Examining the Relationship Between Personality and Work Values Across Career Stages

The study examines the strength of association between personality and work values, and their variations across career stages of exploration, establishment, and maintenance. The results showed that the executives in exploration stage were lower on needs of altruism and economic returns as compared to executives from establishment and maintenance stages, but higher on neuroticism and conscientiousness dimensions of personality. Neuroticism negatively predicted creativity and aesthetics; and conscientiousness negatively predicted management. Security was positively predicted by extraversion, but negatively predicted by openness. However, the variance explained was very weak, indicating that these constructs could be independent or unrelated. The implications have been discussed in the study. © 2013, National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India.