Personality Traits, Organizational Politics, and

Job Satisfaction in Engineers: Mediating Role of

Leadership

TERM REPORT

SUBJECT: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND LEADERSHIP

STUDENT

SYED ZEESHAN ARSHAD 16271

COURSE INSTRUCTOR

MR. SHUJA SHAMS

INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS ADMINSTRATION, KARACHI

 INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH ...................................................................... 2

1.1. Background .............................................................................................................. 2
1.2. Research Title ........................................................................................................... 2
1.3. Research Objective ................................................................................................... 3
1.4. Research Hypotheses ............................................................................................... 3
1.5. Research Limitations ................................................................................................ 3
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................... 4
2.1. Personality and Personality Traits ............................................................................. 4
2.2.Organizational Politics............................................................................................... 4
2.3.Job Satisfaction ......................................................................................................... 4
2.4.Leadership ................................................................................................................. 5
2.4.1.Proactive Leadership ......................................................................................... 5
2.4.2.Knowledgable Leadership ................................................................................. 5
2.4.3.Supportive Leadership ...................................................................................... 5
2.4.4.Preservant Leadership ....................................................................................... 5
3. RESEARCH METHOLOGY ................................................................................. 6
3.1. Research Design ....................................................................................................... 6
3.2. Sample and Sampling Procedures ............................................................................. 6
3.3. Process of Data Collection ........................................................................................ 6
3.4. Assessment Measures ............................................................................................... 6
3.4.1.Demographic Information Sheet ....................................................................... 7
3.4.2.Big Five Inventory ............................................................................................ 7
3.4.3.Percieved Organizational Politics Scale ............................................................ 7
3.4.4.The Implementation Leadership Scale............................................................... 7
3.4.5.Generic Job Satisfaction Scale .......................................................................... 8
3.5. Ethical Consideration................................................................................................ 8
4. RESULTS ............................................................................................................... 9
4.1. Descriptive Analysis ................................................................................................. 9
4.2. Reliability Analysis ................................................................................................ 10
4.3. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Between Study Variables ............................. 10
5. DISCUSSION AND CRITIQUE REVIEW .......................................................... 11
5.1. Research Findings .................................................................................................. 11
5.2. Critique Review...................................................................................................... 13
5.3. Suggestions ............................................................................................................ 13
5.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 13
6. REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 14

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 1. INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH

1.1. Background

The organization is a social structure; its maintenance depends upon linkage between its parts.
It is a flexible system in which individuals relate to each other. It is a body of individuals
working under a defined system of rules, assignments procedures, and relationships designed
to achieve identifiable objectives and goals. It is related to developing a framework where the
total work is divided into manageable components to facilitate the achievement of objectives
or goals. Thus, the organization is the structure or mechanism (machinery) that enables living
things to work together.
Leadership is the relationship through which one person influences the behavior or actions of
other people. A structured and directive leadership style was effective at encouraging the
adoption of the company’s values. Moreover, when employees are committed to the
organization, this has a significant impact on their adoption of values. The optimal leadership
style is most effective in encouraging employee commitment. The research results confirmed
that the directive style of leadership is the mandatory style in the engineering sector and that
there is a direct connection between the dominant style of leadership and room for
improvement of sales clerks’ productiveness because the growth of the intensity of directive
style, leads to the lower productiveness of the average site engineers. Transformational
leadership style shows a more significant relationship with employee organizational
commitment than transactional leadership. Transformational leadership style is found to be the
most effective style that enhances employee’s organizational commitment; whereas
transactional leadership style is found to be less effective. Researches have shown that
Pygmalion effect was significantly correlated with transformational leadership style and
negatively associated with transactional leadership style. Managers with extended experience
were more inclined to practice transformational leadership style and Pygmalion effect was high
among their subordinates as compared to managers with lesser experience. Managers of private
sector engineering companies make more use of transformational in leadership style while
managers of public engineers were mostly transactional.
1.2. Research Title

“Personality Traits, Organizational Politics, and Job satisfaction in Engineers: Mediating

Role of Leadership”

Researchers

 Dr. Shazia Qayyum : Assistant Professor, Institute of Applied Psychology, University

of the Punjab, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

 Dr. Shahnila Tariq : Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Psychology,

University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

 Faiz Younas : Lecturer, Institute of Applied Psychology, University of the Punjab,

Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

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The research was sourced from Pakistan Social Sciences Review website, archived from
publications of Issue –I of March 2021. The research was published online on March 15, 2021.

1.3. Research Objective

This research was conducted to understand the psychology of engineers. The engineers are
considered the most busy and productive individuals of the organization. The motive of
understanding the phenomena of job satisfaction and role of leadership in engineers has led to
conduct the research.
1.4. Research Hypotheses

 There would be a significant relationship among personality traits, organizational

politics and job satisfaction in engineers.

 Leadership styles would like to play a mediating role among personality traits,
organizational politics and job satisfaction.

1.5. Research Limitation

 This research can be applied to the Pakistani society because most of the literature has
been taken from major cites of Pakistan.

 The data collected, and the corresponding findings are in accordance with one another.

 Number of samples are limited.

 Limited specialized engineers were taken into account for the research.

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 2. LITERATURE REVIEW

The organization is a social structure; its maintenance depends upon linkage between its parts.
It is a flexible system in which individuals relate to each other. It is a body of individuals
working under a defined system of rules, assignments procedures, and relationships designed
to achieve identifiable objectives and goals. It is related to developing a framework where the
total work is divided into manageable components to facilitate the achievement of objectives
or goals. Thus, the organization is the structure or mechanism (machinery) that enables living
things to work together.
2.1. Personality and Personality Traits
Behaviors and emotions that make an individual different from the other can be termed as
personality. In this era globalization, personality plays an essential role in guiding the employee
behavior in order to accomplish organization’s objectives or run its operations successfully.
Personality refers to an individual’s characteristic patterns of though, emotion, and behavior,
together with the psychological mechanisms which are hidden or not behind those patterns.
The relationship between personalities have received huge amount of attention recently. Most
of the significant aspects of personality can be explained by the five factors model of
personality.
Personality traits are defined as definite components of an individual's personality. A
personality trait is a characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, or behaving that tends to be
consistent over time and across relevant situations. Different kind of measures can be used to
assess personality.
2.2.Organizational Politics
Organizational politics consists of influential acts through irregular and unofficial means to
exercise influence with the intention to secure resources, power, and other benefits. It is
influenced process which is strategically designed in order to maximize self-interest. These
self-interests might be short-term or long-term and these might be consistent or contrary to the
interests of others in the organizations. Organizational politics is widely known as unsanctioned
and informal way of act and behavior. This is the reason, organizations take active measure to
avoid, discourage or even eradicate politics from the organizational work setting. Politically
affected organizations have different weaknesses in nature because the essence of politicking
is deception and deception lead to other outcomes in the shape of dissatisfaction, low
performance, high turnover and increased anxiety.
2.3.Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a complex and multifaceted concept which can mean different things to
different people. Job satisfaction is the collection of feeling and beliefs that people have about
their current job. It is a worker’s sense of achievement and success on the job. It is generally
perceived to be directly linked to productivity as well as to personal well-being. Job satisfaction
implies doing a job one enjoys, doing it well and being rewarded for one’s efforts. Job
satisfaction further implies enthusiasm and happiness with one’s work. Job satisfaction is the
key ingredient that leads to recognition, income, promotion, and the achievement of other goals
that lead to a feeling of fulfillment.

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2.4.Leadership
Leadership is a process whereby individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a
common goal. Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership knowledge and skills.
While leadership is learned, the skills and knowledge processed by the leader can be influenced
by his or her attributes or traits; such as beliefs, values, ethics, and character. Knowledge and
skills contribute directly to the process of leadership, while the other attributes give the leader
certain characteristics that make him or her unique.
2.4.1. Proactive Leadership
Proactive leadership is about taking time to plan, improve how your team works and putting
measures in place to prevent problems before they happen. Proactive leadership is about
identifying areas of risk for your team, and working on measures that will reduce their impact,
or stop the problems happening altogether.
2.4.2. Knowledgeable Leadership
Knowledge leadership is defined as a process whereby an individual supports other group
members in learning processes needed to attain group or organizational goals. Knowledge
leadership may help develop mechanisms for accountability and control, as well as for
customer knowledge sharing.
2.4.3. Supportive Leadership
Supportive leadership is a leadership style in which the leader supports their subordinates with
tools and resources until they have the skills to work autonomously.
2.4.4. Perseverant Leadership
A leader who perseveres stands ready to endure for the long haul. Successful accomplishers
are always chasing something greater: goals that are difficult to achieve. They feel they have
something to prove—to themselves and/or others.

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 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1. Research Design

Cross sectional correlational research design was used to study the relationship among
personality traits, organizational politics, and job satisfaction in engineers with the mediating
role of leadership. The researchers used SPSS software to analyze the data.

SPSS is the abbreviation of Statistical Package for Social Sciences and it is used by
researchers to perform statistical analysis. As the name suggests, SPSS statistics software is
used to perform only statistical operations.

3.2. Sample and Sampling Procedure

The sample comprised of 180 engineers. The Sampling strategy used for this research was
convenient sampling.Convenient sampling (also known as availability sampling) is a specific
type of non-probability sampling method that relies on data collection from population
members who are conveniently available to participate in study.
Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Civil Engineer, Industrial Engineers and Software
Engineers were included. Both public and private sector engineers were taken. Both male and
female were included.
3.3. Process of Data Collection
Prior to any data collection process, permissions of questionnaires i.e. BFI Short Version Scale,
Generic Job Satisfaction Scale, Turnover Intention Scale, Perception of Organizational Politics
Scale and Leadership Implementation Scale will be taken from the respective authors through
mail. Only after taking the permission, the questionnaires will be used. The purpose of this
research will be completely explained to the participants. After this, informed consent was
signed by them and further explanation was given that their data will be used only for research
purposes. They were asked to fill the demographic information sheet. The assessment measures
regarding all the variables were given to them and ask to fill them. At the end, all the
questionnaires were marked quantitatively.
3.4. Assessment Measures
Following tools were used for the purpose of assessment in this study.
 Demographics Information sheet
 BFI Short Version Scale
 Generic Job Satisfaction Scale
 Perceived organizational politics scale
 The implementation leadership scale.
By employing the above mentioned assessment measures of Big Five Inventory, Perceived
Organizational Politics Scale, The Implementation Leadership Scale and Generic Job
Satisfaction Scale, sample was assessed for the study variables.

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3.4.1. Demographics Information Sheet.
Demographic information sheet consists of important demographic information. Demographic
questionnaire will include age, gender, qualification, working experience on current job, over
all working experience.
3.4.2. BFI Short Version Scale.
The 10-Item Big Five Inventory (Rammstedt& John, 2007), a short scale version of the well-
established BFI, was developed to provide a personality inventory for research settings with
extreme time constraints. It allows assessing the Big Five by only two items per dimension.
It is a self-report inventory. BFI was designed to measure the Big Five dimensions of
personality (openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion). It is a
short personality inventory which consists of short and easy sentences.
Lewis Goldberg is the most important researcher in the domain of personality. Goldberg
identified the five factors as:
 Openness
 Conscientiousness
 Extraversion
 Agreeableness
 Neuroticism
Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness will positively
influence job performance. Individuals with five personality traits may have the ability to build
good professional relationships, achieve goals, promote, and improve performance and so on.
Openness
High scorers on openness are more likely to learn and experience novel things. Openness
includes traits like being imaginative, intuitive and have a variety of interests.
Conscientiousness
High scorers on conscientiousness are reliable and efficient. Traits include being organized,
disciplined, and profound.
Extraversion
Extraverts get their energy from the outside world by interacting/communicating with others.
Extraversion includes the traits of energetic, active talkative, and assertive.
Agreeableness
High scorers on agreeableness are friendly, cooperative, and benevolent. People with low
agreeableness may be more distant. Traits include being kind, warm-hearted, and sympathetic.
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is known as Emotional Stability. This dimension relates to one’s emotional
stability. People that score high on neuroticism are often emotionally instable and have
negative emotions. Traits include being moody and tense.

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Big Five Inventory was developed to measure the prototypical features of each Big Five
domain. Its 44 items are short, descriptive phrases that respondents’ rate on a 5-point scale
ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Alpha reliabilities were (α =.86) for
Extraversion, (α = .82) for Agreeableness, (α = .83) for Conscientiousness, ( α = .85 ) for
Neuroticism, and (α = .84) for Openness to experience.
3.4.3. Generic Job Satisfaction Scale.
Generic Job Satisfaction Scale was developed by Scott Macdonald and Peter Maclntyre in
1997. It is used to examine the nature and causes of job satisfaction. Its short form is well
established, and now contains only 10 items. The scale was significantly related to workplace
factors such as job stress, boredom, isolation and danger of illness or injury. The internal
consistency coefficient for the final form of the scale is (α = .88).
3.4.4. Perceived Organizational Politics Scale.
Organizational politics were measured using Kacmar and Ferris (1994) “Perception of
organizational Politics Scale was defined as the degree to which respondents view their
environment as political, and therefore and unfair. The measure contains 12 items measured on
a five-point despondence scale from 1 to 5. A higher score meant a stronger perception of
organizational politics. POPS has been used by many research and has reliability of .76.
Kacmar and Ferris (1991) developed and evaluated the psychometric properties of the
Perceptions of Politics Scale (POPS). Later, Nye and Witt (1993) examined the dimensionality
of POPS and its construct validity by comparing it with the Survey of Perceived Organizational
Support (SPOS; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison & Sowa, 1986). The present research
extends these previous studies by using structural equation modeling to evaluate the
dimensional, reliability, and validity of POPS across three different studies utilizing nine
different samples for a total of 2758 respondents. Results suggested that some of the original
POPS items were ineffective and needed to be removed or replaced. Hence, some of the
original items were deleted and additional items were generated and tested to produce a revised
version of POPS.
3.4.5. The Implementation Leadership Scale.
It consists of 12 items with four subscales representing proactive leadership, knowledgeable
leadership, supportive leadership and perseverant leadership. All items were scored on a 0 (not
at all) to 4 (to a very great extent scale).
3.5. Ethical Consideration
 First, it was ensured that informed consent will be signed by each participant containing
all the relevant information regarding research.
 Participants were provided with comfortable environment.
 Confidentiality was maintained as per ethical guidelines.
 No harm was given to the participants.
 Participants were free to leave the research at any point of time.
 Anonymity was there as no one will require mentioning their names.
 They were ensured that the details will be used only for research purpose only

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 4. RESEARCH FINDINGS

SPSS is the abbreviation of Statistical Package for Social Sciences and it is used by
researchers to perform statistical analysis. The research findings were based on two types of
analysis.

4.1. Descriptive Analysis

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Demographic

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4.2. Reliability Analysis

Table 2: Reliability Coefficients of the Scales Used in the Present Study (N=180)

Highest α is of Implementation Leadership Scale i.e. α = 0.92

Lowest α is of BFI-10 i.e. α = 0.53
Table 2 shows mean, standard deviation, actual/potential score and reliability coefficient of
BFI Short Version Scale, Generic Job Satisfaction Scale, Perceived organizational politics
scale, The implementation leadership scale. BFI Short Version Scale showed the lowest
reliability i.e. α= .53. The scales overall showed satisfactory reliabilities.

4.3. Pearson Product Moment Correlation

Table 3: Pearson Product Moment Correlation between Study Variables (N=180)

Job satisfaction has significant relationship with extraversion (r= .32, p< .01), agreeableness
(r= .31, p< .01), openness to experience (r= .17, p< .05). There was a significant relationship
between job satisfaction and workplace communication (r=.19, p< .05). Job satisfaction has
significant relationship with age (r= .22, p< .01).
Job satisfaction has non-significant relationship with conscientiousness and neuroticism. Job
satisfaction has non -significant relationship with general political behavior, go along to get
ahead and pay and promotion policies. Job satisfaction has non-significant relationship with

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proactive leadership, knowledgeable leadership, supportive leadership and perseverance
leadership. There was a non-significant relationship between job satisfaction and gender.

Personality Traits .48

.19
Leadership Job Satisfaction

Perceived
Organizational
Politics .38

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 5. DISCUSSION AND CRITIQUE REVIEW

5.1. Discussion on Results

This exploratory research was conducted to assess the different in personalities of engineers
working in the production department of the different organizations as well as the difference
in the individuals working in same organizations but at different posts i.e. in hierarchy. Other
factors studied in this research are job satisfaction, perceived organizational politics and
leadership in the engineers. Sample consisted of the employees working as engineers in the
public and private sectors of Pakistan.
First, reliabilities of all scales used were found. Results showed that all the scales used to assess
different variables were reliable and good for use. Pearson product moment correlation test was
applied to assess the relationship between job satisfaction, organizational politics, personality
and personality traits of public and private engineering employees. Results of this test revealed
that the job satisfaction has the significant positive relationship with leadership.
However the job satisfaction and performance of individuals does not affect by demographic
determinants like age, marriage status and family size.

Correlation was applied, and it revealed that job satisfaction has significant relationship with
extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience. This result is also evident from the
previous research conducted by Ijaz and Khan (2015). Results of this research reported that
extraversion and openness to experience have significant positive correlation with job
satisfaction, while neuroticism has strongly negative correlation. However, there is no
significant correlation of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. This result is also evident from
the previous research conducted by Hassan et.all., (2011). Results of this research reported that
most of the employees working as private engineers are satisfied with their work, management
functions and job positions. Results of this research reported that there is positive significant
relation between job satisfaction, extraversion and workplace communication. Emotional
stability/neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to experience did not show any
significant relationship with job satisfaction.
It was found that lower level employees possess more intention to leave their job in future than
higher or middle level employees. It may be is because of the hierarchy. As the individual is
having many seniors about his post. He must follow the orders of his seniors or there much be
a pretty reason of the facilities provided by the engineering firms. As the person is low in
hierarchy he must be having less salary than others and benefits provided to him will also be
less than other employees according to his post.
Through Pearson product moment correlation, it was also found that job satisfaction has
negative significant relationship with proactive leadership, knowledgeable leadership and
supportive leadership. This result is also evident from the previous research conducted by Jain
and Chaudhary (2014). Results of this research suggests that to adopt participative leadership
style to emphasize state development by infusing at each level of management with a serve of
belonging and involvement. Senior level managers should develop work place relationship,
which is one of the critical skills, every leader in today's work environment and need to possess.

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Leadership plays an important role in all the professions. If there is organizational politics in
any organization, then it becomes difficult for employees to work there. The level satisfaction
decreases resulting in low productivity. The findings also show the same relationship.

5.2. Critique Review

The following research can be applied in many lieu. But it falls short in some domains that
makes the result findings a little difficult to generalize. Deficiency of money, resources and
time makes it a less reliable research that can be improved by further research. A short sample
size made this research limited to some dimensions. A nation-wide survey can help make this
research more valid and reliable. The tools that were administered to find out the results were
not constructed based on norms of the Pakistani society. The cultural discrepancy can be
minimized to obtain more accurate results. A qualitative research on the same research problem
can help dig down the essentials of job satisfaction.

5.2. Conclusion

After an in-depth study of variables of personality traits, organizational politics and job
satisfaction and determinations of major relationships of these variables, we conclude that these
variables are highly interlinked to each other with an association of extraneous variables that
make this study much complicated.
The trait theories of personality are most important variable to measure the employee’s
personality and there is a relatable relationship between personality and job performance as the
personality of the employee would be affected the level of their performance. Usually all
aspects of a person’s performance are affected by their own personality, even how they react
to situations of their job. Not every personality is suited for every job position, so it is important
to recognize personality traits and pair employees with the duties that fit their personalities the
best.
This research can be applied to the Pakistani society because most of the literature has been
taken from major cites of Pakistan. The data collected, and the corresponding findings are in
accordance with one another. The development of societal norms for the scales could help
make this research an authentic one and can become highly valid and reliable.

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 6. REFERENCES

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doi.10.17270/J.LOG.2017.4.8

 Barrick, M.R. and Mount, M.K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job
performance: a meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44 (1), 1-26.
 Hasso, Rayan (2013). The impact of CEO’s personality traits (Big 5) and Human
Resources Management Practices on the Innovation Performance in SMEs. 1st IBA
Bachelor Thesis Conference, Enschede, The Netherlands. University of Twente,
Faculty of Management and Governance.
 The Relationship between Self-Leadership, Personality and Job Satisfaction: A
Review
Choi Long
doi:10.5539/jsd.v8n1p16
 Peeters, M.A.G., Rutte, C.G., van Tuijl, H.F.J.M., & Reymen, I.M.M.J. (2006). The
Big-Five personality traits and individual satisfaction with the team. Small Group
Research, 37.
 Big Five personality test theory. Retrieved from https://www.123test.com/big-five-personality-theory/

 Bunmi Omolayo, Effect of Leadership Style on Job-Related Tension and

Psychological Sense of Community in Work Organizations: A Case Study of Four
Organizations in Lagos State, Nigeria, Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology, 4(2).

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