Who gets promoted? Personality factors leading to promotion in highly structured work environments: evidence from a German professional football club

ABSTRACT

Much of the research on how human capabilities contribute to labour market success focuses on traditional human capital predictors. However, researchers are becoming increasingly aware of the important role of personality traits in determining individual labour market outcomes, both positive and negative. Using data from young professional football players in Germany, this study investigates the relationship between individual personality traits and cognitive abilities on career success. Our results suggest that individuals who score low on the tendency to be principled but high on cognitive processing speed are significantly more likely to enjoy career success through job promotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognitive ability
• extrinsic career success
• job performance
• personality traits
• promotion

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J00
• J01
• M12
• M51
• Z20
• Z22

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The traditional human capital predictors include education, experience and approximates of individual cognitive abilities via standardized test scores or general aptitude tests (Heineck and Anger 2010).

² Also referred to as extrinsic career success, that is, outcomes that are instrumental rewards from the job or occupation but also objectively measured by, for example, salary or promotions (see Seibert and Kraimer 2001).

³ By ‘situation’, we mean the degree to which job context constraints are imposed on individuals in the work environment (Judge and Zapata 2015).

⁴ Each team consists of approximately 22 players; the levels range from the under-12s (U12) to the under-19s (U19), representing ages 12–19.

⁵ A strong situation is a job context in which individuals are subject to (1) a high impact of decisions on co-workers and results, (2) high consequences of error, (3) high consistency in job tasks and (4) high constraints (Judge and Zapata 2015).

⁶ That is, environmental feedback effects that may shape individual personality and thus overestimate the contribution of respective traits to economic outcomes (Heineck and Anger 2010).

⁷ Testing each single factor independently yields similar results.