely to be motivated both extrinsically (especially link to external regulation –social which means the regulation of individuals because of their social striving purpose and it is one of the subscales of extrinsic motivation) and intrinsically (because they are willing to contribute for their team voluntarily). For these reasons, we expect Agreeableness would positively relate to both extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation.

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11 As for Openness to experience, there are few studies to show its relationship with motivation. Since individuals who are openness to experience are described as more intellectually curious, thus we predict they would be easier to be motivated intrinsically, namely, Openness to experience would positively relate to intrinsic motivation. For the relationship between Openness to experience and extrinsic motivation, the evidence is little, however we will still test if this relationship is significant.

These argumentations above showed the possibility of personalities’ impact on self-determination motivation and this is the first step in arguing the mediating effects of motivation on the link between personality and job satisfaction.

2.5 Relationship between self-determination motivation and job satisfaction

Hertzberg’s (1959) two-factor theory has already provided us the evidence of the relationship between motivation and job satisfaction: motivating factors, which are considered as intrinsic, make people’s goal and achievement internalized and at the same time provide them with satisfaction from i.e. accomplishment, promotion and recognition (Aristovnik & Jaklic, 2013). According to Deci, Connell & Ryan (1989), subordinates’ self-determination motivation is related to their perceptions, affect and satisfaction. Similarly, Thomas and Velthouse’s (1990) research indicates that the empowerment (defined by the authors as increased intrinsic task motivation) relates positively to job satisfaction and negatively to job stress. This relation was further validated by Davis and Wilson (2000) with their study among teachers and principals in the U.S. Their results showed that the higher the teacher’s intrinsic motivation, the

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more satisfied they were with their job and the less stress they experienced. Therefore, we can conclude that empirically motivation was related to job satisfaction.

We can also elaborate the argumentation of the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction by analysing the determinants or cause of job satisfaction. According to Robbins’ (2003) theory, the determinants of job satisfaction can be divided into four categories: 1) factors relate to fairness of rewards, that is, when employees find the rewards are fair or the rewards meet their expectations, they are more likely to report higher levels of job satisfaction; 2) factors relate to work security, for example, whether the work environment is safe and whether employees are able to finish their job with appropriate tools and so on; 3) factors relate to job contents, namely, whether the job is challenging and interesting, employees with jobs which give them more opportunities and make them have fun during working would report higher levels of job satisfaction; 4) factors relate to social relations such as good leaders, cooperative colleagues and so on. As was mentioned before in the definition of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, these four categories determining job satisfaction can all be fulfilled with extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Therefore, we can conclude that self-determination motivation can predict job satisfaction.

2.6 Relationship between personality and job satisfaction

A considerable number of researchers have investigated the link between personality traits and job satisfaction. Dating back to as early as in 1935, researchers have found a strong correlation between employees’ emotional stability and their job

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13 satisfaction (Hoppock, 1935). We have seen the links between the five-factor personality traits and various outcomes in numerous areas in an organizational context, for example job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991), the links between the big five personality traits and job satisfaction have been much less studied.

Among those studies, some showed no strong or consistent influence between personality and job satisfaction (Furnham & Zacherl, 1986; Furnham, Petrides, Jackson, & Cotter, 2002), other studies showed the relationship between isolated personality factors (especially Emotional stability) and job satisfaction (e.g. Furnham & Zacherl, 1986; Tokar & Subich, 1997; Judge, Heller & Mount, 2002; Bruk-Lee et al, 2009). With the evidence of the relation of personality and job satisfaction, we are now able to answer another important question: How are personality and job satisfaction related? To answer this question, we provide some information on the relationship between each one of Big Five Personality traits and job satisfaction.

Judge et al. (1999, 2002) reported a positive relationship between Conscientiousness and job satisfaction. This is not hard to understand because it is in line with the fact that conscientious individuals are described as reliable and responsible, more self-disciplined (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and showing more achievement striving (Barrick et al., 2002). These would contribute to a higher level of job satisfaction. Thus, we predict that Conscientious would relate positively to job satisfaction. Two researchers -Tokar and Subich from US surveyed the personality and job satisfaction of nearly 400 adult employees and found that two of the Big Five personality traits showed a significant correlation with job satisfaction. One is Emotional stability and it

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was related positively to job satisfaction. The other one is Extraversion, which related positively to job satisfaction (Tokar & Subich, 1997). Judge et al. (2002) also found the same results and they argued the relations between Personality and job satisfaction by introducing the role of positive affectivity and negative affectivity. Individuals who are high in positive affectivity tend to be more satisfied in the majority aspects of their life, including job. Judge et al. (2002) found that both Emotional stability and Extraversion associated strongly with positive affectivity. Therefore, we expect Extraversion and Emotional stability would both relate positively to job satisfaction. Agreeable individuals are trusting and credulous, cooperative and tolerant, these characteristics make them more likely to be more satisfied with their jobs (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Judge et al. (2002) also found positive the relationship between agreeableness and job satisfaction. Hence we predict that Agreeableness would positively relate to job satisfaction. Openness to experience appears to be less related to job satisfaction and there is little literature found a significant link to job satisfaction. Several researchers found there is no relationship between Openness to experience and job satisfaction with a correlation coefficient of -0.02 (Judge et al., 2002; Bruk-Lee et al., 2009). Therefore, we hypothesize that there is no significant relationship between Openness to experience and job satisfaction.

With the argumentations above, we know that the Big Five Personality traits predict self-determination motivation and job satisfaction, while self-determination motivation positively relates to job satisfaction. Therefore, we expect that motivation can act as a mediator in the relationship of personality and job satisfaction. We examine

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15 the relationship between personality and job satisfaction according to a self-determination explanation.

3. Research gaps and research framework

3.1 Research gaps

Research has been conducted on the relationship between personality and self-determination motivation in different contexts. For example, some researchers studied this topic in schools and they found the role of personality in predicting college students’ academic motivation (Komarraju, Karau & Schmeck, 2009), other researchers focused on exercise behaviour and they investigated the relation of personality and self-determination of exercise behaviour (Ingledew, Markland & Sheppard, 2004). However, relatively less research has tested the relationship of personality and self-determination motivation in organizations.

Although all five factors of personality and job satisfaction have been studied (e.g. Jackson, & Cotter, 2002; Judge, Heller & Mount, 2002; Bruk-Lee et al, 2009), there still exist contradiction among those results, and little research has investigated the relationship of the big five personality traits, self-determination motivation and job satisfaction using an integrated model within the same study. The current study will test the relationship and test if there are mediating effects of self-determination motivation in order to fill in the research gap.

Moreover, according to a recent study the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction would be influenced by national moderators (Huang & Van De

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Vliert, 2003). In this study, results showed that the strength and intensity of the link between intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction vary in different countries with different conditions (e.g. government social welfare program, rich or poor, individualistic or collectivistic countries and so on). The current study is going to investigate the link in a typical developing country – China, and compares the outcomes with previous studies conducted in developed countries. China, as a typical developing country, although experienced fast developments in recent decades, still has huge gaps with developed countries when it comes to average richness, individualistic level, social welfare developments and so on. For most of Chinese, extrinsic motivation such as rewards seems play a more important role than intrinsic motivation (e.g. interests and enjoyment towards job). Since little research aiming at the personality, motivation and job satisfaction relationship in developing countries has been done, the current study will investigate and expect there will be some differences in our findings compare to the research findings of developed countries.

By adopting a self-determination theory perspective, it might enable the illustration of the relationship of the big five personality and job satisfaction in a different light. Therefore, in the current study we are going to investigate: 1) relationships between the big five personality factors, self-determination motivation and job satisfaction, 2) whether or not self-determination motivation can act as the mediator of the effects of personality to job satisfaction and if so, how strong this effect is.

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17 3.2 Research Framework

As was stated in the literature review section, with the contradiction in existed literature, this study is going to investigate the relationships in the model of Big Five personality traits, Self-determination motivation and job satisfaction in Chinese work context, and whether or not self-determination motivation can act as a mediator in the relationship of personality traits and job satisfaction. In order to better investigate these relationships, the current study made 10 hypotheses (5 independent variables * 2 mediators * 1 dependent variable). The hypotheses are listed in Table 1 below (in the terms of “one self-determination motivation mediates the relationship of one personality variable and job satisfaction, in positive or unknown direction”):

4. Method

In this section, we will provide a description of the research method applied to the current study, including introductions to sample, procedure and measurement tools.

Table 1 - Hypotheses on the relationship of Personality and job satisfaction and the mediating effects

Hypo No. Independent variables Mediators Direction

1 Conscientiousness Intrinsic motivation + 2 Extraversion + 3 Emotional stability + 4 Agreeableness + 5 Openness to experience + 6 Conscientiousness Extrinsic motivation ? 7 Extraversion + 8 Emotional stability + 9 Agreeableness + 10 Openness to experience ?

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4.2 Sample

The current study adopted the questionnaire method to carry out the survey. The survey has been sent out to participants through the most famous Chinese online survey site (www.sojump.com) and it was conducted in an anonymous way. Respondents were found through the author’s personal contacts and acquaintances, and they are made up of both full-time and internship employees working in China for the tenure of at least six months. 200 respondents were asked to fill in the questionnaire and 184 of them finished the survey completely (which means the response rate is 92% and it is satisfactory) and the sample size of 184 is fully satisfactory according to the requirements for sample size introduced in Pallant’s (2010) book. There are 106 female respondents which consisted of 57.61% and divide approximately equally with male respondents of the total number of respondents. The average age of the respondents is 28 (Mean age = 28) and 91.3% of the respondents are relatively young and under the age of 30. Majority of the respondents has acquired the degree of bachelor (92.9%) and among them 41.8% have acquired the degree of master. The respondents come from different fields of industry, nearly half of them (47.8%) work in organizations with more than 500 employees. The respondents have at least 6 months working experience and 47.2% of them have worked in their current organizations for more than 2 years.

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19 4.3 Procedure

4.31 Survey design and measurement tools

The questionnaire consisted of four parts evaluating the respondents’ demographic data (gender, age, working field etc.), personality traits, motivation and job satisfaction. Respective items would be introduced as follows and we also provide the complete questionnaire in appendix (see appendix 1).

Control variables

Plenty of researchers have found the relationship between gender and job satisfaction (e.g. Clark, 1997; Oshagbemi, 2000). Bedeian, Ferris & Kacmar (1992) found that age and tenure can impact job satisfaction. Evidences have also been found that education level (e.g. Ross & Reskin, 1992; Hindle & Cutting, 2002) would influence job satisfaction. Therefore, the current study adopted 5 control variables: gender, age, highest education, tenure of current job and organization size. These demographic data were collected with singe choice on the questionnaire, and were coded into dummy variables: Gender (0=male, 1=female), Age (0=younger than 35, 1=35 and above), Education (0=below bachelor, 1=bachelor and above), tenure (0=less than 1 year, 1=1 year and above), and organization size (small and medium: 0=less than 200, large: 1= 200 and above).

Big Five Personality traits

This study adopted a brief measure of Big Five Personality traits – Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) (Gosling, Rentfrow & Swann, 2003), of which the Cron-bach alphas for the Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional

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Stability, and Openness to Experience scales were all above 0.8. Each of the items is made up of two descriptions, with the common stem, ‘‘I see myself as:’’. All of the Big Five personality traits are self-rated by using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly).

Self-determination motivation

In terms of motivation, this study refers the newly developed scale of Gagné et al (2014) - the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS), which consists of 6 scales: amotivation, extrinsic regulation - social, extrinsic regulation - material, introjected regulation, identified regulation and intrinsic motivation. According to the original author of determination theory, Deci and Ryan (2000), we can divide self-determination motivation to three levels: amotivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Introjected regulation, identified regulation and extrinsic - social regulation and extrinsic – material regulation are regarded as the subscalces of extrinsic motivation. The current study will adopt the theory of Deci and Ryan (2000) and use three scales in our analysis: amotivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. These motivation types as reasons to answer the question that “Why do you put efforts into your current job” and respondents should rate the Likert scale from “1=not at all” to “7=completely” for these answers. The alpha value is above 0.8.

Job satisfaction

For job satisfaction, Deci et al. (2001)’s BNS-W (The Basic Need Satisfaction at Work Scale was used. This scale measures three basic needs at work: autonomy (seven items, e.g., “I feel like I can make a lot of inputs to deciding how my job gets done”),

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21 competence (six items, e.g., “People at work tell me I am good at what I do”, and relatedness (eight items, e.g., “I really like the people I work with”). The Seven-Likert scale is adopted for all items (from “1= Not at all true” to “7=Very true”). The alpha value is above 0.8 for Chinese samples.

4.32 Translation process

In order to further improve the reliability and validity of the questionnaire and to better analyse the model in Chinese context, we collected data only from Chinese employees. The survey was originally in English, and in order to improve the response rate and accuracy of the survey, it was translated to Chinese version by the author of the current study (who is a Chinese master student studied full time English course for over 14 years and acquired frequent English, and with Chinese as mother tongue) and checked by another Chinese master student with the similar level of ability and competence in English and Chinese languages. The meaning of items had been paid attention to especially.

5. Results

In this section, we will provide the result analysis to test the hypothesis mentioned above. Firstly, some preliminary data analysis will be presented (such as normality and correlation). Then the model analysis will be found in the second part of results section and the hypothesis will be tested.

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5.1 Preliminary data analysis

Firstly, after the reversed items being recoded and scale means being computed, the mean value and standard deviations of each variable are computed and listed in Table 2. We checked the normality, Skewness and Kurtosis for the next step (the results can also be seen in Table 2). Since our control variables are dummy variables, we didn’t check reliability and normality for them. Except for control variables, all other variables in the current study do not appear the problems with Skewness and Kurtosis, namely, none of the variables was found with the problem of strongly skewed. As for the normality, both Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk test statistics were calculated. Unfortunately, as can be found in Table 2, none of the variables presented significant in both tests except Extrinsic motivation (p>0.05). However, according to Pallant’s (2010) argument, it is very common for large samples to be found not significant in Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and Shapiro-Wilk test, and Pallant’s advice is to check normality with another way, which is by checking the normal Q-Q plot. With this clue, we computed the normal Q-Q plot for all the variables and luckily all of the values were quite close to normal distribution. Therefore, we considered all our variables as normally distributed.

Secondly, under the condition that all the variables are considered normally distributed, we calculated Pearson correlations for all the variables and with all the values summarized in Table 3.

As we can see, amotivation correlates negatively to all Big Five Personality variables, with Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness to experience the highest.

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23 Extrinsic motivation was found to be correlated positively with Extraversion (r=.291, p<0.01), Agreeableness (r=.192, p<0.01) and Conscientiousness (r=.235, p<0.01). Moreover, we found that Extraversion (r=.325, p<0.01), Conscientiousness (r=.223, p<0.01), Emotional stability (r=.249, p<0.01) and Openness to experience (r=.246, p<0.01) correlate positively with intrinsic motivation. As for Job satisfaction, all Big Five Personality variables were found to be correlated positively with it, with Extraversion (r=.331, p<0.01) and Conscientiousness (r=.341, p<0.01) being the highest; amotivation was found negatively correlated with job satisfaction, while both Extrinsic and Intrinsic motivation were found related positively to job satisfaction (with r=.402, p<0.01 and r=.650, p<0.01 respectively). Based on Pallant’s (2010) argument, multicollinearity problems present when variables are extremely correlated which means when correlation coefficient is higher than .9. As is shown in Table 2, no multicollinearity problems are found in the variables of the current study.

To sum up, all of the variables were correlated in the proposed directions and no multicollinearity problems occurred, which is satisfactory for proceeding our model analysis.

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Table 2-Descriptives, skewness, and kurtosis

Variables M SD Skewness SD Kurtosis SD p: Kolmogorov-Smirnov p: Shapiro-Wilk

Extraversion _{4.63 1.10 0.378} _0.179 _-0.049 _0.356 _0.000 _0.000 Agreeableness _{5.03 0.86 0.088} 0.179 _0.783 _0.356 _0.000 _0.000 Conscientiousness _{4.92 1.01 0.088} _0.179 _-0.364 _0.356 _0.000 _0.000 Emotional stability _{4.28 1.04 0.036} _0.179 _-0.244 _0.356 _0.000 _0.000 Openness to experience _{5.17 0.91 -0.073} 0.179 0.074 0.356 0.000 0.000 Amotivation _{2.81 1.19 0.279} _0.179 _0.058 _0.356 _0.000 _0.000 Extrinsic motivation _{4.90 0.73 0.072} _0.179 _0.155 _0.356 _0.003 _0.176* Intrinsic motivation _{4.66 1.27 -0.083} _0.179 _-0.171 _0.356 _0.000 _0.001 Job satisfaction _{4.73 0.56 0.446} _0.179 _0.781 _0.356 _0.001 _0.010 N=184, *p>0.05

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Table 3 - Correlations and Reliabilities

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Variables: 1 Extraversion .87 2 Agreeableness .065 .87 3 Conscientiousness .099 .357** .87 4 Emotional stability .039 .158* .380** .87 5 Openness to experience .459** .14 .168* .117 .87 6 Amotivation -.258** -.214** -.218** -.187* -.232** .86 7 Extrinsic motivation .291** .192** .235** -.031 .143 -.336** .85 8 Intrinsic motivation .325** .105 .223** .249** .246** -.557** .440** .85 9 Job satisfaction .331** .287** .341** .325** .324** -.492** .402** .650** .85 Controls: 10 Gender .02 .071 -.13 -.32 -.083 .162* .002 -.186* -.168* - 11 Age -.125 -.023 .163* -.052 -.263** .114 -.005 -.144 -.111 .135 - 12 Education .082 .050 -.089 .046 .173* .096 -.047 -.098 -.078 .062 -.176* - 13 Tenure -.167* .102 .115 .008 .086 .105 -.137 -.137 .001 -.008 .244** -.113 - 14 Org. Size -.111 .082 .130 .020 -.093 .042 -.029 -.112 -.019 .020 .236** .083 .170* - ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Note: Reliabilities

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5.2 Model analysis

The current study tested the model via parallel mediation analysis. Both of the mediators were included for the model, but for each independent and dependent variable, we conducted separate analyses. Although there are only five pairs of hypotheses in our study, we still conducted 10 parallel mediation computations (5 personalities variables * 2 motivation variables * 1 dependent variable) in order to better investigate the relationship between our variables. In each of these computations, we first conducted Hierarchical multiple regression to control variables, five independent variables and dependent variable to test the influence of the Big Five personality traits on job satisfaction after controlling gender, age, education level, tenure and organization size.

Secondly, we tested the same Hierarchical multiple regression to control variables, five independent variables and two mediators in order to investigate the Big Five personality trait’s impact on both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation after controlling the control variables.

Finally, we conducted a bootstrapping test to compute the indirect effect of each one of the independent variables on the dependent variable with two mediators in parallel and four other independent variables as covariates. This step was aimed at investigating the indirect effect or mediating effect of each one of the Big Five personality traits on job satisfaction via extrinsic or intrinsic motivation respectively.

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27 These steps were conducted utilizing Linear Regression Analysis and Model 4 of the Macro PROCESS (Hayers, 2013) in SPSS. In our computations, we calculated 95% confidence intervals and standard errors for each effect and for bias correction we chose 1,000 bootstrap samples.

Firstly, to examine how much of the variance in job satisfaction was explained by personality traits, we conducted a Hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results can be found in Table 4. In the first step of hierarchical multiple regression, five predictors were entered: gender, age, education, tenure and organization size. Only gender has significant associations with job satisfaction (β =-.147; p<0.05, this data means that male employees report higher levels of job satisfaction) and this model as a whole was not significant, with F(5,178)=1.633; p>0.05. After entry of the Big Five personality variables in the next step, the model is statistically significant and explained 32% of the variance in job satisfaction, with F(10,173)=8.125; p<0.001. All of the Big Five personality variables were significantly associated with job satisfaction. With regard to each one of the Big Five personality traits, our hypotheses stated that Conscientiousness, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, Emotional stability and Extraversion positively associates with job satisfaction. As we can see in our results, Conscientiousness relates positively to job satisfaction (β=.0142, p<0.05), Extraversion relates positively to job satisfaction (β=.240, p<0.001), Agreeableness relates positively to job satisfaction (β=.178, p<0.05), and Openness to experience relates positively to job satisfaction (β=.143, p<0.05). Emotional stability was found also to be related positively to job satisfaction (β=.195, p<0.01). Therefore, all of the Hypothesis with

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regard to the relationship of personality and job satisfaction was supported by our results and we will provide explanation in Discussion section.

Table 4 - Effects of Personality variables on Job satisfaction

Step 1 Step 2 Controls: Gender -.147* -.074 Age -.114 -.072 Education -.089 -.135* Tenure .015 .017 Org. Size .016 .011 Personalities: Conscientiousness .142* Extraversion .240*** Emotional stability .195** Openness to experience .143* Agreeableness .178* R-square .044 .320 F 1.633 8.125 Δf1 5 10 Δf2 178 173 p .154 .000 n = 184, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. R-square change = .276

Secondly, we computed the effects of control variables and independent variables on mediators in order to test how demographic factors and personality traits associate with extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The results are summarized in Table 5 & 6. As we can see in Table 5, in the first step of hierarchical multiple regression, five control variables were entered and the model has no significant associations with extrinsic motivation, with F(5,178)=0.085; p>0.05. After entry of the Big Five personality variables in the next step, the model is statistically significant and explained 18% of the

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29 variance in extrinsic motivation, with F(10,173)=3.801; p<0.001. As for the impact of each one of the Big Five personality traits on extrinsic motivation, according to our hypotheses, Extraversion, Emotional stability and Agreeableness of the Big Five personality traits associates positively with extrinsic motivation, while Conscientiousness and Openness to experience associates with extrinsic motivation in unknown direction. Two of these hypotheses were supported. Extraversion was found to be associated positively with extrinsic motivation (β=.255, p<0.01) and Conscientiousness was found to be associated positively with extrinsic motivation (β=.227, p<0.01).

Table 5 - Effects of Personality variables on Extrinsic motivation

Step 1 Step 2 Controls: Gender .001 -.034 Age .022 .014 Education -.060 -.055 Tenure -.149 -.144 Org. Size -.004 -.014 Personalities: Conscientiousness .227** Extraversion .255** Emotional stability -0.154 Openness to experience -.018 Agreeableness .143 R-square .023 .180 F .850 3.801 Δf1 5 10 Δf2 178 173 p .516 .000 n = 184, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. R-square change = .157

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For intrinsic motivation, in the first step of hierarchical multiple regression, we found gender has significant associations with intrinsic motivation (β =-.165, p<0.05) and this model as a whole was also significant, with F(5,178)=0.079; p<0.05. After entry of the Big Five personality variables in the next step, the model is statistically significant and explained 23.2% of the variance in intrinsic motivation, with F(10,173)=0.323; p<0.001. All of the Big Five personality variables were significantly associated with extrinsic motivation and explained 15.3% of variance in extrinsic motivation after controlling gender, age, education, tenure and organization size (R-square change=.153). As for the impact of each one of the Big Five personality traits on intrinsic motivation, according to our hypotheses, all of the Big Five personality traits associates positively with intrinsic motivation. Two of these hypotheses were supported. Extraversion was found to be associated positively with intrinsic motivation (β=.256, p<0.01) and Emotional stability was found to be associated positively with intrinsic motivation (β=.150, p<0.05).

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31 Table 6 - Effects of Personality variables on Intrinsic motivation

Step 1 Step 2 Controls: Gender -.165* -.104 Age -.101 -.082 Education -.115 -.144 Tenure -.118 -.097 Org. Size -.055 -.049 Personalities: Conscientiousness .120 Extraversion .256** Emotional stability .150* Openness to experience .067 Agreeableness .039 R-square .079 .232 F 3.041 5.223 Δf1 5 10 Δf2 178 173 p .012 .000 n = 184, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. R-square change = .153

In the next step, we conducted a bootstrapping test to verify the mediating effects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on the relationship of personality traits and job satisfaction. In the first place, the direct effects of Big Five personality traits on job satisfactions were summarized in Table 7.

Table 7 - Direct effects of Personality variables on Job satisfaction

Personality variables Effect SE t p LLCI ULCI Conscientiousness .0424 .0339 .2489 .2133 -.0246 .1093 Extraversion .0356 .0313 1.1373 .2570 -.0262 .0973 Emotional stability .0760 .0316 2.4007 .0174 .0135 .1384 Agreeableness .0962 .0367 2.6194 .0096 .0237 .1687 Openness to experience .0666 .0366 1.8202 .0704 -.0056 .1389 n=184

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According to Duffy et al. (2011), we can consider a relationship to be significant when zero is not included in between with the upper and lower limits confidence intervals. As can be seen in Table 7, for direct effects, only Emotional stability and Agreeableness showed significant in their relationship to job satisfaction. However, the results make no difference for our following computation of indirect effects since indirect effects are for testing mediating effects of self-determination motivation in the relationship of personality and job satisfaction.

Based on the results and conclusion that we discussed about the relationships between personality, motivation and job satisfaction before, we can ignore the results of the unsupported relationship in the following mediation test and focus on the supported relationships. The indirect effects of Big Five personality variables and job satisfaction via extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation are summarized in Table 8 (see nest page). As was mentioned before, according to Duffy et al. (2011), we can consider a relationship to be significant when zero is not included in between with the upper and lower limits confidence intervals. As was shown in this table, extrinsic motivation mediates the relationship of Extraversion and job satisfaction (SE=.0106, CI=.0002-.0432). Moreover, intrinsic motivation was found to mediate the relationship of Emotional stability and job satisfaction (SE=.0221, CI=.0089-.1001). Extrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between Conscientiousness and job satisfaction (SE=.0101, CI=.0003-.0419) and intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship of Extraversion and job satisfaction (SE=.0237, CI=.02743-.1199). The supported relationships and their directions are presented in Table 9.

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33 Table 8 - Indirect effect of Personality variables on Job satisfaction

Extrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation

Personality variables Effect BootSE Boot LLCI Boot UlCI Effect Boot SE Boot LLCI Boot ULCI

Conscientiousness .0138 .0101 .0003 .0419 .0296 .0241 -.0120 .0845 Extraversion .0157 .0106 .0002 .0432 .0669 .0237 .0274 .1199 Emotional stability -.0086 0073 -.0306 .0007 .0488 .0221 .0089 .1001 Agreeableness .0088 .0094 -.0019 .0338 .0024 .0259 -.0484 .0530 Openness to experience -.0015 .0078 -.0229 .0120 .0243 .0266 -.0350 .0723 n=184

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6. Discussion

In this section, the main findings of the current study will be discussed. Of course, this study is not without limitations, therefore we will also discuss limitations. Moreover, both the theoretical and practical implications will be provided as well, together with the advice for future study. First, we will start with the explanation of the main findings.

6.1 Main findings

The main purpose of the current study is to investigate the relationship of Big Five personality traits, self-determination motivation and job satisfactions with regard to Chinese employee and test if self-determination motivation can play the role of mediator in the relationship of personality and job satisfaction. We will discuss our results in detail.

Table 9 – The relationship of Personality and job satisfaction and Mediating effects

Hypo No. Independent variables Mediators Direction

1 Conscientiousness Intrinsic motivation N.S 2 Extraversion + 3 Emotional stability + 4 Agreeableness N.S 5 Openness to experience N.S 6 Conscientiousness Extrinsic motivation + 7 Extraversion + 8 Emotional stability N.S 9 Agreeableness N.S 10 Openness to experience N.S

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35 Firstly, for the relationship of personality and job satisfaction, we found that all of the Big Five Personality traits have a significant positive link to job satisfaction. For the previous findings on this relationship, there are contradictions (as was mentioned in Literature review section). Some of the researchers found that Big Five personality traits did not contribute significantly to job satisfaction and it only explained 3-5% variance of job satisfaction (Tokar & Subich, 1997, Furnham et al., 1996, 2002). However, the current study found that personality was related significantly to job satisfaction and it explained 27.6% variance of job satisfaction. Other researchers found that isolated items of Big Five personality traits can predict job satisfaction, especially Emotional stability, conscientiousness, (Judge et al., 2002; Bruk-Lee et al., 2009; Bipp & Kleingeld, 2011,) and Extraversion (Judge et al., 2002). While the current study found that all Big Five personality traits which predict job satisfaction most strongly are Emotional stability and Extraversion.

Secondly, for the relationship of Big Five Personality traits and self-determination motivation, only four of our hypotheses was supported (H2, H3, H6 and H7), namely, we found that Chinese employees who are high in Extraversion and Conscientiousness were motivated extrinsically, and Chinese employees who are high in Emotional Stability and Extraversion were motivated intrinsically. Among them, we had an unexpected finding: Conscientiousness was found to link to extrinsic motivation other than intrinsic motivation (it is different from the previous evidences), and we will discuss and explain in the following unexpected findings section. To sum up, for the relationship of Big Five personality traits and self-determination motivation, we found

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the significant relationship of Conscientiousness and extrinsic motivation, Extraversion and both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and Emotional stability and intrinsic motivation. Since there are not much research findings with regard to the link between Big Five personality traits and intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, our study adds some new findings to the literature.

Finally, for the mediating effects, our results indicated four of our hypotheses were supported, namely, that extrinsic motivation can mediate the relationship of Extraversion & Conscientiousness and job satisfaction when it comes to Chinese employees, and intrinsic motivation can mediate the relationship of Emotional stability & Extraversion and job satisfaction. These findings revealed that Chinese employees who are high in Extraversion and Conscientiousness will be motivated extrinsically and thus have higher levels of job satisfaction, and that Chinese employees who are more emotionally stable and Extraverted will be motivated intrinsically and thus have higher levels of job satisfaction. These findings add some hints to the literature and have both important theoretical and practical implications, and implications will be discussed later.

6.11 Unexpected findings and National factors

During the data analysis process, except for the investigation of hypotheses, we had an unexpected finding: Conscientiousness was found to be associated with extrinsic motivation instead of intrinsic motivation. As was mentioned in the literature review, most of the existing literature evidences showed the link between Conscientiousness and intrinsic motivation, however, it is different in our result. The author of the current

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37 study found an important possible reason for this difference: National factors (There may also exist other reasons could be bias caused by research procedure such as self-rated scales or data analysis method, this will be discussed in limitation section). As was noted in the argumentation in the literature review and verified by our results, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are positively related to job satisfaction, however, the relationships can also be influenced by other factors. A salient impact comes from the extent to which employees value intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, namely, the employees’ preference towards intrinsic or extrinsic motivation (Mottaz, 1985). And as a nature, the employees value and preferences are influenced by cross-national differences automatically (Hofstede, 1991, 2001). These cross-national differences can be the power of countries, condition of governmental social welfare programs and so on. It was revealed by some researchers that employees’ intrinsic work motivation would be less related to job satisfaction and on the contrary, extrinsic motivation would be more related to job satisfaction in less powerful, less individualistic countries (Kaunago, 1990; Diener et al., 2009). A more recent study of researchers from Hong kong, China and Netherlands also found similar results: they collected data from 107,292 employees in 49 countries and found that the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction is stronger in richer countries, more individualistic countries and countries with better governmental social welfare programs while the positive link of extrinsic motivation and job satisfaction can be found in all countries (Huang & Van de Vliert, 2003). China, as a typical developing country, although it experienced fast boosting developments in recent decades, still has to catch up with

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other developed countries with regard to average richness levels, governmental social welfare programs and individualistic levels. In the society of China, money plays a more important role than interest, namely, it is easier to motivate Chinese employees with money or rewards (extrinsic motivations) than with interest (intrinsic motivation). Therefore, it is plausible that we found this mediating effect of extrinsic motivation on the relationship of Conscientiousness and job satisfaction.

6.2 Implication, limitations and future research

6.21 Theoretical implications

The current study investigated the relationship of Big Five Personality traits, self-determination of motivation and job satisfaction, and it contributes to the literature about these topics in the following aspects:

In the first place, the current study investigated the relationship of Big Five Personality traits and job satisfaction, it proved again that Big Five Personality traits can act as the predictors of job satisfaction and adds more evidence to the study of this relationship.

Secondly, since there are few studies on the link of Big Five Personality traits and self-determination motivation, the finding of the current study makes it more clear that Big Five Personality traits can predict both intrinsic and extrinsic and how to predict them. Moreover, the finding about the mediating effects made the current study one of the first research about the mediating effects of self-determination motivation on the

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39 relationship of Big Five Personality traits and job satisfaction. These add important evidence to the mechanism of individual differences in the work context.

Finally, what is more important is that the unexpected finding of this study reveals the fact that cross-national factors could also be an important influential factors in our research, and researchers should pay more attention to this issue.

6.22 Limitation and future research

Except for the contributions in both theoretical and practical aspects, this study is not without limitations.

Firstly, there are some limitations about the sample. Even though the size of the sample (N=184) has reached an acceptable standard, it still a relatively small sample. A small sample limits the generalization. Although the sample varies in gender, field of industry, tenure and organization size, the majority of our respondents are highly educated (92.9% are bachelor or above, 41.8% are master or above) and young people (Mean age=28). There is a large number of literature stated that education level (e.g. Ross & Reskin, 1992; Hindle & Cutting, 2002) and age (e.g. Bedeian, Ferris & Kacmar, 1992) would influence job satisfaction. These limit of generalization will bias the results.

Secondly, the data was collected via online surveys and all of the items on the questionnaires are self-rated, therefore this would lead to validity problems because of respondents’ way of thinking. For example, employees would rate themselves more

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extraverted or conscientious than how they really are. And some employees would rate a higher level of job satisfaction than reality because of their mood and emotion.

Thirdly, this study was planning to adopt the 44-item BFI which is one of the most widely used measures of Big Five Personality traits, with the coefficient alpha reliabilities of 0.83 (John & Srivastava, 1999). However, since 44 items were too much for the questionnaire of the current study and in order to increase response rate, we adopted a briefer measure of Big Five Personality traits – Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) which reached adequate levels of criteria as well. While this inventory contains only two questions for each of the Big Five personality traits, it might not be able to define the respondents’ personality accurately and this will lead to the bias to our result.

As for the suggestions for future research, there are following aspects: Firstly about the data collection procedure, future research should increase the sample size and involve respondents with different education and age levels. It is better to use dyads of supervisor and subordinate to take part in the survey in order to avoid the limitation of self-rating. Moreover, it’s better to use an inventory with more and detailed scales about personality. Secondly, this study found that extraverted employees can be motivated both extrinsically and intrinsically, and we didn’t solve the problem that which way of motivation is better for extraverted employees and generate higher levels of job satisfaction. We hope that there will be more research on this topic. Thirdly, there are several subscales for extrinsic motivation such as external regulation, introjected

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41 regulation, identified regulation and integrated regulation. This study did not include these subscales and investigate their roles and we think this is a good direction for future research. Finally, future research should make more detailed studies on the cross-national factor, and add scales with regard to cross-national factors such as individualistic level of the country, richness level of the country into the survey.

6.23 Practical implications

Personality of employees can act as important predictors of motivation and job satisfaction, and it can predict job satisfaction through the mediating effect of motivation. In general, the findings of the current study provide an idea to management practitioners that knowing the personality of employees would help making decisions on how to motivate employees and how to enhance their job satisfaction, in order to increase their productivity, creativity and so on. For example, for Chinese employees who are high in Conscientiousness are most likely to be motivated by extrinsic motivation. By motivating them in this way, their job satisfaction will also be increased. For employees who are high in Emotional stability, they will be more likely to be motivated intrinsically, and thus have higher levels of job satisfaction. However, for Extraversion employee, they can be motivated both intrinsically and extrinsically, therefore more research needed on this point. Even though there exist limitations, our study did contribute to the practical management from the aspects of personality and motivation.

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7. Conclusion

In conclusion, the current study extends our understanding of the significant role of Big Five personality traits and self-determination motivation in explaining job satisfaction. It sets up a very good foundation for future research on these topics and enlightens management practitioners on the strategies to improve employees’ motivation and job satisfaction by taking employees’ personality traits into consideration.

Acknowledgements

This final version of thesis represents the final step of completing my Master study in University of Amsterdam. Here I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor Dr. Wendelien van Eerde for her guidance and useful comments. Also, I would like to thank the people who participated in the data collection of this study.

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An investigation of the relationship between Big Five Personality traits and job satisfaction in Chinese work context : using self-determination motivation as a mediator

Master Thesis