Overseas Development Workers: ‘Big Five’ Personality Scores

Abstract

To test hypotheses formulated by Ones and Viswesvaran (1997), a cohort of 47 selected volunteer overseas development workers from New Zealand completed the NEO PI-R ‘Big Five’ personality inventory. In line with hypotheses, these workers were significantly higher than population norms on openness and its six subfacets, and on agreeableness and the subfacet of tender-mindedness, but contrary to hypotheses, they were not significantly different on either neuroticism or conscientiousness. The article argues for further research in this field.

Volunteer overseas development workers: the hero's adventure and personal transformation

“…This indicated strong congruence between the mobile nature between overseas assignments, the theory of protean careers and the individual personalities of volunteers. Predictions by Ones and Viswesvaran (1997) that expatriates would also have higher conscientiousness and lower neuroticism were however not borne out (Hudson and Inkson, 2005).…”

Measuring Global Leader Intercultural Competency: Development and Validation of the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI)

“…Nonjudgmentalness is the extent to which one is "predisposed to avoid quick judgments or suspend evaluative conclusions about persons or situations or behaviors that are new, unfamiliar or unexpected" (Mendenhall et al, 2008, p. 6), and this dimension has been found to relate to intercultural effectiveness in both the expatriate and global leadership literatures (Arthur & Bennett, 1995Cui & Awa, 1992;Gertsen, 1990;Hudson & Inkson, 2006;Ku¨hlmann & Stahl, 1996McCall & Hollenbeck, 2002;Moro Bueno & Tubbs, 2004;Oddou & Mendenhall, 1984;Sinangil & Ones, 1997).…”

“…It encompasses a "willingness to seek an understanding of the underlying reasons for cultural differences, avoiding an inclination to stereotype, and the predisposition to seek opportunities for growth and learning" (Mendenhall et al, 2008, p. 6). Bird and his colleagues (2010) observed that this dimension is commonly manifested in the global leadership literature (Bird & Osland, 2004;Jokinen, 2005;Osland, 2008), identified in work by Kealey and his associates (Kealey, 1996;Kealey & Ruben, 1983), regularly found in the expatriate literature (Arthur & Bennett, 1997;Black & Gregersen, 1991;Hudson & Inkson, 2006;Mol et al, 2005), and Black, Morrison, and Gregersen (1999) concluded that it was the most critical of the global leadership factors they studied, acting as a type of conceptual "glue" that bonded the other global leadership factors together.…”

“…Mendenhall and his colleagues (2008) found in their review of the literature that discovering new interests and activities to replace existing ones that do not fit within a different cultural context demonstrates flexibility and a willingness to adapt (Arthur & Bennett, 1995Brein & David, 1973Hudson & Inkson, 2006;Ku¨hlmann & Stahl, 1996Mumford, 1975;Shaffer, Ferzandi, Harrision, Gregersen, & Black, 2003;Zimmerman, Holman, & Sparrow, 2003).…”

Anti-Poverty Psychology

“…An exemplar is the Culture Shock Questionnaire (Mumford 1998). Culture shock has some antecedent in individual differences, e.g., openness to new experience (Hudson and Inkson 2006). It is more likely when the sending and receiving cultures are very different compared to each other (Furnham 2010b).…”