Relationship Among Personality Traits, Leadership Behavior, and Job

Stress in Nurses in Yunlin, Taiwan

Chen-Min Chao, Bor-Wen Cheng

Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Yunlin University

of Science & Technology
123 University Road, Section 3, Douliou, Yunlin 640, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Corresponding author’s e-mail: g9521807@yuntech.edu.tw

Abstract
This study probes into the relationships among personality traits, leadership
behavior, and job stress in nurses in Yunlin, Taiwan. The major questions addressed
were as follows: What model precisely portrays the relationships among personality
traits, leadership behavior, and job stress? Exploration of the causal pathways among
these variables revealed a suitable model. A structured, self-administered
questionnaire with three scales was distributed to the subjects. The questionnaires
were submitted to 350 nurses and 284 questionnaires were completed accounting for a
response rate of 81.1 percent. The data were analyzed by statistic analysis including
frequencies, means, path analysis using computer program SPSS for windows 14.0
and LISREL 8.7. Results demonstrate a significant, direct, and positive effect of
personality traits on leadership behavior, as well as a significant negative indirect
effect of personality traits on job stress through leadership behavior was also revealed
in the findings. All paths in the model were significant (P<0.1). After the analysis of
LISREL, the suitability of the framework was fine and proves that the model is
applicable for the research. The results of this study will be used as a reference to
develop strategies for human resource management.

Key words: Nurses; Personality Traits; Leadership Behavior; Job Stress

 Introduction
Health professionals frequently suffer from stress owing, among other factors, to
the characteristics and working conditions typically found in hospitals. It is estimated
that work stress costs the nation billions of dollars a year in lost productivity, health
care expenses, and stress-related lawsuits (National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health, 2005; Sulsky & Smith, 2005). Job stress is a timely and important topic
for workers, that is the condition in which some factors or combination of factors
interferes with the worker to disrupt his or her physical, psychological, or social
homeostasis (Lou, 1997). One of the groups of workers most affected by this problem
is nurses, who, irrespective of the unit in which they work, frequently suffer from
stress.
Several studies point out that student nurses, ward nurses, renal care nurses and
psychiatric nurses report that they feel stress in their work (Piko, 2006; Sveinsdo’ ttir
et al., 2006; Tyson and Pongruengphant, 2004). Taken as a group, nurses, together
with teachers and chief executives/leaders, have been found to experience the highest
levels of work- related stress (McVicar, 2003). Nurses usually face stress in their
work, and their a group of professionals that work with patients, relatives, and
hospital caregivers in various stressful life situations. Through their dealings with
suffering, illness and death they confront existential issues on a daily basis. They have
to cope with stress at work and even in their private lives. Reasons for stress may vary
in different areas of health care. In a literature review, four different areas that create
stress were highlighted; these are also prevalent in studies of nurses: workload,
leadership issues, professional conflict, and emotional nursing care demands
(McVicar, 2003). This level of stress is included in the organizational factors that
pertain to leadership styles, culture, and climate within an organization, participation
in decision-making, and questions at a group level.
The notion of personality is a special characteristic of human behavior. Over the
past decades a number of potential mechanisms that might link personality and health
have been proposed (Smith, 2006), including mediation models in which the relation
between traits and health is mediated by other variables. The Big Five personality
traits can be found in essentially any measure of personality. The big five personality
theory proposes that individual characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving,
and responding to environmental demands can be described in terms of their scores on
five personality domains – extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), agreeableness (A),
conscientiousness (C), and openness to experience (O) (McCrae & Costa, 2003). The
last decade of personality research has suggested that the five-factor model of
personality or the ‘Big Five' (Goldberg, 1990) is a valid way of describing many
salient aspects of an individual’s personality. Therefore, it is important to understand
how work associated stress effects nurses, and what factors in their personality cause
the greatest burden.
Santos et al. (2003) found that among nurses in Missouri USA, occupational
stress was related to the physical environment and responsibility. Studies indicate that,
in addition to nursing itself, organizational and management characteristics influence
the stress nurses experience at work (Santos et al., 2003; Stordeur et al., 2001). Job
stress is a timely and important topic for organizational leaders (Ganster, 2005). We
examine this critical issue by integrating job stress and shared leadership theories.
Specifically, we argue that leadership could play a crucial role in the leader's ability to
successfully manage the stressful demands of contemporary organizations.
The magnitude of personality traits, leadership behavior, and job stress has
become a matter of concern for nurses. Although a number of researchers have
explored leadership behavior , and job stress among nurses who work in critical care
settings, a few studies have explored these issues among nurses, but there is a lack of
studies assessing the personality traits, and lack of studies assessing the structural
model of these concepts. Little research has been done in the nurses using personality
traits, leadership behavior, and job stress questionnaires to analysis the relationships
between these three independent variables. Thus, the purposes of this study were to
examine personality traits, leadership behavior, and job stress and their relationships
in nurses in Yunlin, Taiwan.
In addition to testing the construct validity of the measurements, which are
personality traits, leadership behavior, and job stress in a nurse sample, this study
addresses the following research questions: What were the personality traits,
leadership behavior, and job stress among nurses? What model accurately portrays the
relationships between these three independent variables?

Methods And Subjects

The subjects were 350 prison officers located in Yunlin, Taiwan. We distributed
350 questionnaires and collected 284 questionnaires. The questionnaires consisted of
general characteristics, personality traits, leadership behavior, and job stress. General
characteristics included age, and education. Job characteristics included department
and work duration (year), position.Descriptive data analysis was performed using
SPSS for windows 14.0. The proposed model was assessed by using structural
equation modeling (SEM) by LISREL 8.7 .

Results
The general and job characteristics of 284 subjects were shown in Table 1.

<Insert Table 1 about here>

The three instruments were established by internal consistency reliability, test–

retest reliability using intraclass coefficient (ICC), and construct validity. Factor
analysis was used for testing construct validity. A pool of items was examined using
principle-axes factors with Varimax rotation. The Statistical Package for the SPSS for
Windows 14.0 was used to analyze the data in this study. Cronbach’s alpha was
calculated to determine the internal consistency, and the yielded a values were 0.866
for the Personality Traits Scale, 0.986 for the Leadership Behavior Scale, and 0.874
for the Job Stress Scale.
The Personality Traits Scale, which consists of 31 items, was retained based on
principal components analysis with Varimax rotation, we found that there were five
factors that account for 58.95% of the total variance. Factor 1 was “openness to
experience”; Factor 2 was “conscientiousness”; Factor 3 was “extraversion”; Factor 4
was “agreeableness”; and Factor 5 was “agreeableness”. The Leadership Behavior
Scale, which consists of 50 items, was retained based on principal components
analysis with Varimax rotation, we found that there were three factors that account for
71.57% of the total variance. Factor 1 was “the role of mentor”; Factor 2 was the “role
of parent”; and Factor 3 was “the role of monarch”. The Job Stress Scale, which
consists of 16 items, was retained based on principal components analysis with
Varimax rotation. Results show that a four-factor solution accounted for 70.57% of
the total variance. Four factors of job stress were identified. Factor 1 was ” anxiety ”;
Factor 2 was “tiredness”; Factor 3 was “low self-esteem ”; and Factor 4 was
“melancholy”. The mean score of total personality traits was 3.25, and that of
leadership behavior was 3.89, and that of job stress was 3.46.The r ange of personality
traits by subgroup was 2.98 to 3.39, the mean score of agreeableness was the highest,
3.39, the range of leadership behavior by subgroup was 3.82 to 3.93, the mean score
of the role of parent was the highest, 3.93, the range of job stress by subgroup was
3.36 to 3.56, the mean score of low self-esteem was the highest, 3.56 as can be seen in
table 2.

<Insert Table 2 about here>

Structural equation modeling was implemented by LISREL 8.7 (Jöreskog and

Sörbom, 1982). Result, the chi-square significant test was used to determine the
degree to which the proposed model fits the data. Nonsignificant chi-square values
(chi-square values approximate to the degrees of freedom, P >0.05) indicate that the
proposed model fits the data.
The goodness-offit index (GFI), expresses the relative amount of the variance
and covariance accounted for by the model. The goodness-of-fit measures include
Adjusted GFI (AGFI), Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA),
comparative fit index(CFI), normed fit index (NFI), and non-normed fit index
(NNFI).A AGFI is taking into account the degree of freedom of the model. A RMSEA
value close to zero shows a near perfect fit, and it is a measure of the discrepancy per
degree of freedom in the model. A CFI assesses the relative fit of a hypothesized
model to a baseline model and it is always between zero and one. The NFI, NNFI are
always between zero and one, with any value above 0.9 indicating a good fit and the
value one suggesting a perfect fit.
From the path diagram in Figure 1, the finding indicated that the chi-square
measure of overall fit for this model is 366.06 with 51 degrees of freedom ( χ2 /df =
7.178); the GFI was 0.823, the AGFI was 0.729; the NFI was 0.898; the NNFI was
0.884; the CFI was 0.910, and the point estimate of RMSEA was 0.148. Therefore,
our research model exhibits quite good fit with data gathered.The path coefficients
from personality trails to openness to experience ( λ1 = 0.27 , t = 11 .49 ),
conscientiousness( λ2 = 0.43, t = 17 .75 ), extraversion( λ3 = 0.34 , t = 13 .86 ),
agreeableness( λ4 = 0.36 , t = 15 .66 ), and neuroticism( λ5 = 0.27 , t = 8.72 ) were
significant.

<Insert Figure 1 about here>

Leadership behavior was not significantly correlated with the role of mentor(
γ 11 = 0.37 ), but significantly and correlated with the role of parent(
γ 12 = 0.42 , t = 18 .37 ), and the role of monarch( γ 13 = 0.39 , t = 17 .53 ). Job stress
was significantly and correlated with tiredness ( γ 22 = 0.71, t = 25 .34 ), low self-
esteem ( γ 23 = 0.61, t = 14 .99 ), and melancholy ( γ 24 = 0.62 , t = 20 .51 ), but not
significantly correlated with anxiety ( γ 21 = 0.81 ).
Going a step further, we explored whether leadership behavior has an intervening
effect between personality trails, and job stress. Table 3 presents the results.
 <Insert Table 3 about here>

The model shows that personality trails has a direct effect on leadership behavior,
which yielded a path coefficient of γ 1 = 0.22 , t = 3.43 (P>0.1), but personality trails
has a direct negative effect on job stress, which yielded a path coefficient of
γ 2 = −0.74 , t = −12 .80 (P>0.1), and leadership behavior has a direct negative effect
on job stress, which yielded a path coefficient of β = −0.06 , t = −1.16 ( P>0.05).
The higher the personality trails nurses had, the higher is their charge nurses’
leadership behavior, but the lower is their perceived job stress. The higher the charge
nurses' leadership behavior with nurses' job is, the lower is nurses' perceived job
stress. The model also shows that personality trails has a direct effect on leadership
behavior, and negative direct effect on job stress, as well as a significant negative
indirect effect of personality traits on job stress through leadership behavior.

Discussion
The results of the structural equation model provided support for the relationship
of the direct and indirect effects among personality traits, leadership behavior, and job
stress. Personality traits was found to have a strong direct positive effect on leadership
behavior, and negative direct positive effect job stress. Most study revealed that
personality traits also has been shown to contribute to leadership behavior, and job
stress. This study revealed that personality behavior, leadership behavior, and job
stress, which are seen to interact with a number of factors. These relationships provide
additional areas that need to be examined.
The finding that leadership behavior had a direct negative effect on job stress is
consistent with the findings of a number of previous studies that show that a
significantly negative correlation exists between stress and leadership. Few studies
explained the relationship between leadership and stress. While personality traits and
job stress theoretically happen at the same period after one enters an institution, they
should be associated with job stress and/or leadership behavior in different ways from
personality traits. This study supports findings that personality traits are an important
antecedent variable, which influences leadership behavior and perceived job stress.
Most of the personality traits, leadership behavior and job stress scales in previous
studies did not develop despite testing the construct validity. In this study, the positive
structural coefficient of all factors shows that there are high-level perceptions of the
factors in each of the three concepts.
The score ranking of the three factors of personality traits in nurses were
consistent with hospital nurses in previous studies. In the personality traits, the
agreeableness factor has the highest mean score and the neuroticism factor has the
lowest. In the leadership behavior, the role of parent factor has the highest mean score
and the role of mentor factor has the lowest. In the job stress, the low self-esteem
factor has the highest mean score and the anxiety factor has the lowest. Thus, it is
highly suggested that the DOH in Taiwan has to establish programs to improve the
leadership behavior of charge nurse, and reduces nurses’ job stress. We believe that
nurses in Yunlin County constitute nurses nationwide at a microlevel. All nurses in
Taiwan are set up by the DOH. Because all nurses are under the control of the DOH,
they have the same mission and job content and perform the same function. Although
the sample in this study may not be large enough to represent the whole country, the
findings of this study should have generalizability in Taiwan. The structural equation
model provides powerful information for administrators to reduces the job stress to
nursing. The results of this study add to previous research linking the relationship
between personality traits and job stress. Further research studies should focus on the
impact of job stress on personality traits and reinforce interactions between the
abovementioned three variables.

Conclusions
The findings of this study show that personality traits plays an antecedent role to
leadership behavior and job stress of nurses. This study suggests that personality traits
is an important factor related to job stress, and health care institutions should be
concerned with this issue.

Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to the nursing staff at Yunlin Hospital for
assistance in coordinating participant interviews. We would also like to thank Hung
Sheue-Jen for her assistance in conducting participant interviews.

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Table 1. General and job characteristics of the subjects
variables category N %
Age ≦20 0 0%
21-30 202 71.1%
31-40 60 21.1%
41-50 22 7.7%
≧51 0 0%
Education Nursing College 153 53.9%
Academy 121 42.6%
Other 10 3.5%
Department Medicine 84 29.6%
Surgery 112 39.4%
Orthopedics 2 0.7%
Psychiatry 16 5.6%
Gynecology 0 0%
Dentology 3 1.1%
Pediatrics 32 11.3%
Ophthalmology 0 0%
Rehabilitation 0 0%
Emergency room 35 12.3%
Work duration (years) ≦1(year) 45 15.8%
1-2(year) 92 32.4%
2-3(year) 69 24.3%
3-4(year) 12 4.2%
≧4(year) 66 23.2%
position Charge nurse 22 7.7%
Nurse 262 92.3%
Table 2. Mean score personality traits, leadership behavior, and job stress
variables Item mean S.D. Cronbach’ α Factors account
Personality traits 31 3.25 0.36 0.866 58.95%
Openness to experience 5 3.31 0.43 0.735
Conscientiousness 6 3.27 0.50 0.659
Extraversion 6 3.31 0.46 0.624
Agreeableness 7 3.39 0.45 0.771
Neuroticism 7 2.98 0.53 0.835
Leadership behavior 50 3.89 0.41 0.986 71.57%
The role of mentor 20 3.82 0.47 0.972
The role of parent 16 3.93 0.44 0.971
The role of monarch 14 3.91 0.44 0.967
Job stress 16 3.46 0.74 0.874 70.57%
Anxiety 5 3.36 0.87 0.897
Tiredness 4 3.51 0.78 0.6109
Low self-esteem 3 3.56 0.86 0.770
Melancholy 4 3.38 0.75 0.6722

The role of mentor 0.08

0.11 Openness to experience 0.37
Leadership behavior 0.42 The role of parent 0.02
0.27
0.06 Conscientiousness 0.22 0.39
The role of monarch 0.04
0.43
-0.06
0.10 Extraversion 0.34 Personality traits Anxiety 0.10
0.36 -0.74 0.81
0.71 Tiredness 0.10
0.07 Agreeableness 0.27 Job stress
0.61
Low self-esteem 0.37
0.62
0.21 Neuroticism
Melancholy 0.17

Figure 1. StructuralChi-Square=366.06,
model of the df=51,
relationships between
P-value=0.000, the concept of personality
RESEA =0.148

traits, leadership behavior, and job stress

Table 3. Path coefficient
Independent variable value t value
Personality traits Openness to experience 0.274** 11.492
Conscientiousness 0.434** 17.753
Extraversion 0.340** 13.864
Agreeableness 0.361** 15.662
Neuroticism 0.269** 8.715
Leadership behavior The role of mentor 0.371
The role of parent 0.424** 18.372
The role of monarch 0.393** 17.534
Job stress Anxiety 0.810
Tiredness 0.714** 25.343
Low self-esteem 0.609** 14.997
Melancholy 0.621** 20.506
Personality traits Leadership behavior
Leadership behavior 0.224*(3.434)
Job stress -0.741*(-12.798) -0.056**(-1.160)
Note: ( ) is t value, *p<0.1, **p<0.05.