The Personality, Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions of African-american Male and Female Accountants

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has made minority recruitment amajor goal. Minorities, and especially African-Americans, have not been entering the accountingprofession in proportion to their numbers in either the general population or the population ofcollege graduates. This paper reports on the results of a survey of a sample of 445 African-American accountants. It assesses personality, job satisfaction and turnover intention andconsiders gender, occupational setting, and level of decision making authority. The distributionof personality type for the sample of African-American accountants was found to be similar tothe results of previous studies conducted on groups of Anglos and another minority group.Previous studies have shown predominantly strong Type-A personality traits for individualsselecting the accounting profession and that result was confirmed for this sample of African-American accountants. The results indicated that, in contrast to most previously reportedresearch, the respondents with a stronger Type-A personality were less likely to intend to leavetheir current position, but that the typical indicator, job satisfaction, did not have a significantrelationship to turnover intentions. Additionally, this study confirmed the results of previousstudies which have indicated that success in the accounting profession is associated with a TypeA personality. Additional research appears to be necessary to determine if other exogenousconstructs such as culture and socio-economic background may influence the turnover rates ofAfrican-Americans. THE PERSONALITY, JOB SATISFACTION AND TURNOVER INTENTIONSOF AFRICAN-AMERICAN MALE AND FEMALE ACCOUNTANTS byHubert D. GloverEASI Oak Ridge, TNPatricia G. MynattUniversity of North Carolina at Charlotte Richard G. SchroederUniversity of North Carolina at Charlotte