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Influence of Personality Traits and Moral Values on Employee Well‐Being, Resilience and Performance: A Cross‐National Study

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Applied Psychology
Authors:
Vidya S. Athota at The University of Notre Dame Australia
Vidya S. Athota
Pawan Budhwar at Aston University
Pawan Budhwar
Ashish Malik at Queen's University Belfast
Ashish Malik
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Research examining the relationship at the interface of personality, values, moral foundations and its impact on employees’ subjective well‐being, resilience, job performance and satisfaction is almost non‐existent. This study addresses this Special Issue’s call focusing on the key antecedents and consequences of resilience on individual and/or organisational level outcomes. It does so by analysing data from two different, though comparative cross‐national studies in Australia and India. Employing a quantitative survey method, we collected data from 195 respondents in Australia and 257 respondents from India. Employing the core theory of moral foundations in association with its relationships with individual personality, values, well‐being and resilience, our findings suggest a significant relationship between personality traits and individual moral foundations, and psychological well‐being via values. The study offers distinctive contributions to the literatures on well‐being, resilience and moral foundations theory. Specifically, the personality trait of extroversion influences power and achievement or self‐enhancement values through individualised moral foundations. Second, the study found that values of benevolence and universalism, or compassionate values, form the basis for biological mechanisms of resilience through individual moral foundations of fairness/harm care. The paper concludes with implications for theory and practice.
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APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, 2020, 69 (3), 653–685
do i: 10.1111 /app s.12198
© 2019 International Association of Applied Psychology.
Influence of Personality Traits and Moral Values on
Employee Well-Being, Resilience and Performance:
A Cross-National Study
Vidya S. Athota*
The University of Notre Dame Australia, Australia
Pawan Budhwar
Aston Business School, UK
Ashish Malik
University of Newcastle, Australia
Research examining the relationship at the interface of personality, values,
moral foundations and its impact on employees’ subjective well-being, resil-
ience, job performance and satisfaction is almost non-existent. This study
addresses this Special Issue’s call focusing on the key antecedents and con-
sequences of resilience on individual and/or organisational level outcomes.
It does so by analysing data from two different, though comparative cross-
national studies in Australia and India. Employing a quantitative survey
method, we collected data from 195 respondents i n Australia and 257 respond-
ents from India. Employing the core theory of moral foundations in associa-
tion with its relationships with individual personality, values, well-being and
resilience, our findings suggest a significant relationship between personal-
ity traits and individual moral foundations, and psychological well-being via
values. The study offers distinctive contributions to the literatures on well-
being, resilience and moral foundations theory. Specifically, thepersonality
trait of extroversion influences power and achievement or self-enhancement
values through individualised moral foundations. Second, the study found
that values of benevolence and universalism, or compassionate values, form
the basis for biological mechanisms of resilience through individual moral
foundations of fairness/harm care. The paper concludes with implications for
theory and practice.
* Address for correspondence: Vidya S. Athota, School of Business, The University of
Notre Dame Australia, NSW, 2007, Australia. Email: s agar.athota@nd.edu.au
... Employee well-being can be broadly defined as an employee's whole-person experience and function, covering physical and psychological aspects (Singh & Gautam, 2023). There is evidence from different study's points of view that moral values (Athota et al., 2020), psychological capital (Avey et al., 2010), and pro-social behavior (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010) are all factors that contribute to EWB in individuals. Researchers studying sustainability management point out that worker well-being is a crucial component of social sustainability in the workplace (Kobal Grum & Babnik, 2022). ...
... Second, the study noted a positive link between employee green behavior, well-being, and engagement. The literature on employee green behavior indicates that EGB has an indirect impact on employees' well-being through factors such as moral values (Athota et al., 2020), social capital (Avey et al., 2010), inclusive leadership (Choi et al., 2017), and helping behavior (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010). These factors can have a favorable effect on employees' overall well-being (EWB). ...
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... In recent years, businesses and human resource managers have given careful thought to how to shape and improve employees' resilience behavior (Bardoel et al., 2014). In their examination of the causes and effects of employee resilience on performance at the individual and organizational levels, Athota et al. (2020) made the case for organizations to systematically invest in resilience building by leveraging behavioral tendencies and individual level personality. While scholars are continually involved in defining the behavioral outcomes of proactivity in various contexts, such as growth mindset, work engagement (Canië ls et al., 2018), employee resilience behavior (Zhu and Li, 2021), innovativeness (Nasaj, 2020) and cultural intelligence (Hu et al., 2020), the empirical evidence regarding how these concepts are interrelated is limited (Din et al., 2023). ...
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... To achieve a higher confidence in generalisability, we need higher sample size and more systematic dissemination strategy to achieve national representation. Despite these limitations, it is worth noting that our sample size, as discussed earlier, was sufficient for the conducted analyses and comparable to other studies, such as (LaRose et al., 2014) and (Athota et al., 2020) which employed similar sample sizes. ...
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