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Article Excerpt
Abstract
Although training can improve customer orientation in logistics personnel, recruiting employees who possess enduring personality traits that stimulate customer-oriented behaviors will greatly help logistics organizations to carry out the marketing concept. This research examined the relationship between personality traits and customer orientation using the five-factor model of personality and the SOCO scale for customer orientation. Data for this study were collected as part of a larger multi-organizational job classification study sponsored by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. Responses were gathered from 354 respondents in 43 logistics organizations.
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Personality testing is a $400 million industry in the United States, and it is growing at an average of 10 percent a year (Hsu 2004). More than 40 percent of the Fortune 100 companies use personality tests to assess job applicants from front line worker to the CEO (Erickson 2004), and all of the top 100 companies in Great Britain use personality tests to hire employees (Faulder 2005). A 2003 survey by Management Recruiters International revealed that 30 percent of American companies, ranging from small firms to large corporations, such as Wal-Mart and General Motors, use personality tests to screen job applicants (Heller 2005). Companies are reporting cost savings by personality testing. For example, Overnite Transportation in Atlanta used the Hogan Personality Inventory to screen 1,500 job candidates, resulting in a 50 percent to 100 percent reduction in on-the-job delinquencies, such as fighting, drunkenness, and damage to goods or vehicles (Emmett 2004). Thus, personality testing of logistics employees should be of interest to practitioners and academicians.
One of the main reasons for using personality testing to select employees is employers' "genuine need to predict the kinds of behavior influenced by personality" (Guion and Gottier 1965, p. 151). In a comprehensive review of the use of personality measures in personnel selection, Rothstein and Goffin (2006, p. 161) concluded that the assessment of applicant personality may inform organizations "on the likelihood that applicants may be involved in an accident, are likely to be satisfied with their job, will be motivated to perform, and will develop into leaders." Thus, personality assessment of logistics employees may benefit the human resource strategy of logistics organizations.
Researchers have used the "big five" personality factors as an organizing framework for developing personality-related selection instruments (Raymark, Schmit, and Guion 1997). Renewed emphasis on human capital in logistics (Myers, Griffith, Daugherty, and Lusch 2004) suggests a powerful need to use personality to predict the behaviors of logistics personnel, especially behaviors that benefit logistics organizations. The five-factor model is often used to select employees since the personality traits are stable (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, and Barrick 1999), and they explain substantial variances in performance (Tett, Jackson, and Rothstein 1991).
A large body of literature has examined the validity of personality measures for personnel selection (Barrick and Mount 1991), but focused on the relationship between the dimensions of personality and job performance, rather than the effects of personality on behaviors. Although the personality-performance relationship is important, personality reflects the characteristics of individuals that result in consistent patterns of behavior. Thus, employee performance is the outcome of work-related behaviors of employees. Although training and experience can enrich the work-related behaviors of employees, recruiting employees who possess enduring personality traits that facilitate productive work-related behaviors is important for implementing human resource strategies.
Scholars have studied the relationship between personality and behaviors in a variety of contexts. For example, personality has been related to high-maintenance employee behaviors (Burke and Witt 2004), salespersons' organizational citizenship behaviors (O'Connell, Doverspike, Norris-Watts, and Hattrup 2001), voice and cooperative behaviors (LePine and Dyne 2001), managers' influence tactics (Cable and Judge 2003), and customer-oriented selling behaviors (Brown, Mowen, Donavan, and Licata 2002). However, to the best of our knowledge, the relationship between personality and work-related behaviors of logistics employees has not been studied. The current study attempts to fill this void, and explores the role of personality testing in selecting logistics employees.
Customer orientation represents one of the key behaviors necessary for logistics employees to successfully implement the marketing strategies of logistics organizations. Viewed as the implementation of the marketing concept at the level of the individual employee and customer, highly customer-oriented salespeople "engage in behaviors aimed at increasing long-term customer satisfaction" and "avoid behaviors which might result in customer dissatisfaction" (Saxe and Weitz 1982, p. 344). Thus, highly customer-oriented logistics employees are expected to avoid actions that sacrifice the interests of internal and external customers. Saxe and Weitz (1982) reported that customer orientation had the highest positive correlation with performance for salespeople who were able to help the customers with whom they had a good relationship. Consequently, logistics organizations may benefit by hiring and promoting customer-oriented employees.
Logistics personnel frequently contact customers. Employees closer to the bottom of the organization than the top, such as sales representatives and customer service representatives, may see customers or customer personnel more often. It follows that logistics personnel, especially those in key contact positions, should be customer oriented. Mentzer, Flint, and Hult (2001, p. 84) defined personnel contact quality as the "customer orientation of the supplier's logistics contact people" and concluded that, as a dimension of logistics service quality, personnel contact quality had a significantly positive effect on timeliness of orders and customer satisfaction. Customer orientation is also a required logistics skill of senior-level logisticians (Murphy and Poist, Jr. 1998). Consequently, customer-oriented employees could be a source of competitive advantage for logistics organizations. But how can organizations identify, hire, and promote customer-oriented people? The key may be found in personality tests, tests with a long history and a strong potential relationship to measures of customer orientation.
The need for customer-oriented personnel in logistics and throughout the supply chain has become increasingly apparent (Mentzer et al. 2001). However, customer orientation may manifest itself differently in one job than in another. For example, a top manager may show customer-oriented behavior in building strong relationships with top managers at a customer organization, while a customer service representative may show customer-oriented behavior in how he or she processes the details of a customer's order. While both behaviors are customer oriented, they reflect different dimensions of personality. So it is crucial to measure customer orientation directly and associate that measure with the dimensions of personality traits.
Long-established scales can also help here. The Selling Orientation-Customer Orientation (SOCO) (Saxe and Weitz 1982) measures the customer orientation of employees in their selling roles. It is a self-assessment that addresses the employees desires to help customers make purchase decisions, assess their needs, offer products that will satisfy customers, describe products adequately, and avoid high-pressure selling and deceptive or manipulative tactics (Thomas. Soutar, and Ryan 2001).
The current study focuses on the "big five" personality factors as a selection tool because they measure enduring traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The strength and mix of these traits suggest which employees are most likely to engage in behaviors that help in their tasks. The purpose of this study is to explore the degree to which the big five personality factors predict the customer orientation of logistics employees.
RESEARCH PROPOSITIONS
In the following paragraphs, the research propositions relating the big five personality dimensions and customer orientation are developed. The personality of employees is expected to affect the manner in which they interact with internal and external customers. For example, agreeable individuals are sympathetic to others and tend to believe others. Conscientiousness shows a person to be "careful, thorough, responsible, organized, and planful (Barrick and Mount 1991, p. 4). Extraversion refers to the degree to which an individual is "sociable, assertive, talkative, and active" (Barrick and Mount 1991, p. 3). An individual's emotional stability is suggested by neuroticism (Costa and McCrae 1992). Those who are open to experiences have an intellectual curiosity to learn new and unfamiliar ways of life (Costa and McCrae 1992). So how employees interact with co-workers, supervisors, and customers is affected by their personality....
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