Competencies, Personality Traits, and Organizational Rewards of Middle Managers: A Motive-Based Approach

Abstract

People are rewarded for how they behave, but what do middle managers get for their behavior at work? In this article, we draw upon socioanalytic and role theories to linking competencies, personality, and organizational rewards among a sample of middle managers. The goals of this study were (a) to identify a motive-based competency structure and (b) to understand the antecedents and consequences of these motive-based dimensions. We found that a three-factor structure formed by “achievement,” “power,” and “affiliation” fit our data well. Each of the three dimensions showed a distinct pattern of personality correlates. Power was found to have the strongest impact on organizational rewards. Our results further suggested that personality impacts organizational rewards mainly through the motive-based dimensions. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

Notes

¹Before moving on with our analyses and because there are no previous studies based on “consensus” scores, we looked for the consistency of the competency structure across the sources (i.e., supervisor, self and consensus ratings) by assessing the measurement equivalence of the models. Following Conway's (2000) strategy, we ran a confirmatory factor analysis across the sources to check whether the same model fits each source's data. The results suggested that the three-factor structure of consensus ratings fits the supervisor and self-ratings as well. To support the use of the consensus scores, we also assessed the factor correlations for each source. The supervisors' factor correlations averaged .71, whereas the self correlations averaged .62, and the consensus correlations averaged .66, which suggests that the supervisors did not distinguish as well as consensus scores among the different ratings factors (in accordance with the halo effect reported in previous studies; Cooper, 1981).