Influence of personality traits and moral values on employee well-being, resilience and performance: a cross-national study

Research examining the relationship at the interface of personality, values, moral foundations and its impact on employees’ subjective well-being, resilience, job performance and satisfaction is almost non-existent. This study addresses this Special Issue’s call focusing on the key antecedents and consequences of resilience on individual and/or organisational level outcomes. It does so by analysing data from two different, though comparative cross-national studies in Australia and India. Employing a quantitative survey method, we collected data from 195 respondents in Australia and 257 respondents from India. Employing the core theory of moral foundations in association with its relationships with individual personality, values, well-being and resilience, our findings suggest a significant relationship between personality traits and individual moral foundations, and psychological well-being via values. The study offers distinctive contributions to the literatures on well-being, resilience and moral foundations theory. Specifically, the personality trait of extroversion influences power and achievement or self-enhancement values through individualised moral foundations. Second, the study found that values of benevolence and universalism, or compassionate values, form the basis for biological mechanisms of resilience through individual moral foundations of fairness/harm care. The paper concludes with implications for theory and practice.