Abstract
This study focuses on telemarketers in the financial service outsourcing industry, aiming to explore the relationship and mechanisms between their personality traits and work performance/turnover behavior, and to provide theoretical foundations and practical guidance for optimizing corporate recruitment and selection systems. At the theoretical level, based on the Big Five personality theory, optimistic explanatory style theory, work adjustment theory, and JD-R theory, a theoretical model of "Personality Traits - Work Adaptation - Work Performance / Turnover Behavior" was constructed. Hypotheses regarding the mediating role of work adaptation and the moderating role of optimistics were proposed.The research employed a longitudinal tracking design, targeting telemarketers from branches of Company Y in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Henan. Data was collected through questionnaires and objective records across three time points (July, September, and November 2024). Statistical tools including SPSS and Mplus were used for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and mediation/moderation analysis.
The results revealed that: Among the Big Five personality traits, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness significantly and positively predicted work adaptation, while Neuroticism significantly and negatively predicted work adaptation. The influence of optimistic explanatory style on work adaptation was not significant. Optimism directly predicted work engagement, whereas the Big Five traits had no significant direct effect on work engagement. Work adaptation played a fully mediating role between the Big Five dimensions and work engagement/turnover behavior. However, the mediating effect of work adaptation between optimistics and work engagement/turnover behavior was not significant. The moderating effect of optimistics on the relationship between personality traits and work adaptation was partially significant.
The innovations of this study are: 1) Focusing on financial telemarketers, filling the research gap on the relationship between personality traits and work behavior in this group; 2) Integrating personality traits with variables like work adaptation and job crafting to build a more comprehensive influence pathway model.
The conclusions provide practical guidance for financial telemarketing companies to optimize recruitment and selection (e.g., incorporating personality assessments focusing on core traits) and enhance employee adaptation (e.g., improving training and support systems).
Simultaneously, the study enriches theoretical research on the relationship between personality traits and work performance within organizational behavior literature.
| Date of Award | 12 Sept 2025 |
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| Original language | Chinese (Simplified) |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Hao Zhao (Supervisor) & Ho Kwong Kwan (Supervisor) |
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