Machiavellianism, self-concept and resilience: do they affect employee performance? A moderated-mediated analysis

Abstract

Purpose

Over the years, the impact of personality attributes on work behavior has constituted a broad research domain. The manner in which employees view themselves have been regarded as significant in analyzing their work behavior and eventual employee performance from the organizational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between self-concept and performance, with resilience as a mediator and Machiavellianism as a moderating variable.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 271 employees from four medium-sized private sector companies in India after excluding missing data. Correlation, regression and Hayes Macro analysis were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Resilience mediates the relationship between self-concept and performance. Second, Machiavellianism moderated the relationship between self-concept and resilience and moderated the mediation effect of resilience on the relationship between self-concept and performance. The role of personality attributes has been found to profoundly impact the employee's perception of self and work performance. Resilience, which refers to the individual's ability to bounce back amidst adverse situations, is simultaneously moderated by one of the dark triad personalities, Machiavellianism.

Practical implications

Understanding the self-concept dimension, the dual effects of resilience and the Machiavellianism personality have gradually become immensely significant for improvising employee work performance in the organization.

Originality/value

This original research has examined a model of untested variables and explored the mediating effect of resilience by connecting self-concept to performance along with the moderated-mediated impact of Machiavellianism on the variables, which is a novel attempt.

Citation

Varshney, D. (2023), "Machiavellianism, self-concept and resilience: do they affect employee performance? A moderated-mediated analysis", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 72 No. 7, pp. 2093-2118. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-06-2021-0348