An empirical investigation of personality testing in organizations in Pakistan : manager's awareness

Abstract

The present study aimed at identifying the current area of utilization for personality tests and on the future of personality testing in organizations of Pakistan. Managers were selected from the human resource departments of organizations as they were most equipped with the knowledge of employee testing and were in a decision making capacity for their organizations for all employee related decisions. The target population of the present study was managers who were able to gain acceptability, understanding and awareness, to take informed decisions towards the future utilization of personality tests. Purposive sampling was selected from three major cities of Pakistan to provide geographical diversity to the study and added organizational perspective as predisposed by the cultural environment of their region. The data was collected through semi structured interviews by using a questionnaire designed for the present study. The aim was to identify organizational readiness for the future of personality tests by interviewing managers from a total of nineteen organizations. Qualitative research approach was applied using the method of inductive thematic analysis after the transcription of each interview. In this method of analysis recurrent ideas or topics were identified from within the interview transcriptions, this was then coded and though a Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) product, NVivo 9 and results obtained. The implication of this research was to investigate the manager’s awareness, acceptance and understanding of personality testing its utilization and benefits for employees and their organizations in the future. The significance of the manager’s awareness levels was established through identifying how manager’s accept and understand the future of personality tests and the personality tests present and future usability. The results were obtained and discussed with figures and tables generated through the NVivo 9 software. The tables indicate the correlation between the themes and their sub-themes statistacially anlyzedto obtain the Pearson correlation coefficient. The figures on the other hand show the number of interviews that discussed the themes and sub-themes during the interview process. xiv The findings of the present study indicate that the level of awareness and understanding of personality tests by managers show that they realized the benefits and were open and accepting towards the general idea of personality testing. Further to the same objective, the study presents a platform to launch personality tests constructively as the awareness level of the managers shows a promising and encouraging future. The results also show that managers are ready to promote personality tests, while emphasizing the cost effectiveness of personality tests and their long term valuable contribution in organizational growth. For future research it is recommended that other departments of organizations be considered in the sample as this study relies on data collected from the human resource department of organizations only. Also a more intensive research may evaluate the present study quantitatively and a comparison drawn between variables maybe considered for future research. Another recommendation for future research is that a pre and post level of awareness may be calculated by taking a brief questionnaire before and after the interview process. The implications of the present study are that it provides information on how personality tests can be successful assessment tools used in collaboration with other instruments like the interviews or other informal methods. It also establishes the level of awareness, understanding, acceptance and future of personality tests discussed through the interviews and the primary themes. The idea of this investigation was to establish grounds to launch personality testing within organizations in Pakistan. The present study has examined how the managers view this topic from all vantage points; also the outlook was to deliver the voice of the managers and their perspective on the topic of personality testing. Most of the managers were in the top most position of their organization’s departments, which was chosen by design to ensure that they are in a decision making capacity and that their opinion carries weightage along with their number of years of service and seniority. A qualitative analysis of senior managers from such reputable organizations in three major cities of Pakistan holds merit and richness of data collected.