Personality traits and job performance among public sector managers: The role of gender

A prevailing idea in the organizational context is that men and women differ in personality traits and leadership styles. Few studies, however, have examined gender differences in managerial behavior. The aim of the present study was to explore the presence of such differences in a sample of public sector employees (N = 678), focusing on personality and two key human resources constructs, namely organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and adaptive performance. We also compared gender differences among managers with those observed among employees without managerial responsibilities. Finally, we examined whether the attributes that distinguish managers from non-managers are the same for men and women. Mean comparison strategies and the Cohen’s d effect size index were used. The results suggest that male and female public managers have similar leadership profiles in terms of personality, OCBs and adaptive performance. In addition, and despite small gender differences in this respect, it appears that communal traits, such as Creativity or interpersonal OCBs, are becoming increasingly relevant to managerial positions in the public sector, which implies complementarity in the gender roles linked with the behaviors associated with leadership and access to management positions. Our results support both the gender-invariant role demands and the changing leadership roles perspectives and may have implications for selection and promotion policies in public sector organizations.