Personality Traits and Career Success: Understanding Workplace Dynamics

Liya Wang, Yingchao Zhang, Yukiko Asai and Hideo Owan

Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Abstract: How do personality traits affect promotion outcomes? We study the role of personality in career advancement using detailed personnel records from a business solutions firm. Employees with higher levels of extraversion are significantly more likely to be promoted, while those with higher neuroticism scores face lower promotion probabilities. Gender differences in extraversion partly explain the observed gender gap in promotions. Role and task assignments largely mediate the link between personality and promotion, with employees who receive “stretch assignments†being promoted faster. Our evidence points to both productivity-related and non-productivity-related factors underlying this relationship. First, interpersonal skills are the key determinant of role and task assignment, and extraverts possess superior skills from the outset, enabling them to continue excelling after promotion. Second, extraverts have an advantage in building relationships with supervisors, which may lead to better developmental assignments based on trust and favoritism, yet supervisors with more extraverted subordinates do not perform better. Our findings illustrate how personality-driven social dynamics influence firms’ internal labor markets, offering insights into how assignment and promotion policies affect leadership pipelines and organizational equity.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/25e105.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eti:dpaper:25105

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by TANIMOTO, Toko ().