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A specific area of interest in the coaching literature is focused on exploring the intersection of personality and coaching; however, research has yet to explore whether coaching exerts reciprocal effects on personality traits (i.e. if personality trait change can accompany coaching). Utilizing the explanatory theoretical framing of the Demands-Affordances TrAnsactional framework (Woods et al., 2019), we propose that coaching may indirectly facilitate personality trait change by firstly enabling the coachee to reflect on their behaviors, second, implement desired behavioral changes which consequently facilitate personality trait change.

A quasi-experiment was conducted to explore coaching and personality trait change. Students participating in a demanding, work-based team simulation (N = 258), were assigned to either an intervention group (and received one-to-one coaching) or a control group (who received no intervention). Personality traits were measured before and after coaching and positioned as the dependent variable.

Results indicate that participants in the coaching group exhibited significant changes in self-reported agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and core self-evaluations, which all significantly decreased after coaching; however, no change was observed for the control group.

We provide the first exploration of coaching and personality trait change, contributing to both the coaching literature, by providing evidence regarding the efficacy of coaching to facilitate personality trait change in coachees, and the personality literature, by highlighting coaching as an important tool for those interested in personality trait change. Our research also has implications for other interventions such as mentoring, as we provide support for the notion that interventions can support personality trait change.

In order to address the need for greater understanding about the occupational and practice determinants of effective workplace coaching, the purpose of this paper is to examine the associations of two coaching practice factors (coaching format and external vs internal coaching provision), and coachees’ job complexity with perceived outcomes from coaching.

A survey of 161 individuals who had received workplace coaching was conducted. Participants provided data on two outcome criteria (self-reported work well-being and personal effectiveness at work).

Analysis indicated that external coaches and blended format coaching were most strongly associated with work well-being outcomes. The examination of interaction effects showed that coaching provided by external coaches was more strongly associated with outcomes for individuals working in the most complex job roles.

The original contribution of the authors’ findings is in terms of the implications for coaches, managers and HR practitioners by showing how coaching can be implemented differentially and most effectively based on desired outcome criteria and features of coachees’ job situations.

This paper reviews literature on interim leadership and management through the lens of effective interim performance. The purpose of this review is to advance understanding of interim assignment performance and the antecedent individual psychological characteristics of effective interim leaders and managers, to improve the practice of managing interim leaders from a human resources (HR) perspective.

The paper reports a targeted review of the literature on interim leadership and management.

The main proposition from this review is that the influence of individual factors on interim performance operates within the stages and contexts of assignments. Accordingly, the authors propose a framework of the demands on interim assignments (the interim assignment cycle), comprising stages of preparation, entry, delivery and exit. The paper subsequently reviews evidence of the potential individual characteristics (focussing on individual differences in personality, leadership approach, motivation and competencies) of effective preparation and entry to an assignment, actions and performance during an assignment and exit/disengagement.

The findings of the review have implications for the selection and placement of interims into organizations and their management once appointed.

The main original contribution of the paper is to provide a framework around which interim assignments can be modelled and better understood. The paper discusses implications for future research, theory and human resource management practice and calls for a renewed research effort in this critical area of management and leadership.

The literature on individual differences in innovative work behavior (IWB) reveals inconsistencies in the relations of personality traits and tenure on innovation at work. To provide greater clarity about the effects of these antecedents, the purpose of this paper is to report a study of the moderating effects of tenure on the associations of traits and IWB, and apply a theoretical lens based on the trait-activation theory.

In all, 146 employees of a UK-based financial institution completed measures of conscientiousness and openness, and had three aspects of IWB (idea generation, promotion, and realization) rated by their line-supervisor. All participants were on graduate training programs. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the moderating effects of tenure on the associations of the self-reported traits with the supervisor-rated IWB outcomes.

Tenure moderated the effects of conscientiousness on IWB, with highly conscientious employees being less innovative with longer tenure. Tenure moderated the effect of openness with idea generation with highly open employees generating more ideas if they were longer tenured.

Management of innovation requires differentiated strategies based on the personality traits and tenure of individual employees. Implications for recruitment, socialization and development are discussed.

This is the first study to examine empirically the interactions of traits and contextual factors (i.e. organizational tenure) on IWB, framed around a strong theoretical foundation (i.e. trait activation theory). The study also makes notable contributions by measuring innovative behavior using a supervisor-rated and multidimensional approach.

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of personality traits of the Big Five model on training outcomes to help explain variation in training effectiveness.

Associations of the Big Five with self-reported learning following training were tested in a pre- and post-design in a field sample of junior medical practitioners (N = 99), who attended a training workshop on self-awareness. Associations are reported of personality traits with post-training learning measured immediately following the workshop and one-month later controlling for pre-training learning.

Conscientiousness was related to post-training learning at both times. None of the remaining Big Five factors were associated with post-training learning.

The study contributes to the literature on personality and training outcomes, clarifying the associations of traits with outcomes in a pre-and-post design. Although the study sample has limitations, the findings have implications for numerous lines of future research, in particular in understanding the role of training in relations of personality and job performance.

Practitioners should consider ways to encourage training participants to approach training conscientiously. Personality assessment might help people reflect on their approach to learning to adapt it during training.

No study has previously examined the role of personality traits in training outcomes using a pre- and post-design. The role of conscientiousness in workplace learning is underlined by the findings. While dimensions such as openness and extraversion may encourage people to participate in training, conscientiousness may make the difference in promoting internalized individual development and change following training.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the role of personality in occupational specialty choice, to better understand how and in what ways personality traits might influence vocational development after a person has chosen a career.

The study tested hypotheses in a sample of UK medical students, each of whom had chosen their specialty pathway, and completed a measure of the Big Five personality traits. Associations of the junior doctor’s Big Five personality traits with the Holland’s realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional (RIASEC) profiles of their medical specialty selections (derived from the O*NET database) were examined.

Findings provided good support for the hypotheses. Junior doctors’ agreeableness (with social) and neuroticism (with realistic, artistic and enterprising) were the main predictors of the RIASEC profiles of their specialty selections.

The findings suggest that personality traits influence specialty selection in predictable ways, and differently compared to occupational choice. The paper discusses findings within a theoretical framework that explains how and why trait influences on within occupational specialty selection differ from influences on occupational interest and choice more broadly. The potential mechanisms underlying these associations are explored in the context of motivational aspects of agreeableness and neuroticism.

Within-occupation specialties should feature in career guidance discussions and interventions more explicitly to enable people to decide whether occupational specialties are available that appeal to their individual differences.

This is the first study to examine the relations of personality and occupational specialty through the lens of the RIASEC model, and the first to propose cross-occupation theoretical pathways from personality to specialty choice. The data from the field of medicine enable us to test the propositions in a suitably diverse set of occupational specialties.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a quality management (QM) philosophy underlies the joint use of operations and human resource management practices, and the relationships with job-related contentment and performance.

Data from an economy-wide survey are used to test hypotheses via latent variable analyses (latent trait and latent class models) and structural equation models. The sensitivity of each path is then assessed using regression models.

Different elements rather than a unified philosophy are identified. A managerial approach that integrates total QM and just-in-time procedures is rare, but is associated with the quality of the product or service delivered. Labor productivity and quality are independent of the level of job-related contentment in the workplace. Although the average workforce is content, high involvement management and motivational support practices are associated with job anxiety. On the positive side, job enrichment is linked to labor productivity, thus suggesting potential gains through job design.

The study adds evidence from a national sample about a comprehensive range of management practices, and suggests distinct outcomes from different elements of QM. Additionally, it shows that performance expectations based on previous studies may not hold in large nationwide heterogeneous samples.

Black marks for moulding The Rubber and Plastics Research Association is to present the outcome of its survey of productivity in thermo‐plastics custom moulding at a symposium at Shawbury, Salop, on November 17.

Organizational climate has been shown to predict job satisfaction and other employee attitudes. Using the concept of organizational climate, strength has shown mixed success. However, diversity in psychological climate at the individual level has not been explored. The paper aims to introduce a new individual‐level concept: relative psychological climate paper.

Using the example of supportive leadership climate, the significance of this concept for predicting job satisfaction is assessed. Data from a large national British survey (the Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004) of 19,993 employees within 1,593 workplaces are used.

Workplace supportive leadership climate quality, climate strength and individual relative leadership climate position are shown to be significantly associated with job satisfaction. So is the interaction of climate quality and climate strength. When all three variables are assessed simultaneously, only the individual relative position and the climate quality are substantially related to job satisfaction.

Individual relative climate is introduced and the shows that this new concept is related to job satisfaction, thereby demonstrating its usefulness in climate research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of entrepreneurs’ personality traits on firm innovation performance through the mediation role of entrepreneurs’ innovativeness.

The data consist of 2,574 firms from a survey of small and medium-scale manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam, a developing and transitioning economy where SMEs constitute an integral part of the economy. The estimation results based on the structural equation model was applied to analyze the data.

The results indicate that an entrepreneur’s innovativeness is positively associated with his extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience but negatively accompanied with his neuroticism. Besides, the three traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness and extraversion have positive indirect effects, while neuroticism has a negative indirect effect on technological improvement and new technology adoption. However, the effects of agreeableness on entrepreneurial innovativeness and firm innovation performance are insignificant. In addition, the diverse backgrounds of the entrepreneur such as education and ethnics are also found to influence his innovativeness and to have indirect effects on firm innovation performance.

This study may contribute to the immature literature on the entrepreneurial process within SMEs by presenting empirical evidence on the relationship between entrepreneurial personality traits and firm innovation with a large sample of SMEs in Vietnam, an emerging economy where SMEs constitute an integral part of the economy.