The Joint Effects of Personality and HR Practices on Job Performance: Extending the TPWB

Personality traits and human resource (HR) practices have been extensively studied as job performance predictors, yet, there is scant research and understanding about how these mechanisms interact to jointly affect job performance. Extending the theory of purposeful work behavior (TPWB), we argue that conscientiousness and extraversion have an indirect effect on job performance through the individual’s cognitive motivational strivings (i.e., achievement and status striving, respectively) which are differentially moderated by employee recognition HR practices as they impact job performance. Our novel theoretical model articulates when the presence of employee recognition HR practices will enhance or substitute for personalities’ impact on individual job performance, simultaneously adding theoretical precision to both the TPWB and the HR practices literatures. Based on a sample of 329 employees within 102 work units, collected from multiple sources over three discrete time periods, multilevel analysis revealed that the relationship between achievement striving and job performance is negatively moderated by employee recognition HR practices (i.e., a substitution effect), whereas the association between status striving and job performance is positively moderated by such practices (i.e., an intensifying effect). These findings provide interesting implications to the motivation and HR literatures.