Do Personality Traits Predispose the Employees’ Commitment to Change in Large Companies? Empirical Evidence in Malaysia

Abstract

Employees’ commitment seems to be vital in decision making for any organizations to be able in business competition and to adapt with changes. The commitment among employees can be a crucial tool for improving their performance in organizations. Personality characteristics are highly considered as a strong recommendation while choosing change recipients to cope with organizational change. Personality traits characterized employees’ intention to commit to change in their company. The objectives of this study is to investigate the influence of personality traits on employee commitment to change. The present study attempts to add to the literature by exploring the role of personality traits in influencing employees’ commitment to change. Five-hundred fifty employees in Malaysian large companies were selected to respond to a structured questionnaire. Multiple regressions indicated that personality traits were found to have significant relationship to employees’ commitment to change (affective commitment, continuance commitment, normative commitment). Implications to practice and theory are discussed.