A Closer Look at the Personality-Turnover Relationship

Abstract

Recent advances in the personality and turnover literatures suggest the importance of expanding current turnover criteria, incorporating dark personality traits, and examining the role of time in these relationships. The present study investigates these issues by considering both the speed and the reasons for leaving, examining a wider range of personality variables as predictors by including both “bright” and “dark” traits, and exploring the potential moderating effect of time in such predictions. Data were collected from a sample of 617 employees working in an electronics manufacturing firm in the United States. Using a Bayesian survival analysis framework, we found that dark traits were just as useful in predicting turnover outcomes as traditional personality traits and best predicted the specific turnover reasons, “deviant behavior” and “no call no show.” Investigating the role of time showed that job satisfaction and intellectual curiosity (i.e., Openness) grew in predictive strength over the course of organizational tenure but that the time-dependent effects of other predictors were negligible.