The Role of Personality Traits on Job Involvement with Considering Quality of Work life as mediator

In today's dynamic and rapidly changing world, organizations need to survive to improve their performance and adapt to change. The research organization, which is one of the most widely used media organizations in the world, is one of the organizations that need to study for survival in the age of transformation. In this way, we intend to study the role of personality traits in occupational engagement of employees with regard to quality Working life as a mediator role.
Introduction Human behavior plays an important role in maximizing organizational effectiveness. In fact, any effort to maximize organizational effectiveness requires high levels of occupational involvement among organizational members (Elankumaran, 2004). High levels of occupational involvement indicate meaningfulness, enthusiasm, pride, absorption in work, and positive feelings toward the job (Feyzabadi F arahani and Mir Hashemi, 2011: 52). Although different organizations use various incentives to increase employee in volvement, such efforts face difficulties due to inherent variations among staff members (Liao & Lee, 2009). Many researchers attribute such variations to personality variation in humans (Zabihi et al., 1391: 2- 3). In fact, personality has been accepted as one of the predictors of job performance and the personality of each person plays an important role in his job performance, because the personality of each person as one of the factors influencing the way a person responds to job requirements, his motivation and his attitude toward a job (Moharamzade et al., 2012: 698). On the other hand, the quality of work life is an important factor affecting the performance of individuals in organizations and its relationship with organizational performance has been confirmed by experts on organizational behavior (Jalilpour et al., 2013: 52). The quality of work life includes all the steps that are taken to protect the body and spirit of the staff and give them satisfaction (Jalilpuor et al., 2013: 52). Therefore, the present research aims to determine the role of personality traits in occupational involvement in one of the most widely published newspapers in Tehran, considering the quality of work life as a mediating factor.
Case Study This research studies a popular media organization that needs to improve its performance and adapt to changes in order to survive in a dynamic and rapidly changing world. Due to problems the researcher observed in organizational performance, there is a sense of disappointment, desperation, and lack of involvement among operational staff which leads to aggression, excuses, and indifference among employees. Lack of employee involvement is partly responsible for the organization's repetitious tasks and cliché principles, which can dramatically decrease audience involvement if not addressed. Considering research literature and background managers can base their decision-making in recruitment, transfer, and promotion of employees on personality traits and thereby improve organizational performance and efficiency.
Materials and Methods Considering the theoretical foundations and the background of previous research, the conceptual model of this study regards personality traits as an independent variable, occupational involvement as a dependent variable, and the quality of work life as a mediator variable. According to this conceptual model, personality traits include five components, namely extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences and neuroticism. The quality of work life includes eight components of fair and adequate payment, safe and healthy work environment, provision of opportunities for sustainable growth and security, adherence to rules, the social dependence of work life, the general context of life, social integration and cohesion, and the development of human potentials.
This research is an applied study that employs the descriptive-correlational research method. The statistical population of the research includes all 400 staff members of a popular media organization in Tehran. Using the random sampling method, 196 individuals were selected according to Morgan's table. To collect the required data, three questionnaires were used: Costa and McCarey’s Five-factor Personality Questionnaire (1992), Walton's Quality of Work Life Questionnaire (1973), and Kongo's Professional Attachment Questionnaire (1982).
Discussions and Results The content validity method and expert opinions were used to ensure questionnaire validity. In addition, the validity of the research construct was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis as well as convergent and divergent validity indices. The reliability of the questionnaires was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and its value was more than 0.7 for all four questionnaires. The questionnaires were therefore sufficiently reliable.
The results of the Pearson correlation test for measuring correlations among research variables demonstrated that there is a positive and significant correlation between all research variables. There is a positive and significant correlation between personality traits and quality of work life with occupational involvement with coefficients of 0.575 and 0.483. There is also a positive and significant correlation between personality traits and quality of work life with a correlation coefficient of 0.396 at an error level of less than 0.01.
In addition, the study of the structural equation model of the research showed that the quality of work life variable has a mediating role in the relationship between job involvement and personality traits such as extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences, and neuroticism.
The results of data analysis using the Pearson correlation test and structural equation modeling show that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences, and neuroticism are related to job involvement directly and through the mediation of the quality of work life. Thus, all research hypotheses are confirmed and the final research model can be generalized to the entire population.
Conclusion The authors concluded that to involve employees in the job, it is important to pay attention to the personality traits of individuals. For example, extroverted individuals are energetic and optimistic; they are more inclined to feel positive; and they are comfortable and open when working with groups. Agreeable individuals naturally tend to help others and cooperate. Such individuals tend to strictly follow rules and regulations. They can easily adapt to the environment and even the negative aspects of the workplace. Compared to disagreeable individuals, they are more involved in their jobs. Consciousness individuals are conscionable, responsible, and hard-working. Such individuals exert sustained efforts to achieve the goals of the organization and are more involved in the job and more successful as a result. They are reflective and pragmatic; they have character and are open to new experiences. Consciousness individuals are more flexible when dealing with unusual events and ideas. They are more curious and creative and are more involved in their jobs. On the other hand, neurotic individuals tend to be angry, unreliable, depressed and anxious. They are also more inclined to experience negative feelings. By focusing on the negative aspects of a situation, neurotic individuals fail to be involved in their jobs. Managers of the media organization were therefore advised to carefully evaluate an individual's personality through interviews and valid tests based on the five-factor model of personality in order to identify and recruit staff who tend to be more involved in their jobs. Regarding the role of quality of work life in the occupational attachment of employees, it is recommended that managers of the media organization periodically evaluate components effective in the quality of work life. By doing so, they can identify key factors in improving the work environment and employ such factors to promote the quality of work life for their employees. The managers will thus be able to employ the potential capabilities of their employees to provide services to the community and promote the strategies and performance of the organization.