Journal of Applied Psychology Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association

2004, Vol. 89, No. 5, 835– 853 0021-9010/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.835

The Big Five Personality Traits and Individual Job Performance Growth
Trajectories in Maintenance and Transitional Job Stages

Carl J. Thoresen Jill C. Bradley

Tulane University and Cornerstone Management Resource Tulane University
Systems, Inc.

Paul D. Bliese Joseph D. Thoresen

U.S. Army Medical Research Unit—Europe, Cornerstone Management Resource Systems, Inc.
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research

This study extends the literature on personality and job performance through the use of random
coefficient modeling to test the validity of the Big Five personality traits in predicting overall sales
performance and sales performance trajectories— or systematic patterns of performance growth—in 2
samples of pharmaceutical sales representatives at maintenance and transitional job stages (K. R.
Murphy, 1989). In the maintenance sample, conscientiousness and extraversion were positively associ-
ated with between-person differences in total sales, whereas only conscientiousness predicted perfor-
mance growth. In the transitional sample, agreeableness and openness to experience predicted overall
performance differences and performance trends. All effects remained significant with job tenure
statistically controlled. Possible explanations for these findings are offered, and theoretical and practical
implications of findings are discussed.

Organizational researchers have long been interested in relation-
ships between personality traits and job performance. With the
resurgent interest in trait theories of personality and the “discov-
ery” of the Big Five model of trait structure (e.g., Goldberg, 1990;
Tupes & Christal, 1992), research in this area has flourished.
Authors of personality–performance studies (e.g., Bing &
Lounsbury, 2000; Crant, 1995; Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen,
2002; Stewart, 1999) frequently make the implicit assumption that
performance is a stable construct and thus rely on cross-sectional,
one-time (as opposed to multiple-time) measures of performance
to capture something that by its very nature unfolds across time. In
large part, studies of the relationship between personality and static
performance measures have been the norm despite longstanding
evidence that performance is dynamic (Bass, 1962; Ghiselli, 1956;
Ghiselli & Haire, 1960).
Carl J. Thoresen, Department of Psychology, Tulane University, and
Cornerstone Management Resource Systems, Inc., Carnegie, Pennsylvania;
Jill C. Bradley, Department of Psychology, Tulane University; Paul D.
Bliese, U.S. Army Medical Research Unit—Europe, Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research; Joseph D. Thoresen, Cornerstone Management Re-
source Systems, Inc.
We acknowledge Dave Hofmann and several other members of Re-
search Methods Network (RMNET) for advice concerning data analysis for
our study and are grateful for the assistance of Sally Porter and Mary
Westermann for their clerical and data management assistance. Our thanks
also go to José Cortina for his insightful contributions. Any errors are ours
alone.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Carl J.
Thoresen, Cornerstone Management Resource Systems, Inc., 212 Mary
Street, Carnegie, PA 15106. E-mail: carl@cornerstone-mgtdev.com
Incorrect assumptions about the stability of performance might
result in erroneous conclusions about personality–performance
relationships. These assumptions could be quite costly to organi-
zations that rely on such research findings to make selection and
training decisions. As noted by Hanges, Schneider, and Niles
(1990), “Every personnel decision in organizations is predicated
on the belief that long-term performance can be pre-
dicted. . . . Thus the degree to which performance is stable has
direct implications for the accuracy of any personnel decision” (p.
658). Indeed, if personnel selection decisions are based on a
top– down model using trait measures demonstrated to be valid
predictors of performance at a particular point in time and the
rank-ordering of individuals on the criterion significantly changes
with time and experience, the utility of such a system likely would
be compromised (Deadrick & Madigan, 1990; Henry & Hulin,
1987, 1989; Hulin, Henry, & Noon, 1990).
Given the centrality of these two areas of inquiry—the nature of
relationships between personality traits and job performance and
the changing nature of performance across time—it is somewhat
surprising that more research has not attempted to integrate these
two literatures. In fact, authors of recent reviews have pointed to
the need to examine motivational constructs such as personality
traits in the context of more sophisticated models of individual
performance change (Steele-Johnson, Osburn, & Pieper, 2000). In
the current study we attempted to achieve such an integration by
capitalizing on recent innovations in the measurement of change.
In so doing, we drew upon Murphy’s (1989) distinction between
job performance at maintenance versus transitional job stages.
First, we advanced hypotheses concerning different patterns of
performance change or growth for employees working in these two
divergent job conditions. Second, we used the familiar Big Five

835
836 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN
framework to generate substantive hypotheses about individual
differences in performance trajectories—which we defined as id-
iosyncratic patterns of systematic performance growth across a
specified period of time or a series of performance observa-
tions—at both maintenance and transitional job stages.
Logistics of Performance Change Measurement
Once performance is conceptualized as a dynamic construct, the
matter of how to measure performance change arises. Devising
correct methods for the study of change is a problem that long has
plagued research in all areas of scientific psychology (Cronbach &
Furby, 1970), and the industrial– organizational field is no excep-
tion (Lance, Vandenberg, & Self, 2000). Fortunately, new statis-
tical techniques provide sophisticated strategies for answering
questions about intraindividual performance change. In particular,
use of random coefficient modeling (RCM; Bliese & Ployhart,
2002), also known as hierarchical linear modeling (Bryk &
Raudenbush, 1992; Davison, Kwak, Seo, & Choi, 2002; Hofmann,
1997), has led to great advancements in this area.
One of the primary advantages of RCM is its ability to simul-
taneously estimate within-person (Level 1; L1) and between-
person (Level 2; L2) effects across time. L1 analyses concern
performance stability and change—specifically, the extent to
which mean levels of performance for a group of individuals
change across a specified period of time. For example, perfor-
mance may increase or decrease at a linear rate, accelerate or
decelerate (evidenced by significant higher order polynomial
terms), or display some combination of these trends (Mitchell &
James, 2001; Ployhart & Hakel, 1998; Raudenbush, 2001; Willett
& Sayer, 1994). Conversely, L2 analyses address whether individ-
ual difference variables (e.g., abilities, personality traits) predict
both between-person differences in overall performance across a
specified period of time (L2 intercept parameters; which we refer
to from this point forward as mean performance differences) and
individual differences in shapes of performance trajectories— or
rates of change—across this specified period (L2 slopes; Bliese &
Ployhart, 2002).
Performance Change and the Job Stage Context
Perhaps nowhere are the issues of individual differences in
performance change more salient than in job stage research. In an
oft-cited theoretical piece, Murphy (1989) distinguished between
maintenance and transitional job stages (see also Deadrick, Ben-
nett, & Russell, 1997; Dodd, Wollowick, & McNamara, 1970).
Murphy defined the maintenance stage as a point at which “the
worker has learned to perform all major job tasks and is no longer
confronted with situations that present novel or unpredictable
demands” (p. 190). In contrast, the transitional period involves a
stage when “methods of operation are undefined; the workers must
learn new skills and tasks and make decisions about unfamiliar
topics” (p. 190). Thus, some form of change (usually an increase)
in job performance is expected during the transitional job stage as
workers familiarize themselves with job-specific demands.
Murphy (1989) originally proposed that cognitive ability would
be most highly predictive of performance during transitional
stages, which require learning of new knowledge and skills. In
contrast, volitional dispositional factors would predict perfor-
mance during maintenance or steady-state stages. That is, once the
necessary knowledge and skills have been obtained, personality
traits should become key forces in determining job-related behav-
ior. In support of this reasoning, Keil and Cortina (2001) used
meta-analysis to demonstrate a temporal deterioration of the va-
lidity of general cognitive ability for predicting performance of a
variety of tasks, with the degree of validity deterioration being
greatest for consistent (i.e., easily routinized or automated) tasks
than for more complex ones.
Although considerable research has been conducted examining
cognitive ability and performance change, relatively little research
effort has been directed at understanding the role of personality
and dynamic criteria within the context of Murphy’s (1989) main-
tenance and transitional job stage model. Stewart (1999) found that
conscientiousness was positively associated with sales perfor-
mance for both maintenance and transitional stage employees. In
subsequent analyses, Stewart found that the order component of
conscientiousness was more strongly related to performance for
transitional employees, whereas the achievement component was a
better predictor of performance for maintenance employees. On
the basis of these results, Stewart concluded that “when the crite-
rion is dynamic, broad traits such as conscientiousness may be
appropriate [for selection] because they exhibit robust relation-
ships with the various behaviors that affect success over time” (p.
966). However, because of the cross-sectional nature of his study’s
design, Stewart was unable to explicitly model individual perfor-
mance trajectories in these two samples as a function of
conscientiousness.
Level 1 Predictions
One possible reason that personality traits have rarely been
examined in longitudinal analyses of performance among job
incumbents at different job stages is that the categorical distinction
between maintenance and transitional stages is difficult to opera-
tionalize. Murphy (1989) argued that people experience transition
when “major duties or responsibilities of a job change” (p. 190). In
the abstract, maintenance stages occur when employees have been
performing a job long enough to have gained familiarity with task
requirements, whereas transitional stages are associated with learn-
ing and adapting to new task requirements. The most obvious
illustration of a transitional stage involves a shifting of one’s job,
occupation, or organization. However, it certainly is possible to
experience a transitional stage without leaving one’s job, occupa-
tional group, or employer. In practice, there is no hard and fast
categorical distinction between the two stages, and judgments
concerning maintenance versus transitional-stage status for a given
set (or sets) of workers typically require inside knowledge of the
context surrounding data collection, because different job charac-
teristics make it nearly impossible to define universal criteria for
what constitutes a maintenance versus a transitional stage.
We believe that there are empirical criteria that can help support
a priori assumptions about whether a group of employees is
experiencing a maintenance versus transitional job stage. For in-
stance, if one has reason to believe that a sample of employees is
experiencing job transition (e.g., changes in required knowledge or
task demands), this can be confirmed by examining the perfor-
mance pattern for that group of employees to see if the pattern is
consistent with a transitional stage. Conversely, if one has reason
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES
to believe that two samples of employees are at different job
stages, one can test this hypothesis by contrasting mean levels of
performance across a specified time period in these two groups.
Gradual, uniform increases (or complete stability) of performance
across time would provide indirect evidence of a maintenance
stage, whereas drastic performance increases would suggest a
period of transition.
Results from several studies provide a useful starting point for
identifying performance patterns associated with specific job
stages. To illustrate, long-term studies of the relationship between
job tenure and performance have found an initially positive linear
and then plateauing relationship (e.g., Avolio, Waldman, & Mc-
Daniel, 1990; Jacobs, Hofmann, & Kriska, 1990; Schmidt, Hunter,
& Outerbridge, 1986; for exceptions see Hofmann, Jacobs, &
Gerras, 1992; Russell, 2001). Thus, performance growth appears
to be more dramatic in early (transitional) job stages and then
tapers off in later (maintenance) job stages. Further supporting
these conclusions concerning temporal aspects of job performance,
Hofmann, Jacobs, and Baratta (1993) found a mean group trend of
linear then plateauing performance over a 3-year period for newly
hired insurance sales personnel. It is clear that the initial perfor-
mance measures reflected a transitional phase for the new hires,
and one might infer that the employees were entering the mainte-
nance phase when their performance gains started to decelerate. In
a similar vein, Ployhart and Hakel (1998) investigated sales per-
formance over eight consecutive business quarters. These re-
searchers found support for a classic learning curve indicated by
linear, quadratic, and cubic models in which performance in-
creased sharply in initial quarters (positive linear change) and then
continued to increase, albeit at a decelerated rate (evidenced by
significant quadratic and cubic terms, respectively). Thus, results
clearly supported a pattern in which the greatest incremental gains
in performance occurred in the initial stages of the study. In sum,
cumulative evidence from these studies suggests that performance
increases over time; however, the nature of this increase is more
dramatic in earlier observations. On the basis of these results, we
predicted different patterns of performance for samples of employ-
ees working in maintenance versus transitional stages. Specifi-
cally, we hypothesized the following:
Hypothesis 1: The overall performance trend for employees
identified a priori as being in a maintenance stage will be
positive and linear.
Hypothesis 2: The overall performance trend for employees
identified a priori as being in a transitional stage will be
positive and linear but will also show evidence of decelera-
tion via a significant negative quadratic trend.
Level 2 Predictions
Regrettably, there is a paucity of research addressing exactly
how individual characteristics influence adaptive (i.e., transitional)
job performance, or “responsiveness to changing job demands”
(Hesketh & Neal, 1999, p. 47; see also Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, &
Plamondon, 2000). To the extent that novel (i.e., transitional) job
environments would seem to constitute weak situations (Mischel,
1977), relationships between personality traits and job perfor-
mance may be most evident for employees embedded in novel job
837
environments (Hesketh & Neal, 1999). In addition to contrasting
differences in performance trends between employees in mainte-
nance and transitional job stages, one of our central goals in the
current study was to examine predictors of individual differences
in performance both in terms of (a) mean level performance across
a specified period of time and (b) interindividual differences in
performance growth trajectories during this period. Partly on the
basis of Murphy’s (1989) research, we proposed that different
personality traits may be salient at these two stages. We specifi-
cally investigated the usefulness of the Big Five personality traits
as predictors of mean performance and performance trajectories in
maintenance- and transitional-stage samples of employees.
Mean Performance Differences in Maintenance and
Transitional Job Stages
Two traits should positively influence mean job performance
levels in both maintenance and transitional job stages. One such
trait is conscientiousness. Conscientious persons are dependable,
reliable, and achievement oriented, whereas low scorers are care-
less, lackadaisical, and undependable (Digman, 1990). Meta-
analytic research has consistently supported conscientiousness as
one of the few personality-based predictors with generalizable
validity across occupations and job situations (Barrick & Mount,
1991; Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000;
Mount & Barrick, 1995; Salgado, 1997), and such research has
confirmed the positive association between conscientiousness and
sales performance as well (Vinchur, Schippmann, Switzer, &
Roth, 1998).
A second trait associated with success in sales is extraversion.
Extraverts are characterized by gregariousness, assertiveness, pos-
itive emotionality, activity, and sociability, whereas those low in
this trait tend to be aloof, timid, and socially withdrawn (Digman,
1990). Although the generalizability of extraversion in predicting
performance across all jobs has not been supported in empirical
research (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Barrick et al., 2001; Hurtz &
Donovan, 2000; Mount & Barrick, 1995; Salgado, 1997), this trait
does seem to have particular salience for sales effectiveness. In a
meta-analysis restricted to the predictors of sales success, Vinchur
et al. (1998) found extraversion to be a valid predictor of both
supervisory ratings of sales performance and actual sales volume.
Barrick, Stewart, and Piotrowski (2002) found that extraverts were
motivated to obtain status and rewards at work and subsequently
had increased sales.
Because of differences between the maintenance and transi-
tional stages of employment, we also propose that openness to
experience is related to performance in the transitional stage but
not necessarily in the maintenance stage. Highly open people
display intellectual curiosity, creativity, flexible thinking, and cul-
ture (Digman, 1990). Most meta-analytic research has failed to
support a consistent and positive correlation between openness and
job performance across broad occupational categories (Barrick et
al., 2001), including sales success (Vinchur et al., 1998); however,
Tett, Jackson, and Rothstein (1991) found that openness predicted
performance in a meta-analysis of 10 confirmatory studies that
specifically hypothesized such a relationship. We propose that
openness to experience may be a critical factor for performance
under certain job circumstances. Specifically, we suggest that
openness should be positively related to sales performance during
838 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN
transitional employment periods because in this stage, an em-
ployee will benefit from adaptability and flexibility characterizing
openness (Goldberg, 1990). Results from a handful of experimen-
tal and field studies support this assertion. Using an undergraduate
sample, LePine, Colquitt, and Erez (2000) found that openness
helped participants adapt to changing task demands in a comput-
erized decision-making study. Highly open subjects were better
able to adapt their decision-making and problem-solving heuristics
to changing situational cues. In a field setting of managerial
success, Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, and Welbourne (1999) found that
openness was positively related to managers’ ability to cope with
various organizational changes, such as mergers, acquisitions,
downsizing, and the like.
Taken together, these results suggest that openness to experi-
ence should foster effective performance at the transitional job
stage. Because of their increased ability for flexible thinking, as
well as their preference for novel stimuli, open salespeople should
be more effective during times of job change. Thus, as with
conscientiousness and extraversion, openness to experience should
be positively associated with sales for transitional stage employ-
ees. We made the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3: Conscientiousness will be positively related to
mean performance differences in the maintenance sample.
Hypothesis 4: Extraversion will be positively related to mean
performance differences in the maintenance sample.
Hypothesis 5: Conscientiousness will be positively related to
mean performance differences in the transitional sample.
Hypothesis 6: Extraversion will be positively related to mean
performance differences in the transitional sample.
Hypothesis 7: Openness to experience will be positively
related to mean performance differences in the transitional
sample.
Prediction of Performance Trajectories in Maintenance
and Transitional Job Stages
The prediction of performance trajectories (slopes) is somewhat
more complex. A handful of investigators have studied such rela-
tionships in an exploratory manner (e.g., Ployhart & Hakel, 1998)
or have used characteristics such as general cognitive ability and
job tenure to forecast performance change (e.g., Deadrick et al.,
1997). However, we are aware of no longitudinal research directly
contrasting the validities of various personality traits within the
context of maintenance and transitional stages. Deadrick et al.
(1997) found that both job experience and psychomotor ability
were positively associated with initial individual job performance
in a sample of sewing machine operators. Additionally, general
mental ability was positively correlated with performance in-
creases, whereas previous job experience was negatively related to
positive performance trends for individuals. In addition, Ployhart
and Hakel (1998) found that individual differences in trait empathy
were positively and negatively associated with individual differ-
ences in initial performance increases (linear growth) and subse-
quent performance plateauing (quadratic growth), respectively.
Furthermore, a trait measure of persuasion was positively associ-
ated with both initial growth and later plateauing, providing some
evidence for individual differences as predictors of performance
growth patterns. Finally, Russell (2001) tested whether individual
differences in managerial competencies could predict performance
growth curves of top-level executives. Results indicated that re-
source problem-solving-oriented competencies predicted initial per-
formance and that people-oriented competencies predicted later
performance growth.
We propose that certain traits are related to individual differ-
ences in intraindividual performance patterns, although research in
this area admittedly is scant. Conscientiousness—the trait most
strongly and consistently related to performance—should predict
not only mean performance but also performance growth. Behav-
ioral correlates of this trait include the use of self-regulatory tactics
such as autonomous goal setting (Barrick, Mount, & Strauss, 1993)
and time management (Macan, 1994) as well as the ability to cope
with stress (Watson & Hubbard, 1996). Thus, we predict that the
performance of conscientious persons will reflect continuous im-
provement, although this effect may take some time to manifest
itself. In support of this view, Helmreich, Sawin, and Carsrud
(1986) found that the trait work orientation (which is very similar
conceptually to conscientiousness) demonstrated a stronger rela-
tionship with performance after several months on the job (e.g.,
when incumbents likely had moved from a transitional to a main-
tenance period) than with an initial “honeymoon period” measure
of performance taken shortly posthire, when motivation should be
high among all new employees.
With respect to the differential predictions for mean perfor-
mance trajectories within maintenance versus transitional employ-
ees, we expected a slightly different relationship between consci-
entiousness and performance growth. Conscientiousness should be
positively correlated with linear performance growth in the main-
tenance sample, reflecting the desire for continuous performance
improvement for conscientious persons in the steady-state sample.
In the transitional sample, we would expect this same tendency to
be manifested by a negative relationship between conscientious-
ness and negative quadratic growth. In other words, the perfor-
mance of conscientious persons should be less likely to peak with
movement from the transitional or honeymoon period to a time
when job-related duties have become somewhat routinized. Hence,
we offered the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 8: Conscientiousness will be positively related to
positive linear growth in performance within the maintenance
sample.
Hypothesis 9: Conscientiousness will be negatively related to
negative quadratic growth in performance within the transi-
tional sample.
In addition to conscientiousness, past personality–performance
research suggests that openness to experience should relate to
performance trajectories for people in transitional job stages. Be-
cause openness has been shown to relate positively to effectiveness
under changing conditions requiring adaptive performance (e.g.,
Judge et al., 1999; LePine et al., 2000), people high in openness
should show steady performance gains initially (i.e., a positive
linear trend). This prediction is consistent with results obtained by
Russell (2001), who found that resource-oriented problem solv-
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES
ing—an employee competency conceptually similar to the flexible
thinking and problem-solving ability characteristic of highly open
individuals (Goldberg, 1990)—predicted initial performance of
newly promoted executives. However, as the novelty of the tran-
sitional stage fades as people encounter relatively fewer novel job
situations, we would expect openness to be less critical for per-
formance, although we certainly would not expect that openness
would be a hindrance at this point. Thus, we hypothesized the
following:
Hypothesis 10: Openness will be positively related to positive
linear performance growth in performance within the transi-
tional sample.
Method
Participants and Procedure
Maintenance sample. The population of interest to the maintenance
stage study consisted of 137 sales representatives employed by a large
pharmaceutical firm headquartered in the United States. Primary job re-
sponsibilities for this position include duties such as gaining access to
potential client physicians, detailing or educating physicians as to the
indications for particular products, and strategic targeting of high-potential
client physicians in one’s sales territory. Survey materials were sent to the
homes of all potential respondents as part of a large, company-wide study
of relationships between personality traits, job attitudes, and sales perfor-
mance. These surveys were accompanied by a letter from the primary
investigator explaining the purpose of the study, along with a similar letter
on company letterhead from an organizational representative indicating
that although purely voluntary, participation in the study could provide the
organization with useful information regarding factors that influence sales
success.
A total of 99 complete responses were received in the maintenance
sample, for a response rate of 72.2%. The mean age of respondents was
41.76 years (SD ⫽ 9.51), and respondents reported a mean job tenure of
11.11 years (SD ⫽ 9.45). A majority (61.6%) of respondents were men,
and 38.4% were women. A company representative confirmed that these
figures were roughly characteristic of the demographic makeup of this
particular population.
Transitional sample. The population of interest for the transitional
sample was 78 sales representatives employed by the same organization
involved in a product launch of a new medication. There was no overlap of
participants between the maintenance and transitional samples. The pro-
cedure used in the transitional sample was identical to that used in the
maintenance sample. We received a total of 48 responses from the transi-
tional group (response rate ⫽ 61.5%). Mean age for respondents was 36.77
years (SD ⫽ 7.79), and mean job tenure was 7.92 years (SD ⫽ 7.51 years).
A slight majority (52.1%) of respondents from the transitional sample were
women, and 47.9% were men. Again, these figures appeared to match the
profile of the population from which the transitional sample was drawn, as
confirmed by a company representative.
The validity of our study hinges on the difference in job responsibilities
between the maintenance and transitional samples—that in fact, the
changes experienced by the latter truly were transitional in nature. This
issue deserves some further comment. All members of our transitional
sample had previously been working in the primary care area, focusing on
marketing a variety of products (similar to those carried out by participants
in the maintenance sample) to general practitioner physicians. On the basis
of a corporate-wide decision, members of the primary care sales force were
reassigned to a new product launch involving the marketing of a hormone
replacement therapy product. Thus, participation in the product launch was
not voluntary for this sample of employees. Employee compensation was
directly correlated with sales of the new product. There was no systematic
839
relationship between previous individual job performance and reassign-
ment to the product launch project, as this decision was made at the group
level (i.e., salespeople working in primary care were shifted to the new
assignment regardless of their previous levels of effectiveness). This is a
critical point, as nonrandom assignment of individuals to the transitional
sample (e.g., highly conscientious persons or persons with a history of
outstanding performance) could complicate the interpretation of our study
results.
Changes experienced by this group constituted entry into a transitional
phase for at least two reasons. First, transitional sample employees were
required to focus exclusively on the marketing of one particular product
and hence were shifting to a specialty area. This change required mastering
a great deal of technical information regarding issues such as the physio-
logical mechanisms by which the product had been found to effectively
treat the condition for which it is prescribed, indications for the product,
potential interactions with other drugs, and so forth. Because the product
was new, this was novel information for transitional participants. The
company provided participants with extensive technical training in these
areas, and each individual salesperson was required to pass a job knowl-
edge examination covering these areas. Individuals who failed to pass this
examination on the first try were subsequently retested until a previously
specified level of declarative knowledge was reached.
Second, employees assigned to the product launch were required to
solicit business from an entirely new client base. Specifically, individual
salespeople had to shift their focus from calling on general practitioners to
specialists in obstetrics and gynecology (ob/gyn). An organizational rep-
resentative confirmed that there was little if any overlap for the transitional
sample in terms of their previous versus new client bases. Thus, to achieve
success, sales representatives had to strategically target potentially high-
prescribing ob/gyn specialists (in part on the basis of information concern-
ing prescription history of similar competitor products, as provided by the
research group within the organization), and “get a foot in the door” in
gaining access to these individuals. The potential frustrations due to short-
term setbacks inherent in the sales occupation (Corr & Gray, 1995) are
particularly salient here, as initial efforts to influence ob/gyn specialists to
change their prescribing habits (i.e., switch from familiar products to the
new medication) were likely to meet with failure. Furthermore, given the
importance of return business, it was necessary for participants in the
transitional sample to establish interpersonal credibility and long-term,
professional business relationships with this new set of potential clients.
Although the two issues discussed here may not constitute an exhaustive
list of the changes experienced by the transitional group, we believe that
they provide a sufficient basis for inferring that these persons were entering
a transitional job stage at the time of reassignment to the product launch.
Measures
The Big Five traits. The Big Five traits were assessed using the
12-item scales from the NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992) in both the
maintenance and transitional samples. This measure has been shown to
predict job performance in numerous organizational field studies (Costa,
1996). All responses were scored on a 9-point scale with response options
ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 8 (strongly agree).1 Internal consis-
tency (coefficient alpha) reliabilities for the Big Five traits obtained in the
current study were as follows: emotional stability (␣ ⫽ .80 in the mainte-
nance sample, ␣ ⫽ .87 in the transitional sample), extraversion (␣ ⫽ .79
maintenance, ␣ ⫽ .83 transitional), openness to experience (␣ ⫽ .69
maintenance, ␣ ⫽ .62 transitional), agreeableness (␣ ⫽ .72 maintenance,
1
This format represents a change to the original NEO-FFI format, which
uses a 5-point scale. As the NEO-FFI was administered with a number of
other personality and attitude measures (not related to the current study) in
our surveys, we felt it necessary to adopt a common format for all of these
measures to avoid confusing respondents (Mattell & Jacoby, 1971).
840 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN
␣ ⫽ .71 transitional), and conscientiousness (␣ ⫽ .88 maintenance, ␣ ⫽
.78 transitional). The reliability values obtained for openness to experience
were somewhat lower than those reported in the NEO-FFI manual (Costa
& McCrae, 1992), although the reason for this difference was unclear.
Control variables. Although we offered hypotheses concerning only
three of the Big Five traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness
to experience), we included the remaining two traits in all estimated models
for two reasons. First, it is well established that the Big Five traits are not
entirely orthogonal (Digman, 1997). Thus, for us to determine the
independent contribution of conscientiousness, extraversion, and open-
ness to experience as predictors of growth parameters (L2 intercept and
slope terms), we felt it necessary to include the remaining traits (emo-
tional stability and agreeableness) in all of the relevant models. Second,
as so few studies have incorporated a temporal perspective to the
prediction of performance from personality traits, we felt that the
inclusion of these dimensions could provide valuable exploratory
information.
Job tenure was used as a control variable in all subsequent RCM
analyses. Although we offered no formal hypotheses concerning the rela-
tionships between job tenure and performance growth parameters, we
included this variable for three reasons. First, past meta-analytic research
has revealed moderate positive relationships between measures of job
tenure and work experience and job performance (Hunter & Hunter, 1984;
McDaniel, Schmidt, & Hunter, 1988a, 1988b; Quiñones, Ford, &
Teachout, 1995), with the magnitude of the relationship decreasing with
increasing levels of job tenure (McDaniel et al., 1988b). Second, the
potentially complex nature of relations between work experience and job
performance trajectories is worthy of further investigation in its own right.
In a rare study of this type, Deadrick et al. (1997) found that previous work
experience was positively related to mean levels (i.e., intercepts) of job
performance— but negatively related to subsequent performance increases
(slopes)—in a sample of sewing machine operators. Likewise, Tesluk and
Jacobs (1998) have posited that the benefits of job tenure may be negated
by transitional job environments in which the stimuli one encounters bear
little similarity to past work experiences. Third, failing to control for tenure
could result in upwardly biased estimates of personality–performance
relationships if levels of the Big Five traits were substantially correlated
with job tenure in our samples and if tenure were related to performance.
This possibility is indirectly supported by research demonstrating robust
relationships between traits (in particular, conscientiousness) and voluntary
turnover (Barrick & Mount, 1996; Barrick, Mount, & Strauss, 1994;
Salgado, 2002).
Job performance. We used results-oriented (i.e., hard sales) criteria to
operationalize job performance for both the maintenance and transitional
samples. In the maintenance sample, the outcome measure was a simple
count of territory sales aggregated on a quarterly basis (November 1998 –
January 1999, February 1999 –April 1999, May 1999 –July 1999, and
August 1999 –October 1999) such that performance was assessed at four
points in time (99 persons ⫻ 4 ⫽ 396 observations). In the transitional
sample, performance was operationalized as quarterly product market share
(raw sales divided by all sales in the given product class for each individual
salesperson’s territory) because of large differences in market size for
products carried by this sample. Although the scaling of the criterion
measure was not strictly equivalent across samples, we do not see any
reason to believe that raw versus market-adjusted sales figures differ from
a construct perspective, and such market size adjustments are frequent in
studies of sales success (see Cravens & Woodruff, 1973; Lucas, Weinberg,
& Clowes, 1975; McManus & Brown, 1995; and Ryans & Weinberg, 1979,
for in-depth discussions of this issue). Market share data were available for
the same 4 consecutive business quarters in the transitional sample as for
the maintenance group, coinciding with the month of the product launch in
the former sample (48 persons ⫻ 4 ⫽ 192 observations).
Analyses
Power analyses. Because of the different number of participants in the
maintenance and transitional samples, as well as the modest sample size in
the latter, we sought to estimate the relative power for analyses in the two
groups. Power analyses in random coefficient models are complex. Al-
though exact methods have been developed for power analyses of discrete
predictors, Raudenbush and Xiao-Feng (2001) noted that approximations
are possible in cases in which explanatory variables are continuous (e.g.,
traits, job tenure). For these analyses, we used the PINT computer program
(Snijders & Bosker, 1999) to estimate the relative power between a sample
with 99 respondents and four time periods and a sample with 48 respon-
dents and four time periods.
In the comparative power analysis, we assumed that personality would
have a direct and cross-level effect size (in a correlation metric) of .30. We
chose this value because a validity coefficient of .30 corresponds to a
practically significant effect for a given trait in a selection context and is
consistent with meta-analytic research estimating the size of associations
between traits such as conscientiousness and extraversion and sales per-
formance (e.g., Mount & Barrick, 1995; Vinchur et al., 1998). Given a
sample size of 99 in the maintenance sample and a conservative two-tailed
test of statistical significance, power was estimated at .99 for both the
direct and cross-level effects. Using the same parameters in the transitional
sample with a sample size of 48 resulted in a power estimate of .89.
RCM analyses. We tested random coefficient models examining the
nature of relationships between the Big Five traits, job tenure, mean sales
performance levels, and performance trajectories by using Bliese and
Ployhart’s (2002) six-step model estimation procedure. To test hypotheses
of interest to the current study, we estimated random coefficient models
separately for the maintenance and transitional samples. All analyses were
conducted using the Nonlinear and Linear Mixed Effects program (Pin-
heiro & Bates, 2000) in the statistical package R (Bliese & Ployhart, 2002).
Step 1 of the procedure involves estimating the intraclass correlation
coefficient (ICC1) for the criterion measure. In our context, ICC1 indicates
how much variability in quarterly sales (i.e., among 396 and 192 individual
observations in the maintenance and transitional samples, respectively) can
be attributed to between-person differences across the 4 quarters studied
(Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). Step 2 involves estimating the nature and
shape of the time–performance relationship through the use of orthogonal
polynomial terms (e.g., linear, quadratic, cubic). Each polynomial term
reflects a change in the direction of performance change for the sample as
a whole (Hypotheses 1–2). Step 3 involves testing for significant variability
across persons in intercepts (mean level differences in performance, as
suggested by Hypotheses 3–7). This step also tests for individual differ-
ences in the slopes of time–performance relationships (Hypotheses 8 –10).
As Bliese and Ployhart (2002) noted, tests for intercept and slope differ-
ences are based on a log-likelihood ratio test contrasting models with and
without random effects (see also Pinheiro & Bates, 2000). In Step 3,
separate tests are performed for all relevant higher order polynomial terms
(e.g., linear, quadratic, cubic) to specifically determine potential sources of
between-person slope variability.
Step 4 involves estimating the structure of errors (autocorrelation, het-
eroskedasticity) in the criterion measure. Accounting for correlated errors
and nonconstant variance is critical in random coefficient models for
deriving accurate standard errors for estimated parameters in estimating the
L1 solution (DeShon, Ployhart, & Sacco, 1998). Results from tests of error
structures at Step 4 provide parameter estimates for the final L1 solution.
On the basis of the final L1 model, one can also estimate a pseudo- R2
statistic to determine the extent to which a model specifying higher order
growth terms explains variance in the criterion variable for the entire
sample by comparing residual variances for the relevant parameter esti-
mates in the final model with the same estimates from a model specifying
only random variation in the criterion measure (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992;
Hofmann, 1997; Snijders & Bosker, 1994). Step 5 involves accounting for
between-person differences in intercepts— or mean sales performance
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES 841

across the 4 quarters studied— using scores from predictor variables (e.g.,
Big Five traits, job tenure, as indicated by Hypotheses 3–7). Finally, Step
6 adds tests for cross-level interactions by estimating the extent to which
individual-level predictors account for between-person differences in slope
parameters (i.e., growth trajectories) for time–performance relationships
(Hypotheses 8 –10). Thus, Step 6 contains estimates for the final L2 model.
Again, a pseudo-R2 can be computed to determine the extent to which
predictor variables account for between-person variance in L2 intercept
and slope terms (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992; Hofmann, 1997; Snijders &
Bosker, 1994).
Results
Comparability of Maintenance and Transitional Samples
As discussed previously, we felt it critical to establish the rough
equivalence of the maintenance and transitional samples in terms
of the predictor variables of interest to our study (the Big Five
traits, job tenure). Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for all
variables in both samples are shown in Table 1. As indicated by
Table 1, the two groups appeared virtually identical with respect to
the Big Five traits, and two-tailed t tests for differences between
means for the maintenance versus transitional samples revealed no
differences at the .05 level of significance. Results did indicate a
mean difference in job tenure between the two samples of 3.18
years, t(145) ⫽ 2.04, p ⬍ .05. However, the direction of this
difference was such that tenure was higher in the maintenance than
the transitional group. If anything, these results confirm the ten-
dency of the maintenance sample to be employed in a steady-state
job situation, although the average job tenure for the transitional
sample (nearly 8 years) was still quite substantial.
Maintenance Sample
For the maintenance group (the upper diagonal of Table 1),
rank-order performance appeared to be highly stable across the 4
quarters (Quarter 1–Quarter 4). Correlations ranged from .84 ( p ⬍
.01) between Quarter 1 and Quarter 4 to .96 ( p ⬍ .01) between
Quarter 1 and Quarter 2. Thus, although these correlations do not
show the degree of rank-order instability found in some previous
longitudinal performance studies (e.g., Ployhart & Hakel, 1998),
there is at least some evidence of a simplex pattern of correlations.
In addition, there is evidence of changes in performance across
time in the sample as a whole, with pronounced increases in mean
sales between Quarter 1 and Quarter 2, t(98) ⫽ 10.86 p ⬍ .001,
and Quarter 3 and Quarter 4, t(98) ⫽ 9.00, p ⬍ .001. An exami-
nation of bivariate associations displayed in Table 1 reveals a
consistent correlation between job tenure and sales, ranging from
.23 ( p ⬍ .05) for Quarter 4 to .33 ( p ⬍ .01) at Quarter 1. As
expected, conscientiousness predicted performance, with correla-
tions ranging from .21 ( p ⬍ .05) for Quarter 3 to .28 ( p ⬍ .01) at
Quarter 1. Extraversion was positively associated with perfor-
mance at Quarter 1 (r ⫽ .24, p ⬍ .05) and Quarter 2 (r ⫽ .23, p ⬍
.05), but the relationships between extraversion and performance
were marginal at Quarter 3 (r ⫽ .18, p ⬍ .10) and Quarter 4 (r ⫽
.19, p ⬍ .10). No other traits were significantly correlated with
sales performance at any time period in the maintenance group.
RCM results for the maintenance sample are presented in Table
2. Results for Step 1 provide strong confirmation of reliable person
effects on sales performance (ICC1 ⫽ .83). At Step 2, L1 results
reveal a positive, linear trend in performance across the four time
periods and thus support Hypothesis 1. However, a visual inspec-

Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations for Variables From Maintenance and Transitional Stage Samples

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Job tenure (years) 11.11 9.45 — .08 .06 .03 .07 .13 .33 .30 .28 .23
7.92 7.51 —
2. Emotional stability 68.71 13.16 .80 .49 .03 .27 .40 .13 .12 .10 .11
66.85 15.43 .11 .87
3. Extraversion 70.63 10.83 .79 .09 .47 .36 .24 .23 .18 .19
71.42 11.74 .00 .45 .83
4. Openness to experience 53.44 11.42 .69 ⫺.02 ⫺.14 ⫺.02 ⫺.03 ⫺.01 .00
51.86 10.53 ⫺.16 .05 .13 .62
5. Agreeableness 67.67 10.73 .72 .32 .04 .02 ⫺.05 .02
67.00 10.15 ⫺.04 .31 .49 .03 .71
6. Conscientiousness 76.73 12.21 .88 .27 .28 .21 .25
76.81 9.93 .30 .57 .34 ⫺.10 .23 .78
7. Sales (Quarter 1) 1101.66 520.97 — .96 .90 .84
2.10 1.20 .13 .02 .23 .25 .38 .14 —
8. Sales (Quarter 2) 1324.71 631.22 — .93 .90
4.91 2.27 .15 ⫺.01 .17 .30 .34 .12 .94 —
9. Sales (Quarter 3) 1280.36 539.73 — .95
7.26 2.89 .12 ⫺.07 .20 .26 .34 .08 .91 .96 —
10. Sales (Quarter 4) 1499.08 681.38 —
9.39 3.50 .12 ⫺.12 .19 .17 .33 .06 .89 .93 .97 —

Note. Correlations for the maintenance sample are shown in upper portion of the diagonal. Correlations for the transitional sample are shown in lower
portion of the diagonal. For means, standard deviations, and internal consistency (coefficients alpha) reliability estimates, the top number refers to the
maintenance sample, and the bottom number refers to the transitional sample. Means and standard deviations for NEO–FFI scales are based on summed
scores from a 9-point scale. Sales data for the maintenance sample represent raw sales volume. Sales data for the transitional sample represent percent
market share. For maintenance sample, p ⬍ .01 at 兩 r 兩 ⫽ .26; p ⬍ .05 at 兩 r 兩 ⫽ .21; p ⬍ .10 at 兩 r 兩 ⫽ .18 for two-tailed tests. For the transitional sample,
p ⬍ .01 at 兩 r 兩 ⫽ .38; p ⬍ .05 at 兩 r 兩 ⫽ .31; p ⬍ .10 at 兩 r 兩 ⫽ .25 for two-tailed tests.
842 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN

Table 2
Random Coefficient Models Predicting Quarterly Sales in Maintenance Stage Sample

Parameter 95% CI 95% CI

Model and parameter estimate SE lower bound upper bound t

Final Level 1 model

Intercept 1301.452 57.305 1189.134 1413.770 22.71***
Linear trend 2553.981 272.044 2020.775 3087.188 9.39***
Quadratic trend ⫺21.558 115.761 ⫺248.449 205.332 ⫺0.18
Cubic trend 1180.187 157.177 872.120 1488.253 7.51***
Final Level 2 model
Job tenure (intercept) 16.129 5.787 4.787 27.471 2.79**
Emotional stability (intercept) ⫺2.719 4.924 ⫺12.370 6.932 ⫺0.55
Extraversion (intercept) 12.418 6.339 ⫺0.007 24.842 1.96†
Openness to experience (intercept) ⫺0.709 4.850 ⫺10.215 8.797 ⫺0.15
Agreeableness (intercept) ⫺9.245 5.806 ⫺20.625 2.135 ⫺1.59
Conscientiousness (intercept) 10.472 5.142 0.394 20.550 2.04*

Job Tenure ⫻ Linear (slope) ⫺19.385 30.004 ⫺78.193 39.424 ⫺0.64

Emotional Stability ⫻ Linear (slope) 2.048 25.532 ⫺47.994 52.091 0.08
Extraversion ⫻ Linear (slope) ⫺9.427 32.869 ⫺73.849 54.996 ⫺0.28
Openness to Experience ⫻ Linear (slope) 11.465 25.147 ⫺37.823 60.753 0.46
Agreeableness ⫻ Linear (slope) ⫺10.238 30.105 ⫺69.242 48.767 ⫺0.34
Conscientiousness ⫻ Linear (slope) 10.342 26.660 ⫺41.912 62.596 0.39

Job tenure ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺7.803 12.455 ⫺32.214 16.608 ⫺0.62

Emotional Stability ⫻ Quadratic (slope) 5.410 10.598 ⫺15.362 26.183 0.51
Extraversion ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺10.820 13.644 ⫺37.562 15.922 ⫺0.79
Openness to Experience ⫻ Quadratic (slope) 5.277 10.438 ⫺15.182 25.737 0.51
Agreeableness ⫻ Quadratic (slope) 24.354 12.496 ⫺0.139 48.847 1.95†
Conscientiousness ⫻ Quadratic (slope) 3.313 11.067 ⫺18.377 25.004 0.30

Job tenure ⫻ Cubic (slope) 19.639 16.216 ⫺12.145 51.422 1.21

Emotional Stability ⫻ Cubic (slope) ⫺12.657 13.799 ⫺39.703 14.389 ⫺0.92
Extraversion ⫻ Cubic (slope) 21.956 17.764 ⫺12.862 56.774 1.24
Openness to Experience ⫻ Cubic (slope) ⫺4.252 13.591 ⫺30.891 22.386 ⫺0.31
Agreeableness ⫻ Cubic (slope) 4.660 16.270 ⫺27.230 36.550 0.29
Conscientiousness ⫻ Cubic (slope) 35.602 14.409 7.361 63.844 2.47*

Note. For all Level 1 parameter estimates, df ⫽ 294: for parameters predicting intercept variation in Level 2 analyses, df ⫽ 92: for cross-level interaction
parameters in Level 2 analyses, df ⫽ 276. For the sake of clarity, hypothesized effects are italicized. CI ⫽ confidence interval.
† p ⬍ .10. * p ⬍ .05. ** p ⬍ .01. *** p ⬍ .001.

tion of our data (as well as a critical examination of descriptive studied) and slope parameters (growth trajectories). Not surpris-
statistics from Table 1) reveals a large increase in performance ingly, allowing intercepts to vary significantly improved the fit of
between Quarter 1 and Quarter 2, relative stability of performance our model, ␹diff
2
(1) ⫽ 402.73, p ⬍ .001. The fit of the model was
between Quarter 2 and Quarter 3, and another large increase further improved by allowing between-person variation in the
between Quarter 3 and Quarter 4. In an attempt to model these linear slope parameter, ␹diff
2
(2) ⫽ 75.15, p ⬍ .001, was unaffected
marked group-level changes, we reestimated L1 models to include by allowing between-person variation in the quadratic slope pa-
linear, quadratic, and cubic growth terms in an exploratory fashion. rameter, ␹diff
2
(5) ⫽ 5.42, ns, and was significantly improved by
The inclusion of both quadratic and cubic growth terms is consis- allowing between-person variation in the cubic slope parameter,
tent with previous studies modeling sales performance growth ␹diff
2
(9) ⫽ 61.61, p ⬍ .001. Taken together, these results suggest
(e.g., Ployhart & Hakel, 1998). Results fail to support a statistically considerable individual variability in overall performance levels
significant quadratic effect but do support positive cubic growth. and growth trajectories.
Although we did not hypothesize such a trend, we included this Next (in Step 4), we sought to determine if the fit of our
positive cubic increase in sample mean quarterly performance in maintenance sample model could be improved through modeling
subsequent models to determine if personality traits (in particular, within-person error structures. The results fail to support the pres-
extraversion and conscientiousness) might be associated with in- ence of autocorrelation, ␹diff
2
(1) ⫽ 0.02, ns, or heteroskedasticity,
dividual differences in this later performance increase. Although ␹diff(1) ⫽ 0.00, ns, in the maintenance sample data; hence, sub-
2

the quadratic growth term was nonsignificant, we retained it in
subsequent analyses to preserve the scaling of the criterion
variable.
Step 3 analyses involved testing for significant between-person
differences in intercepts (mean performance across the 4 quarters
sequent models excluded these error term specifications. Final
estimates for the final L1 model are shown in Table 2. Included are
parameter estimates, estimated standard errors, 95% confidence
intervals for estimated parameters, and corresponding t statistics.
The upper diagonal of Table 3 displays correlations between
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES
Table 3
Correlations Between Growth Terms in Maintenance and
Transitional Samples
Variable 1 2 3 4
1. Intercept (mean
performance) — .34*** .03 .76***
2. Linear growth .94*** — .55*** .09
3. Quadratic growth .54*** ⫺.30* — .01
4. Cubic growth
Note. For maintenance sample (upper diagonal), n ⫽ 99; for transitional
sample (lower diagonal), n ⫽ 48. As no cubic term is included in the
transitional sample model, no correlations are shown for the cubic growth
term.
* p ⬍ .05. *** p ⬍ .001.
higher order growth terms. Of particular interest are positive
relationships between mean sales and both linear (r ⫽ .34, p ⬍
.001) and cubic (r ⫽ .76, p ⬍ .001) sales growth. These results
indicate that effective performers (in terms of mean sales across
the 4-quarter period) were also likely to increase their performance
between Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 and between Quarter 3 and
Quarter 4. As shown in Table 4, the final L1 model accounted for
41% of the reliable within-person variance in sales performance
across the 4-quarter period for this group.
Table 2 also shows the L2 solution for the maintenance sample.
The first set of terms listed represents predictors of individual
intercept terms, or in this case, predictors of mean level sales
performance differences (Step 5; Hypotheses 3– 4). Recall that all
trait effects are conditional on job tenure. Clear support was found
for Hypothesis 3 (conscientiousness and mean level performance),
and marginal support ( p ⬍ .10) was obtained for Hypothesis 4
(extraversion and mean level performance). Job tenure also was
positively associated with individual performance intercepts. Tests
for individual differences in growth parameters as a function of the
traits and job tenure are captured in the cross-level interaction
terms shown in Table 2. The full L2 model shows cross-level
interaction terms for the linear, quadratic, and cubic trends in the
data. Hypothesis 8 stated that conscientiousness should be posi-
tively related to continuous performance change in the mainte-
nance sample, which is evidenced by a positive association be-
tween this trait and the linear growth term. Although this
hypothesis was not strictly supported with respect to the linear
term, conscientiousness was positively associated with the cubic
term, providing some support for the general tendency of consci-
entiousness to predict positive job performance trends in the main-
tenance sample. The results also reveal a nonsignificant ( p ⬍ .10),
positive association between agreeableness and negative quadratic
growth. However, given the nonsignificance of the quadratic term
(which was retained to preserve scaling) at L1, this result likely
was a statistical artifact.
Table 4 shows the percentage of variance in between-person
differences in both intercepts accounted for by the differences in
levels of predictor variables. Predictor variables in the final L2
model accounted for 13% of the between-person variance in per-
formance intercepts (mean performance differences) along with
10% of the between-person variance in cubic slopes, across the 4
quarters studied. Because of the lack of significant predictors of
843
linear performance increases, as well as the lack of significant
quadratic trend effects at L1, the model failed to account for
significant variance in linear or quadratic growth.2
Given the unexpected finding concerning the relationship be-
tween conscientiousness and positive cubic growth, we sought to
determine the exact form of this interaction. The complexity of the
Conscientiousness ⫻ Time interaction is revealed in Figure 1,
which uses the final L2 model parameters to estimate predicted
performance in each of the 4 quarters for persons high (one
standard deviation above the sample mean) and low (one standard
deviation below the sample mean) on conscientiousness, con-
trasted with predicted performance at each quarter for persons
scoring at the sample mean on conscientiousness (Bliese & Ploy-
hart, 2002). Values for job tenure and the remaining traits were
held constant at their respective sample means in these contrasts.
The effect of conscientiousness in predicting mean performance
across time was reflected in the average performance difference
between high- and low-conscientiousness persons across the 4
quarters, which is relatively constant once sample mean differ-
ences in predicted performance are taken into account. A closer
examination of Figure 1 shows a slightly steeper slope for high
conscientiousness persons between Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 than
for their low conscientiousness counterparts, and the same pattern
is observed between Quarter 3 and Quarter 4, capturing the sig-
nificant association between conscientiousness and positive cubic
growth.
Transitional Sample
Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for all transitional
sample variables are shown in the upper diagonal of Table 1.
Again, we observed strong evidence for rank-order stability across
the 4 quarters studied (Quarter 1–Quarter 4) in this sample, with
correlations ranging from .89 ( p ⬍ .001; Quarter 1–Quarter 4) to
.97 ( p ⬍ .001; Quarter 3–Quarter 4), and there was evidence of a
slight simplex pattern to these associations. As shown in Table 1,
there was strong evidence of mean performance increases between
Quarter 1 and Quarter 2, t(47) ⫽ 16.13, p ⬍ .001; Quarter 2 and
Quarter 3, t(47) ⫽ 17.63, p ⬍ .001; and Quarter 3 and Quarter 4,
t(47) ⫽ 15.26, p ⬍ .001. This dramatic pattern of performance
growth reaffirmed our expectation that this sample truly was in a
transitional period in contrast with the maintenance group. In a
relative sense, sales performance increased by 134% in the tran-
sitional sample between Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 (compared with
a 20% increase between the same two quarters for the maintenance
group), increased by another 49% between Quarter 2 and Quarter
3 (in contrast to a slight performance decline of 3% in the main-
2
In computing pseudo-R2 statistics, we actually encountered negative
estimates for the linear and quadratic terms at L2, evidenced by the
increase in variance for the linear term when the predictor variables were
added (see Table 4). As suggested by Snijders and Bosker (1994, p. 343),
this is a common occurrence in growth-based random coefficient models in
which L1 predictors (linear and cubic growth functions in this case) are not
expected to vary at L2. This suggestion is consistent with our result that no
predictor variables were significantly (at p ⬍ .05) associated with individ-
ual differences in linear or quadratic growth in the maintenance sample.
Given that pseudo-R2 values represent mere approximations in random
coefficient models, we assumed an R2 value of .00 in these cases.
844 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN

Table 4
Variance Accounted for in Final Level 1 and Level 2 Models for Maintenance Sample

Percent variance accounted

Model description Observed variance for in model (pseudo R2)

Level 1 .41
Unconditional on time trends 63,604.29
Conditional on linear and cubic trends 37,327.71
Level 2 intercept differences .13
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 319,030.57
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 278,104.28
Level 2 linear slope differences .00
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 6,430,197.19
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 6,869,322.77
Level 2 quadratic slope differences .00
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 436,504.62
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 483,695.22
Level 2 cubic slope differences .10
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 1,562,525.60
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure 1,407,917.53

tenance sample), and finally, jumped by another 29% between
Quarter 3 and Quarter 4 (the positive change over the same period
for the maintenance employees was 17%).
Given the difference in the scaling of performance in the main-
tenance (raw sales counts) and transitional (percent market share)
samples in the four periods of interest to our study, we sought to
confirm a positive association between raw and adjusted sales
figures in the latter group. Strong, positive correlations between
raw and market share adjusted sales figures at each quarter would
support our use of the latter as criteria in the transitional sample.
We obtained the necessary data from company records and found
strong correlations between raw and adjusted sales of .85 at Quar-
ter 1, .78 at Quarter 2, .72 at Quarter 3, and .72 at Quarter 4 (all
ps ⬍ .001). The mean correlation between raw and market share
adjusted sales across these four periods was .77.
Regarding bivariate predictor– criterion relationships (see Table
1), extraversion failed to predict performance at the traditional .05
level of significance for any of the 4 quarters studied in the
transitional group. Openness to experience predicted performance
at Quarter 2 (r ⫽ .30, p ⬍ .05). Correlations between openness and
performance were positive but nonsignificant at Quarter 1 (r ⫽
.25) and Quarter 3 (r ⫽ .26; both ps ⬍ .10). Openness did not
predict performance at Quarter 4 (r ⫽ .17, ns). Surprisingly,
conscientiousness (Hypothesis 5) failed to predict performance in
any of the 4 quarters studied. Although not hypothesized, agree-
ableness predicted performance in each of the 4 quarters, with
correlations ranging from .33 ( p ⬍ .05) at Quarter 4 to .38 ( p ⬍
.01) at Quarter 1. The remaining Big Five traits, as well as job
tenure, failed to predict performance at any measurement period in
this sample.
RCM results for the transitional sample are presented in
Table 5. At Step 1, we found ICC1 ⫽ .22. Consistent with
Hypothesis 2, the L1 results show a positive linear trend in
performance followed by a significant negative quadratic trend,

Figure 1. Predicted sales in the maintenance sample at each quarter as a function of conscientiousness (C).
Total sales volume ⫽ sales in terms of the number of prescriptions written by physicians in the salesperson’s
territory.
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES 845

Table 5
Random Coefficient Models Predicting Monthly Sales in Transitional Stage Sample

95% CI 95% CI
Parameter lower upper
Model and parameter estimate SE bound bound t

Final Level 1 model

Intercept 5.916 0.349 5.233 6.599 16.97***
Linear trend 37.497 1.839 33.893 41.102 20.39***
Quadratic trend ⫺2.350 0.593 ⫺3.512 ⫺1.188 ⫺3.96***
Final Level 2 model
Job tenure (intercept) 0.059 0.046 ⫺0.030 0.148 1.29
Emotional stability (intercept) ⫺0.052 0.027 ⫺0.105 0.001 ⫺1.92†
Extraversion (intercept) 0.016 0.034 ⫺0.051 0.083 0.47
Openness to experience (intercept) 0.064 0.032 0.003 0.126 2.04*
Agreeableness (intercept) 0.091 0.037 0.019 0.163 2.47*
Conscientiousness (intercept) 0.034 0.042 ⫺0.048 0.117 0.82

Job Tenure ⫻ Linear (slope) 0.242 0.249 ⫺0.245 0.730 0.97

Emotional Stability ⫻ Linear (slope) ⫺0.359 0.148 ⫺0.649 ⫺0.069 ⫺2.43*
Extraversion ⫻ Linear (slope) 0.167 0.187 ⫺0.199 0.534 0.89
Openness to Experience ⫻ Linear (slope) 0.173 0.172 ⫺0.165 0.510 1.00
Agreeableness ⫻ Linear (slope) 0.396 0.201 0.002 0.789 1.97*
Conscientiousness ⫻ Linear (slope) 0.146 0.229 ⫺0.302 0.595 0.64

Job tenure ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺0.082 0.077 ⫺0.232 0.068 ⫺1.07

Emotional stability ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺0.020 0.046 ⫺0.109 0.070 ⫺0.44
Extraversion ⫻ Quadratic (slope) 0.069 0.058 ⫺0.044 0.181 1.19
Openness to Experience ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺0.202 0.053 ⫺0.305 ⫺0.098 ⫺3.80**
Agreeableness ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺0.065 0.062 ⫺0.186 0.056 ⫺1.05
Conscientiousness ⫻ Quadratic (slope) ⫺0.039 0.071 ⫺0.177 0.099 ⫺0.55

Note. For all Level 1 parameter estimates, df ⫽ 142; for parameters predicting intercept variation in Level 2
analyses, df ⫽ 41; for cross-level interaction parameters in level 2 analyses, df ⫽ 130. For the sake of clarity,
hypothesized effects are italicized. CI ⫽ confidence interval.
† p ⬍ .10. * p ⬍ .05. ** p ⬍ .01. *** p ⬍ .001.

indicating a plateauing or deceleration of group-level perfor-
mance (which still increases, but not at the same rate) between
Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 (Step 2). These results may suggest a
movement from a transitional to a maintenance stage at this
period. As in the maintenance sample, we tested an L1 model
involving a cubic term in an exploratory fashion (Ployhart &
Hakel, 1998). The results fail to support cubic growth in the
transitional sample— hence, the cubic term was dropped from
all subsequent analyses. The results of our Step 3 analyses show
that allowing intercepts to vary increased model fit, ␹diff2
(2) ⫽
10.98, p ⬍ .001. There was significant interindividual variation
in both the linear, ␹diff
2
(2) ⫽ 198.94, p ⬍ .001, and quadratic,
␹diff(5) ⫽ 33.86, p ⬍ .001, slope parameters. Again, these
2
results support the possibility of individual difference-based
predictors of the L2 terms. The results of our analyses of error
structures fail to support autocorrelation, ␹diff
2
(1) ⫽ 1.60, ns, or
heteroskedasticity, ␹diff(1) ⫽ 0.96, ns, so these specifications
2
were dropped from subsequent analyses. A correlational anal-
ysis of trend terms (see lower diagonal of Table 3) shows a
nearly perfect correlation between mean performance and linear
growth (r ⫽ .94, p ⬍ .001), perhaps a tautological result in the
sense that all salespeople in the transitional sample began the
study with sales of zero. More interesting is the finding that
mean performance was negatively related to negative quadratic
growth (r ⫽ –.54, p ⬍ .001). Positive linear and negative
quadratic growth also were moderately and inversely related
(r ⫽ –.30, p ⬍ .05). These results suggest a pattern in which
effective performers in the transitional sample (in terms of
mean sales) were more likely to experience performance in-
creases early in the study and also less likely to experience
plateaued performance throughout the course of the study. As
shown in Table 5, the final L1 model accounted for 88% of the
reliable within-person variance in sales performance across the
4-quarter period for the transitional sample.
Also shown in Table 5 are parameter estimates for the L2
model in the transitional sample. Again, all effects for the traits
are conditional on job tenure. Hypotheses 5–7 concerned the
prediction of performance intercept differences (mean perfor-
mance) from conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to
experience, respectively, with job tenure held constant. Only
Hypothesis 7 (openness to experience) received support—indi-
viduals high in openness tended to have higher mean perfor-
mance than did those low in openness. Although not hypothe-
sized, agreeableness also was positively associated with mean
level performance.
Hypothesis 9 concerned the effects of conscientiousness on
negative quadratic performance growth (e.g., the plateauing
effect—such that the performance of conscientious persons
should be less likely to peak at some point during the study). As
shown in Table 5, this hypothesis failed to receive support, as
conscientiousness failed to predict any of the L2 parameters.
Two traits clearly were associated with the linear term. Our
846 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN
Table 6
Variance Accounted for in Final Level 1 and Level 2 Models for Transitional Sample
Model description
Level 1
Unconditional on time trends
Conditional on linear and quadratic trends
Level 2 intercept differences
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure
Level 2 linear slope differences
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure
Level 2 quadratic slope differences
Unconditional on Big Five traits and job tenure
Conditional on Big Five traits and job tenure
results indicate that agreeable salespeople were more likely and
emotionally stable individuals were less likely to increase their
sales in a positive linear fashion across the period of the study.
Finally, openness to experience was negatively associated with
negative quadratic growth, indicating that open salespeople
were less likely to experience plateaued performance across the
4-quarter period of the study. Job tenure failed to predict both
mean level performance and performance growth. As indicated
by Table 6, predictor variables in the final L2 model accounted
for 18% of the between-person variance in performance inter-
cepts and 11% and 31% of the between-person variance in
linear and quadratic slopes, respectively, across the 4 quarters
studied for the transitional group.
Effects on performance at each quarter for agreeableness, emo-
tional stability, and openness to experience in the transitional
sample are shown in Figures 2, 3, and 4, respectively. For each
trait, predicted performance of persons one standard deviation
above and one standard deviation below the sample mean on the
given trait are contrasted along with predicted performance at each
quarter for persons scoring at the sample mean for each trait.
Again, values for job tenure and the relevant other four traits are
held constant at their respective sample means in these contrasts.
Figure 2. Predicted sales in the transitional sample at each quarter as a function of agreeableness (A).
Observed Percent variance accounted for
variance in model (Pseudo R2)
.88
11.07
1.28
.18
5.51
4.53
.11
155.56
137.72
.31
10.09
6.94
Figure 2 supports a persistent effect on mean level performance
across the 4 quarters for agreeableness, corresponding to the sig-
nificant association between agreeableness and the L2 intercept
term in this sample. In addition, a close examination of Figure 2
shows a slightly steeper slope for persons high in agreeableness
across the study period, reflecting the positive association between
this trait and linear growth at L2. Identical effects are shown in
Figure 3 for emotional stability, although this effect is in the
opposite direction as one might expect, with low emotional stabil-
ity (i.e., neuroticism) positively associated with mean performance
differences and positive performance growth. Finally, Figure 4
reveals the complexity of the interaction between openness to
experience and time. Again, positive mean-level performance dif-
ferences as a function of openness across the 4 quarters are
immediately apparent. The increasing divergence between high-
and low-openness salespeople across the 4 quarters represents the
negative association between openness and negative quadratic
growth. Although there is a slight decrease in the sample as a
whole in the rate of performance growth between Quarter 1 and
Quarter 4 (see the line corresponding to predicted sales at sample
mean levels of openness), this effect is less pronounced for those
high in openness to experience.
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES 847

Figure 3. Predicted sales in the transitional sample at each quarter as a function of emotional stability (ES).

Discussion change (for conscientiousness) in the maintenance sample but not in

Our study adds to a growing body of literature concerning the
temporal nature of job performance. In addition, ours is the first
study of which we are aware to advance explicit hypotheses
concerning associations between personality factors and change in
individual performance trajectories while accounting for job stage
in a field setting. To date, the majority of research on personality–
performance relations has correlated personality traits with perfor-
mance measured at only one point in time. Some of our hypotheses
concerning personality–performance relations in the context of
performance change were supported, whereas others were not.
Conversely, we obtained serendipitous findings with respect to the
validity of agreeableness in predicting performance growth param-
eters in the transitional sample.
Most important, the same personality factors associated with suc-
cess did not necessarily generalize across the maintenance and tran-
sitional job contexts. For example, conscientiousness and extraversion
were positively associated with mean performance and performance
the transitional sample. The reason for this discrepancy is unclear.
However, it has been argued that during the maintenance stage,
employees do not necessarily face new challenges or novel stimuli on
a regular basis (Murphy, 1989). Perhaps employees low on these traits
may become complacent during this stage. In contrast, extraverts and
conscientious persons are more likely to excel under these circum-
stances, as such persons have high energy levels, strive for achieve-
ment, and in the case of conscientiousness, are more likely to be
duty-bound (Hogan & Ones, 1997). Thus, extraversion and consci-
entiousness should continue to predict job performance even when
job-related tasks have become fairly routinized, as in the maintenance
stage (Stewart, 1999). In fact, our results do point to conscientiousness
as a positive force in performance change in the maintenance sample,
as evidenced by the significant cubic trend. These traits may be less
salient during transitional stages, in which individual differences in
creativity, intellectual flexibility, problem solving, and adaptability
are brought to the forefront.

Figure 4. Predicted sales in the transitional sample at each quarter as a function of openness to experi-
ence (OE).
848 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN
Consistent with this view, openness was positively associated
with both mean performance and performance trends in the tran-
sitional sample but unrelated to sales in the maintenance sample.
Thus, openness may be a critical factor for performance when
employees are required to adapt to change (as hypothesized) but
less important for steady state performance. One might expect that
the validity of openness to experience would wane with time in our
transitional sample, signaling the movement to more of a mainte-
nance stage for this group of employees. Bivariate analyses from
our study suggest slightly weaker correlations between openness
and later performance (e.g., Quarter 4). However, our RCM results
tell a different story, as highly open salespeople had increased
sales aggregated across the 4-quarter period as a whole and were
less likely to experience plateaued performance at later periods.
An unexpected finding was the strong positive relationship
between agreeableness and both mean performance and perfor-
mance growth in the transitional sample. Agreeableness, although
sometimes argued to interact with other personality traits such as
conscientiousness in predicting performance (Witt, Burke, Barrick,
& Mount, 2002), is rarely hypothesized to have a main effect on
performance. However, in the transitional sample, we believe
salesperson agreeableness may have resulted in a positive “foot in
the door” effect. That is, agreeable salespeople may have achieved
greater success in the transitional group as a function of their
increased ability to gain access to potential customers as well as
their ability to maintain positive relationships with these persons
across time. What would lead to such an effect? One possible
mediating mechanism is trust. A fundamental characteristic of
agreeable persons is their trustworthiness, whereas disagreeable
people are manipulative, cynical, and self-serving (Costa & Mc-
Crae, 1995). In addition, agreeableness has been shown to be a key
component of employee integrity (Sackett & DeVore, 2001). As
gatekeepers of information, it is critical that pharmaceutical sales
representatives have trusting relationships with potential custom-
ers. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of the sales literature uncovered
a significant positive association between customer trust percep-
tions and sales performance (Swan, Bowers, & Richardson, 1998).
Thus, the quality of employee– customer interactions may have
represented the driving force behind the validity of agreeableness
in predicting transitional group performance and performance
trends in our study. Consistent with such an interpretation, meta-
analytic research has shown that agreeableness possesses validity
comparable with that of conscientiousness for jobs focused on
interpersonal interactions in which “getting along” is critical for
performance (Hogan & Holland, 2003; Mount, Barrick, & Stewart,
1998).
More difficult to explain is the negative association between
emotional stability and linear performance growth in the transi-
tional sample. To the extent that emotional stability predicts per-
formance, meta-analytic reviews have concluded that the associa-
tion is positive (e.g., Judge & Bono, 2001; Salgado, 1997). This
makes sense, in light of the fact that people with low emotional
stability are described as depressed, insecure, and anxious (Costa
& McCrae, 1995), traits that would hardly seem to facilitate
effective job performance under any circumstances. One possible
explanation for this counterintuitive finding comes from control
and cybernetic theories of the stress process as applied to work
(Carver & Scheier, 1990, 1998; Edwards, 1992). These theories
posit that when confronted with stressful episodes, people take
action (e.g., increase effort) to eliminate the unpleasant emotions
associated with stress. As people low in emotional stability are
more likely to appraise their job environments as threatening
(Spector, Zapf, Chen, & Frese, 2000) and a transitional job period
is full of novel challenges, some degree of neuroticism may
actually be beneficial for performance under these conditions.
However, researchers rarely advance such arguments, and this
finding clearly needs replication before such an interpretation
would seem credible.
Finally, because job tenure was not a central focus of this study,
we did not hypothesize any directional associations between tenure
and either mean level performance or performance trends in the
maintenance and transitional samples. However, our results reveal
a positive relationship between tenure and mean performance in
the maintenance sample, indicating that employees who had
worked in their jobs longer had higher sales. There was no asso-
ciation between tenure and sales in the transitional sample. These
findings deserve comment. On one hand, to the extent that tenure
would facilitate performance, one might expect that this effect
would be stronger for incumbents in the transitional sample, as
these persons may have similar (although not identical) experi-
ences in their past work with the company to those encountered in
their new positions. This effect would be reflected in a higher
positive linear trend (i.e., higher initial performance) for highly
tenured salespeople. On the other hand, consistent with Deadrick
et al.’s (1997) findings, such an effect would be expected to
dissipate with time. Neither assertion is supported by our data. The
positive relationship between tenure and mean sales in the main-
tenance sample may simply reflect the within-sample variation in
job knowledge as a result of experience in this group (Murphy,
1989). Although not the central focus of the current study, a
critical research question in this context might involve estimation
of the diminishing returns on performance across time (e.g., pla-
teaued growth) of previous job tenure and experience as a function
of job characteristics such as complexity or changing task envi-
ronments (Schmidt, Hunter, Outerbridge, & Goff, 1988; Tesluk &
Jacobs, 1998).
Several potential weaknesses of the current study deserve men-
tion. First, it should be noted that in both the maintenance and
transitional data, rank-order consistency in performance across
time was somewhat higher than that frequently reported in other
studies of this type (e.g., Deadrick et al., 1997; Hofmann et al.,
1992, 1993; Ployhart & Hakel, 1998). Although the reason for this
tendency in our own data is unclear, it is possible that individual
performance in both samples was largely determined by tempo-
rally stable factors outside the person’s control (e.g., market
demographics, territory size), resulting in upwardly biased consis-
tency estimates. The measurement of performance— even objec-
tive performance—is always potentially subject to confounds of
this sort (Austin & Villanova, 1992; Muckler, 1992), and we do
not necessarily see our samples as differing from typical sales
samples in this regard. Such influences might place limits on the
effects of individual difference factors as predictors of individual
mean performance differences and performance trajectories across
a specified time period. However, the magnitude of bivariate
personality–performance relationships we observed in our study
was comparable to those frequently reported in the literature (e.g.,
Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000), although our
conclusions about which traits possess validity under maintenance
 PERSONALITY AND PERFORMANCE TRAJECTORIES
versus transitional job conditions differed somewhat from findings
typically generated by studies correlating personality traits with
static job performance measures, as well as several major meta-
analyses of personality trait validity (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991;
Barrick et al., 2001; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000). Future validity
generalization research may want to consider job stage as a mod-
erator of personality–performance relationships by comparing the
validity of traits in high- versus low-tenured employees. The often
disappointing meta-analytic results obtained for the validity of
traits such as agreeableness and openness to experience may
simply be the result of the tendency of previous meta-analytic
authors to collapse across job stage variables in estimating the
validity of these traits.
A second potential shortcoming of our study concerns our use of
broadband measures of the Big Five traits—particularly in light of
the null effects for conscientiousness in predicting performance
and performance growth parameters in the transitional sample. In
recent years, attention has returned to the longstanding bandwidth–
fidelity debate within industrial– organizational psychology as it
relates to the relative validity of broad versus narrow traits in the
prediction of job performance. Several researchers have argued
that narrow traits offer the most promise (e.g., Ashton, 1998),
others have suggested that broad traits are preferable (Ones &
Viswesvaran, 1996), and still others have pointed out that the
choice of broad versus narrow measures should be determined by
the nature of the criteria that one is trying to predict (Hogan &
Holland, 2003; Hogan & Roberts, 1996; R. J. Schneider, Hough, &
Dunnette, 1996). In the context of our study, it is possible that
some facets of conscientiousness (e.g., order, duty, achievement,
competence) may be relevant for transitional job performance,
whereas others are less relevant (or perhaps negatively related). If
so, the use of a measure of conscientiousness combining items
from these various facets—yet not allowing for comprehensive
assessment of any of the facets individually—would cause these
competing influences to cancel out, producing an overall null
effect for conscientiousness. In fact, several recent studies have
suggested differences in the nature and direction of facet-level
associations within Big Five constructs for the prediction of cri-
teria such as escalation of commitment in decision-making situa-
tions (Moon, 2001; Moon, Hollenbeck, Humphrey, & Maue,
2003), absenteeism (Judge, Martocchio, & Thoresen, 1997), and
most critical to our study, job performance (Stewart, 1999). Like-
wise, we found fairly modest effects for the broad traits in pre-
dicting some of the higher order growth trend terms (e.g., linear
growth in maintenance and transitional samples) relative to our
ability to predict mean performance levels. It is possible that the
higher order growth trend terms contain specific factor variance
uniquely associated with the facet level (but not the broad-based)
components of the Big Five traits.3 Future research might attempt
to replicate our results using measures allowing for more fine
grained assessments of Big Five traits at the facet level to tease out
these potentially complex influences in predicting job performance
in a temporal context while still allowing for broad-based assess-
ment by summing facet-level scores for each Big Five trait.
A third issue revolves around salespeople in the transitional
sample. One may question whether the changes experienced by
these individuals were qualitatively comparable to those described
by Murphy (1989). For example, although these persons experi-
enced a shift in priorities, were required to learn new technical
849
information, and had to seek out a new client base, they ultimately
remained working for the same employer in the same industry. It
is difficult to definitively say whether our designation of this group
of employees as a transitional sample diminished the internal
validity of our study (Cook & Campbell, 1979), and we acknowl-
edge this possibility. However, if the transitional stage in the
current study were truly not transitional in nature, we probably
would not have observed the strong positive linear and negative
quadratic trends in group mean performance (signaling a potential
transitional to maintenance stage shift) as well as the tendency of
different personality factors (e.g., openness to experience, agree-
ableness) to be associated with success in this situation vis-à-vis
the maintenance context. If anything, we believe that our results
may be on the conservative side, given the nature of our transi-
tional sample. That is, maintenance versus transitional differences
in performance trends—and predictors of these trends—might
have been more pronounced had we used a start-up sample as our
transitional group. Future studies could avert this problem through
the use of transitional samples comprising persons with no prior
experience in a given industry or occupation or at least the use of
subjective perceptual measures of job stage status on which main-
tenance and (ostensibly) transitional samples could be contrasted
to verify the status of the latter.
Finally, we did not measure general mental ability (g) in the
current study to test its relationship to individual performance
growth. Thus, it was not possible to test the relative importance of
g versus personality dispositions and job tenure in the prediction of
performance across time. However, we do not feel that this omis-
sion invalidates our results. Meta-analytic research has shown that,
because g is relatively orthogonal to the Big Five dimensions, g
and personality uniquely add to the prediction of job performance
in most occupations (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). In addition—and
in contradiction to previous research in this area—Vinchur et al.
(1998) found that g was uncorrelated with objective sales data in
their meta-analysis of the predictors of sales success. Thus, it is
unlikely that the omission of g from our study substantively
affected parameter estimates for the Big Five traits in the predic-
tion of performance. However, future research might incorporate
both g and personality traits in the prediction of temporal changes
in job performance for employees at maintenance and transitional
job stages. In spite of these potential shortcomings, we feel that our
use of real field data, as well as our use of the Big Five taxonomy
to generate and test theoretically salient personality–performance
and performance trajectory relationships, somewhat ameliorates
these concerns.
The practical implications of our results for organizations de-
serve some comment. Numerous management theorists have ob-
served that the nature of jobs is changing, such that in the future,
workers will need to continuously increase their skill base to
experience workplace success (Howard, 1995; Patterson, 2001).
Likewise, our economy is becoming increasingly service oriented
(V. Schneider, Chung, & Yusko, 1993), and the focus on service
is particularly salient for people in sales jobs. Given these chang-
ing aspects of the workplace environment, organizations may want
to consider traits that relate to adaptability (openness) and service
3
We thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing to our attention this
possibility.
850 THORESEN, BRADLEY, BLIESE, AND THORESEN
(most likely, agreeableness) in addition to factors such as consci-
entiousness and general mental ability when making hiring deci-
sions. Furthermore, organizations may want to take these charac-
teristics into account when nominating employees for transitional
job situations. Other researchers have advanced similar arguments
with respect to identifying employees most capable of coping with
the demands of changes such as organizational restructuring and
downsizing (Judge et al., 1999), expatriate work assignments
(Ones & Viswesvaran, 1997, 1999), and the implementation of
new technologies (Hesketh & Neal, 1999). Although the changes
experienced by our transitional sample may not have approached
the scope of those listed here, it is interesting to note that the same
traits hypothesized to affect performance for these types of
changes (in particular, openness) predicted sales effectiveness in
our transitional sample.
Another practical consideration stemming from our results con-
cerns the practice of banding in a personnel selection context.
Simply stated, banding is a procedure that treats predictor test
scores within a range of potential scores (i.e., a score band) as
equivalent, given a previously specified level of measurement
precision in the predictor (Cascio, Outtz, Zedeck, & Goldstein,
1991). Some researchers have advocated this method as a means of
reducing adverse impact against minority groups in a selection
context (e.g., Cascio et al., 1991), whereas others (e.g., Schmidt,
1991) have questioned the logic underlying this method. Sophis-
ticated models have been developed that take into account the
effects of unreliability in predictor tests in the process of deter-
mining score bands (e.g., Murphy, 1994; Murphy, Osten, & My-
ors, 1995). However, researchers have largely overlooked the issue
of change in criterion scores (i.e., dynamic criteria) in the context
of the practice of banding (for an exception, see Aguinis, Cortina,
& Goldberg, 1998). Incorporating performance change into band-
ing models may prove problematic. Schmidt and colleagues (in
Campion et al., 2001, pp. 163–164) presented a scenario in which
accounting for unreliability in job performance measures resulted
in score bands including 97% of all predicted performance
scores— hence negating the utility of banding in such a scenario.
Clearly, more research is needed that incorporates a criterion-
based perspective and acknowledges both group- and individual-
level changes in job performance. One possible solution involves
treating temporal change in criterion scores as systematic (rather
than random measurement error) and setting bands around pre-
dicted performance scores that incorporate expected performance
growth. Of course, it should be noted that there is no clear-cut
evidence of sizable group differences on measures of broad (e.g.,
the Big Five) personality traits (Hough, Oswald, & Ployhart,
2001), which would suggest that adverse impact may not be a
significant problem for selection based on measures of these
constructs.
Finally, our design provides some basis for confidence in the
long-term validity—and consequently, the utility— of selection
systems based on personality traits, a point that has been debated
in the literature (Henry & Hulin, 1987, 1989; Schmidt et al., 1988).
The validity of personality traits for predicting sales performance
did not systematically decrease across the 1-year time interval for
our study in either of the two samples. Although research has
supported the deterioration of the validity of cognitive ability
across time (Keil & Cortina, 2001), our results indicate cause for
cautious optimism with respect to this question for personality
traits. Rather than suggesting that the validity for traits deteriorates
with time, our results point to the conclusion that changes in
performance at relatively distal time periods (i.e., performance
growth trajectories) can actually be predicted with some degree of
accuracy from personality traits such as conscientiousness, open-
ness to experience, and agreeableness, depending on the nature of
the sample of job incumbents in question. That is, traits may
constitute substantively important determinants of changes in job
performance patterns with increased job experience. Thus, one
conclusion one might draw from our study is that the initial gains
to organizations for selection based on personality traits are not
epiphenomenal but that they persist (and may even increase) with
increased time on the job. In addition, even small gains in indi-
vidual performance across time as a function of these individual
differences would be expected to translate into large economic
gains in the aggregate within an entire sales force or organization.
Of course, a 1-year time frame simply may not have been long
enough for us to observe a decline in validity for traits similar to
those often observed for cognitive ability (Keil & Cortina, 2001).
Clearly, a number of questions about the relationships between
personality traits and job performance trajectories remain to be
addressed by future researchers in other occupational settings and
contexts. Although the field has witnessed important theoretical
and empirical advances concerning relationships between ability
constructs and performance in a temporal context (e.g., Ackerman,
1988, 1992; Hulin et al., 1990; Keil & Cortina, 2001; Murphy,
1989; Schmidt et al., 1988), similar theories focusing on volitional
variables such as personality traits have been lacking. In addition
to replicating the current study in other field contexts with more
sophisticated research designs, experimental laboratory research
could test more complex temporal aspects of personality–perfor-
mance relationships using a task-based skill-acquisition frame-
work. In fact, the evolution and evaluation of testable theories
involving personality–performance relationships in the context of
temporal and career stage variables may represent the next impor-
tant step for personality research in applied settings. We hope that
our study provides a useful starting point for additional research in
this tradition.
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Received August 9, 2002
Revision received November 10, 2003
Accepted November 19, 2003 䡲