Does Personality Relate to Job Performance of Partners and Managers?

Recent audit partner research finds that variation in partner characteristics affects the quality of audit engagements. Most of this research uses publicly available data on partner demographics such as age, gender, experience, industry expertise, and workload (busyness). In contrast, our study uses validated survey instruments to measure the personality traits of Dutch audit partners and managers.

Contrary to what one might think, there is wide variation in the personality traits of auditors – they’re not homogenous. The organizational behavior (OB) literature documents the importance of personality in explaining job performance. Consistent with the OB literature, we find that personality traits do have a significant association with the job performance of audit partners and managers,  as assessed by audit firms in their annual performance reviews.

There are direct effects of some personality traits on performance such as “extraversion” which is positively associated with performance. There are also indirect effects on performance in which personality traits affect job skills (technical, commercial, leadership) and these job skills, in turn, affect job performance. The study has implications for hiring, and for targeted training to better manage the effects of diverse personality traits among auditors. Finally, there are implications for diversity. As people move from manager to partner, there is a narrowing of personality traits, and extroverted individuals are more likely to be rewarded and promoted to partner. Yet firms say they want diversity in their firms, and we argue that personality traits are an important dimension of diversity that firms need to explicitly manage.