Role of NEO Five Factor Model of Personality in Management Education: An Empirical Study‪.‬

It is often argued that, besides cognitive abilities, a blend of personality characteristics is necessary for people to be successful in education and eventually in their jobs or careers (Smithikrai 2007). Recent research has demonstrated that personality assessment contributes unique information to the prediction of job performance, over and above that offered by methods such as cognitive ability testing and managerial assessment centres (Goffin, Rothstein & Johnson 1996). Progress has been made in recent years in understanding the structure and the concepts of personality (Dunn, Barrick & Ones 1995). In principle, personality measurement should sample elements or aspects of an individual's behaviour that are diagnostic of importance characteristics of people in general. These diagnostic behaviour samples should on the one hand, allow us to compare different people against the same standard and, on the other hand, allow us to interpret what a person has done and predict what he or she will do in other important non-test situations. Both processes -comparisons among people and interpretations of individual cases -are important tasks in industrial and organizational psychology (Hogan 1991). With the introduction and general acceptance of the five-factor model (FFM), also known as the 'Big Five' (Goldberg 1990) in the early 1990s, research examining the link between personality and work behaviour has been intensified. The FFM dimensions have been replicated in an impressive series of studies across countries and cultures and have remained fairly stable over time (McCrae 8Costa 1997, McCrae, Terracciano 878 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project 2005, Salgado 1997, and Tett, Jackson, and Rothstein 1991). These studies show that the most relevant personality factors which predict job performance are Conscientiousness and Emotional stability. The five-factor model of personality is obtaining construct validation, recognition, and practical consideration across a broad domain of fields, including clinical psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and health psychology (Widiger & Trull 1997).