Cross-Cultural Psychometrics 1 Cross-Cultural Psychometrics and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R): The Challenges of Applying Psychometric Instruments in Cross-Cultural I/O Psychology

Cross-Cultural Psychometrics 2 The continuing globalization of workplaces, workforce, and technology demands of organizational leaders to become cross-culturally competent. The influence of personality as one of the elements shaping the potential for effective international leadership, motivation, and performance appears undeniable. Assessing personality traits within a cross-cultural context using a valid and reliable framework would therefore provide significant benefit when comparing and selecting managers for global, expatriate assignments. The revised NEO Personality Inventory Test (NEO PI-R), a broadly accepted psychometric tool to assess personality dimensions along the five factor model (FFM), will therefore be evaluated to showcase the challenges of applying psychometric measurement tools in cross-cultural I/O psychology. Particular focus of the discussion will rest on possibly existing cultural influences on both validity and reliability of items, scales, and test scores derived from NEO PI-R. It is hypothesized that, such differences will not reduce the tools validity and reliability, if the overall construct of leadership personality and its relevant personality dimensions maintain convergent validity with other, valid cross-cultural research findings (e.g. Hofstede’s framework of cultural implications on leadership and motivation).