The effect of neurotic personality traits on careerism: Mediating effects of moral disengagement

The purpose of this study is to determine the antecedents of careerism orientation at the individual level. In this context, the concepts of neuroticism and moral disengagement are included as antecedents of careerism. The research model was based on social cognitive theory and locus of control principle while neuroticism was considered as independent variable, careerism orientation as dependent variable and moral disengagement as mediator variable. Despite there are lots of studies about the negative employee orientations there are limited studies to determine antecedents of careerism orientation. In this respect filling this gap is the originality of this study. The sample of this study was composed of 316 white collar service sector employees (197 male and 119 female) who were choosen by simple random sampling method. The survey technique was used to collect the data and the questionnaires were applied to the same people in two different time periods with one month interval in order to prevent common method variance error. To analyze the data SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 20.0 programs were used. The results of time lapped study show that neuroticism positively predicts careerism and moral disengagement fully mediates this relationship. At the end of the study, suggestions and managerial implications as well as the limitations of the research were provided.