Need for Power, Personality Traits, and Organizational Work-Related Behaviors among Employees

Abstract

The existing study aimed to investigate the relationship between the need for power, personality traits, and organizational work-related behaviors among employees. The sample of the study N=225 was recruited through the purposive sampling technique (Emerson, 2015) from different cities in Pakistan including male (n=160) and female (n=65) employees with an age range from 30 years to 55 years (M= 41.15, SD= 7.24). Furthermore, informed consent was obtained from the organizations and the participants. Standardized research instruments were used for data collection. The results of reliability analysis showed high Cronbach’s alpha coefficient estimates for the research instruments on the Pakistani employees’ papulation i.e., Personalized and Socialized Need for Power Scale (Moon et al., 2022) (α= .84, α= .82), HEXACO Personality (R) (Lee & Ashton, 2019) (Honesty-Humility α= .87, Emotionality α= .88, Extroversion α= .90, Agreeableness α=.88, Consciousness α= .73, Openness to Experience α= .80), Impression Management (Bolino & Turnley, 1999) (Intimidation α= .78, Self-Promotion α= .76, Ingratiation α= .70), and Counter Productive Work Behavior (Spector et al., 2006) (α= .81). The findings of correlation analysis revealed that personalized need for power positively associated with counterproductive work behavior, and two components of the impression management (self-promotion and intimidation) and negatively related to socialized need for power, honesty-humility, emotionality, extroversion, agreeableness, and one component of the impression management (ingratiation). Whereas the socialized need for power positively correlated with honesty-humility, emotionality, extroversion, agreeableness, and one component of impression management (e.g., ingratiation) further, it was negatively associated with counterproductive work behavior, and two components of impression management (e.g., self-promotion, intimidation). This research would provide help organizations identify their potential employees to enhance their work productivity and positive work-related personality traits by eliminating the undesirable factors of power. Moreover, the factorizations of the research instruments on the Pakistani employees' population would provide reliable evidence to the local researchers for their more comprehensibility. This research would provide new insight for future research on other work-related psychological models.