Integrating Personality and Social Networks: A Meta-Analysis of Personality, Network Position, and Work Outcomes in Organizations

We examine three research questions concerning the roles of personality and network position in organizations. First, how do different personality characteristics—self-monitoring and the Big Five traits—relate to indegree centrality and brokerage, the two most studied structurally advantageous positions in organizational networks? Second, how do indegree centrality and brokerage compare in explaining job performance and career success? Third, how do these personality variables and network positions relate to work outcomes? Meta-analytic results from 138 independent samples indicate that: (1) self-monitoring and the Big Five traits contribute modestly to the prediction of indegree centrality and brokerage—the total explained variance ranges between three and five percent; (2) indegree centrality is more strongly related to job performance and career success than brokerage; and (3) personality predicts job performance and career success above and beyond network position. Further, network position partially mediates the effects of certain personality variables on work outcomes. The paper provides an integrated view of how the individual’s personality and network position combine to influence job performance and career success.