The influence of personality, person-environment fit, and work engagement on adaptive performance among nurses in Malaysian public Hospitals

Currently, performance and reputation of public hospitals’ employees specifically nurses has become a central issue for the developing countries including Malaysia. However, to maintain employee’s performance in today’s work environment is so challenging due to many changes occur within the organization. Critically, globalization became a major contributor to organizational change especially in healthcare sector. Hence, adaptive performance has become an important issue for the nurses especially in critical unit like Emergency Department (ED) as they are facing with uncertainty and serious working condition. Thus, nurse’s ability to cope and adapt fast with the changes in working environment can increase their performance as well as reduce patient’s complaint. Therefore, this study intends to recognize factors contribute to enhance nurses’ adaptive performance. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between personality-traits (PT), person environment (PE) fit, work engagement (WE), and adaptive performance (AP). The study will also determine the role of WE as a plausible mediating variable between PT, PE fit and AP. PT in this study was measure using Big Five Personality Traits which are agreeableness (AG), conscientiousness (CC), emotional stability (ES), extraversion (EX) and openness to experience (OE). Meanwhile, PE fit, in this study was measured using three dimensions; person-group (PG) fit, person-job (PJ) fit, and person-supervisor (PS) fit. Besides, a mediator of WE used vigor, dedication and absorption while AP measured as unidimensional in this study. Total 638 data set of questionnaires were distributed among nurses at ED in twelve Malaysia public hospitals and 430 set was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The statistical results of this study indicate that three dimensions of PT (AG, CC, and OE) and two dimensions of PE fit (PG fit and PJ fit) were found to be related to AP. Meanwhile, the study revealed that CC, ES, and EX (for PT) and PJ fit and PS fit (for PE fit) were related to WE. The result supports for positive significant relationship between WE and AP. The finding also found that WE mediates the relationship between three dimensions of PT (CC, ES, and EX) and two dimensions of PE fit (PJ fit and PS fit) to AP. Based on the findings, public hospitals’ administrator should give more focus on nurse’ traits and individual fit to boost their work engagement as well as enhancing their adaptive performance. Finally, the theoretical and practical contributions as well as limitations and recommendations for future research are also discussed in this thesis.