The Work Personality: A Neglected Element in Research

The search for increased productivity through increased or improved human labour has deep historical roots. In relatively recent times this search has included the scientific management school, the human relations school, and the structuralist school. In the thousands of studies which constitute the field of work satisfaction and/or work incentive research, however, that factor which Neff terms the “work personality” remains underemphasised. Despite some scattered references to mediating variables arising from individual or idiosyncratic differences; and despite a few studies which attempt to correlate work patterns with personality attributes, such as anxiety, authoritarianism, and others, there are very few studies which take into account the effects of relatively stable work personalities, and even fewer which address the question as to how these differences in work responses arise and develop. Yet the effect of basic, rooted, enduring attitudes toward work may influence differential reactions to various intended and purported work incentives, and may outweigh them in total consequences. An understanding of work personalities and the factors which form them can therefore be of importance in attempts to understand work patterns and to influence them.