Integrating Personality and Social Networks: A Meta-Analysis of Personality, Network Position, and Work Outcomes in Organizations

TLDR

The study investigates how personality traits (self‑monitoring and the Big Five) relate to network positions (indegree centrality and brokerage) and how these positions predict job performance and career success. The authors performed a meta‑analysis of 138 independent samples to examine the relationships between personality traits, network positions, and work outcomes. The analysis found that self‑monitoring predicts both indegree centrality and brokerage, personality explains only a small portion (3–5%) of variance, indegree centrality is a stronger predictor of job performance and career success than brokerage, and personality predicts these outcomes beyond network position with partial mediation by network position.

Abstract

Using data from 138 independent samples, we meta-analytically examined three research questions concerning the roles of personality and network position in organizations. First, how do different personality characteristics—self-monitoring and the Big Five personality traits—relate to indegree centrality and brokerage, the two most studied structurally advantageous positions in organizational networks? Second, how do indegree centrality and brokerage compare in explaining job performance and career success? Third, how do these personality variables and network positions relate to work outcomes? Our results show that self-monitoring predicted indegree centrality (across expressive and instrumental networks) and brokerage (in expressive networks) after controlling for the Big Five traits. Self-monitoring, therefore, was especially relevant for understanding why people differ in their acquisition of advantageous positions in social networks. But the total variance explained by personality ranged between 3% and 5%. Surprisingly, we found that indegree centrality was more strongly related to job performance and career success than brokerage. We also found that personality predicted job performance and career success above and beyond network position and that network position partially mediated the effects of certain personality variables on work outcomes. This paper provides an integrated view of how an individual’s personality and network position combine to influence job performance and career success.