In an increasingly competitive business environment, organizations are seeking to find the key factors that will help them to get ahead of their competitors. One of these factors is how group work can be improved by determining the most essential traits of individual group members. With regards to the Big Five Model, we investigated how group success relates to these five traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience, emotional stability and extroversion. We searched for indications that would support the notion that the personality traits pertaining to the Big Five Model positively affect group success.
The personality trait conscientiousness is a component of the Big Five Model that contributes to group performance and group cohesion, which in turn results in group success. It is a trait that consists of six facets. These six facets are competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, and deliberation (Costa & McCrae, 1992).
Conscientious people are individuals who are described as being careful, responsible, dependable, persistent, self-motivated and task-oriented (Barry & Stewart, 1997). In particular, as a result of being self-motivated and achievement striving, a conscientious person increases group cohesion by promoting the notion of goals and the steps that lead to these goals. These goals can then build a bond between group members, as they are all trying to achieve the same end. In addition, conscientious members pose a positive externality on the rest of the group by exhibiting persistence and a desire to achieve. The rest of the group members observe this "self-motivation" and in turn can become more motivated themselves to achieve the goals set by the group. Moreover, Hogan and Ones ...