Personality and Occupation: Implications for Human Resource Management

A wag once said that personality is what personality tests measure. Most of us believe that we have ‘a personality’ and that ‘it’ affects most aspects of our behaviour. Yet there is widespread disagreement about the fundamentals of personality. Even experts cannot agree about its nature and measurement. Some believe personality represents an individual's underlying biological tendencies and is largely inherited. Others believe that personality is the product of conditioning and is acquired through socialisation. For some personality does not exist at all, it being a convenient label for game‐playing: a metaphor which exists only in the heads of people. Yet personality is measured and assumptions made about its relationship to managerial performance and leadership. 1985 Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI)