J. Eng. Technol. Manage.

30 (2013) 157168

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Engineering and

Technology Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jengtecman

Key personality traits of engineers for innovation and

technology development
Jeanine M. Williamson a,*, John W. Lounsbury b,1, Lee D. Han c,2
a

University of Tennessee Libraries, 1015 Volunteer Boulevard, Room 152, Knoxville, TN 37996, United States
Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-0900, United States
Transportation Engineering Program, University of Tennessee, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering,
112 Perkins Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-2010, United States

b
c

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords:
Personality
Career satisfaction
Engineers

Focusing on new roles of engineers for technological innovation and

internal entrepreneurship, we examined the personality traits of
4876 engineers versus 75,892 non-engineers. Engineers scored
higher on Tough-Mindedness and Intrinsic Motivation; but lower
on Assertiveness, Conscientiousness, Customer Service Orientation,
Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Image Management, Optimism,
Visionary Style, and Work Drive. All but four of these traits were
positively related to engineers career satisfaction. Overall, the
results are not encouraging for the new roles of engineers such as
intrapreneurship. Findings were discussed in terms of occupational
proling of engineers as well as career planning, selection, training,
and professional development of engineers.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In todays ercely competitive, global marketplacewith its emphasis on rapid, continuous
innovation and need for ongoing adaptation to an increasingly complex worldthe human resource
capital conguration of companies is undergoing corresponding dramatic changes (Geisler and
Wickramasinghe, 2009). Among these are demands for engineers to play more consequential roles
in all phases of the innovation process in global corporations. Such roles require knowledge, skills,

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 865 974 9164; fax: +1 865 974 9242.
E-mail addresses: jwilliamson@utk.edu (J.M. Williamson), jlounsbu@utk.edu (J.W. Lounsbury), lhan@utk.edu (L.D. Han).
1
Ecareert.com.
2
Tel.: +1 865 974 7707.
0923-4748/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jengtecman.2013.01.003

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and personal traits which go well beyond those found in standard taxonomies such as the
Dictionary of Occupational Titles and its successor, O*NET (2012) or Occupational Networkan
online occupational database comprising a mix of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personal
traits for a wide range of occupations. Menzel et al. (2007) contend that engineers must function
more entrepreneurially in their companies, in an intrapreneur role. In their view, the core
competences of intrapreneurs include a number of new qualities not found in traditional
engineering job descriptions, such as embracing revolutionary change, teaming with other
disciplines, visionary thinking style, exible problem-solving, risk-taking, and comfort with
uncertainty. Similarly, as idea innovators working in new product development settings, engineers
would be expected to possess curiosity, self-motivation, intuition, emotion management, selfawareness, and creativity (Amabile and Gryskiewicz, 1988). In a similar vein, Uljin et al. (2007)
propose that engineers engaged in new product development and innovation diffusion should have
competencies in people skills, social networking, team facilitation, risk management, and customer
responsiveness, among others.
Then, too, as noted by Davis (1999), successful technological innovation requires a unique
combination of not only entrepreneurial competences at the level of the individual contributor, but
also corresponding managerial skills. Engineering managers who function in an intrapreneur capacity
will need the attributes outlined above. They will also need to identify, motivate, inuence, and guide
the innovation-related behavior of engineers so as to facilitate overall corporate innovation and
competitiveness. From a broader perspective, there is an emerging and strongly held consensus
among national policy analysts that the future prosperity and security of the United States is imperiled
by the eroding human resource capital in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (National
Science Foundation, 2012). Among the critical areas for improving the education and training of
engineers to compete in the global marketplace and function in international settings are the new
roles and soft skills noted above as well as open-mindedness, cross-cultural sensitivity, social
awareness, and emotional intelligence (Del Vitto, 2008).
Some companies have successfully integrated intrapreneurial roles with other innovative
strategies for commercial technology. For example, 3M jointly promotes entrepreneurship and
intrapreneurship as part of new venture teams, intra-company technology exchange, and customer
driven innovation to help foster the commercialization of technology in its electronic business
(Conceicao et al., 2002). In smaller rms, the intrapreneur role may have to be combined with other
roles, such as lead manager or founder, to facilitate the development of new products and services to
expand prot (Camelo-Ordaz et al., 2012). In larger organizations, the intrapreneur role is often
adopted by middle management and by ad hoc positions designated by the company to develop new
business ventures in the existing organization (Roupas, 2008).
While there is a nascent conceptual literature on characteristics of engineers purported to be
important for successful intrapreneurship and new technology innovation, there is a dearth of
empirical research bearing on these issues. As noted by Davis (1999), we do not know whether any of
the proposed attributes are necessarily descriptive of, say, intrapreneurial engineers. At the present
juncture, one important question to ask is what are the key personal attributes of engineers at the
beginning of the 21st century? Two other important, related questions are: do these attributes differ
from the ones portrayed in extant occupational taxonomies like O*NET, and how do they correspond
to the new roles engineers will be expected to adoptsuch as intrapreneurship, technology change
advocate, and innovation co-facilitator?
To address these questions, our focus in the present study is on one key attribute of engineers
their personality traits. There are ve main reasons for choosing personality traits as our unit of
analysis. First, personality traits are recognized as one of the main components to be considered in
any job analysis or job description, which are referenced by the commonplace acronym KSAO, or
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other personal characteristics, with personality traits typically
representing the other personal characteristic of job incumbents (cf. Muchinsky, 2012). O*NET
(2012), for example, lists personality traits as well as key areas of knowledge, skills, and educational
requirements for all occupations listed. Second, personality traits can be assessed in a reliable,
standardized manner such that personality trait scores can be meaningfully compared across
situations, time periods, and diverse samples of people. Third, personality traits have been found in

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159

meta-analyses to be valid predictors of job performance and satisfaction for a wide range of jobs
and job groups (see, e.g., Salgado, 1997, 2002). Fourth, personality traits are frequently used in such
key organizational functions as recruitment, selection, training, development, and mentoring
(Muchinsky, 2012) to enhance the caliber of a companys human resource capital. Fifth, from an
evolutionary psychology perspective, personality traits have emerged and persist because they
have functional value for individuals in solving problems. As Buss (1996, p. 192) noted, personality
traits represent individual differences in the qualities or resources individuals can draw upon to
solve adaptive problems. In his view, for example, an emotionally stable person may rely on
steadiness of nerves, inner resilience, and the capacity to rally from setback, which allows the
person to focus on work demands without performance being impaired by anxiety, worrying, loss of
energy, etc. Similar scenarios can be constructed to show how different personality traits are
related to successful job performance, job satisfaction and career success (see, e.g., Lounsbury,
2006).
To examine the above questions, we drew on Hollands (1996) vocational theory, which posits that
the correspondence or t between persons and work environments on key personality characteristics
leads to important vocational outcomes, including satisfaction, tenure, and performance. Holland
(1996, p. 397) summarized his vocational theory as follows:
Studies show that people ourish in their work environment when there is a good t between
their personality type and the characteristics of the environment. Lack of congruence between
personality and environment leads to dissatisfaction, unstable career paths, and lowered
performance.
There are two logical corollaries of Hollands t model that have been veried by a long line of
empirical research and are germane to the present study. (1) There are differences in average
scores on personality characteristics associated with occupations which help determine t; and
(2) higher scores on these personality characteristics associated with good t are related to higher
levels of satisfaction. Accordingly, the following research questions were examined in the present
study:
Research questions
RQ1: On which personality traits do engineers differ from other occupations?
This research question is based directly on Hollands vocational theory. Scores on traits important for
an occupation should differ in magnitude from scores on the same traits obtained from other
occupations. The personality traits assessed were the traits studied previously by Lounsbury et al.
(2003b) for 14 different occupational groups.
RQ2: Which personality traits are related to career satisfaction for engineers?
This question is also derived from Hollands vocational theory, which holds that salient traits for an
occupation will be related to satisfaction with that occupation.
The following sections describe the methodology and results of this study, followed by a discussion
of the meaning of the results, both in terms of theoretical and practical implications.
Method
The data for this study were drawn from an archival source representing responses collected on the
Internet as part of personality assessment and career planning services offered by an international
strategic human resources company. Individuals who listed their present or most recent job as being
in the eld of engineering, and had answered questions about career satisfaction, were selected from
this data source. Owing to condentiality considerations, the identities of the companies where
individuals worked were not available. Human subjects approval was obtained for the study. Data
were collected between March 2004 and June 2010.

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Participants
The total sample for the present study consisted of 4876 engineers and 75,892 individuals
employed in a variety of occupations. Of the 4876 engineers, 82% were male; 18% were female.
Relative frequencies by age group were under 309%; 303925%; 404934%, and 50 and over
32%. Race/ethnic data were not available.
Measures
The personality measure used in this data source was the Personal Style Inventory (PSI), a normal,
work-based personality inventory which has been used in a variety of settings internationally, mainly
for career development and pre-employment screening purposes (Lounsbury and Gibson, 2012;
Lounsbury et al., 2003a,b, 2004a,b; Pemberton et al., 2005; Williamson et al., 2005). Reliability and
validity information on the PSI is provided by Lounsbury and Gibson (2012).
A brief description of each of the personality constructs examined in the present study is given
below along with the Cronbachs coefcient alpha observed for that scale (Nunnally and Bernstein,
1994). The coefcient alpha is the average of the split-half reliabilities of a psychometric scale. Kline
(2000) states: It can be shown that the square root of the alpha coefcient is an estimate of the
correlation of the test score with the true score. Coefcient alphas range from 0 to 1.0, and 0.7 is
considered acceptable.
Assertivenessa persons disposition to speak up on matters of importance, expressing ideas and
opinions condently, defending personal beliefs, seizing the initiative, and exerting inuence in a
forthright, but not aggressive, manner. Coefcient alpha = 0.79.
Conscientiousnessdependability, reliability, trustworthiness, and inclination to adhere to company
norms, rules, and values. Coefcient alpha = 0.77.
Customer Service Orientationstriving to provide highly responsive, personalized, quality service to
(internal and external) contacts, putting the person rst; and trying to make him or her satised, even
if it means going above and beyond the normal job description or policy. Coefcient alpha = 0.70.
Emotional Stabilityoverall level of adjustment and emotional resilience in the face of job stress and
pressure. Coefcient alpha = 0.81.
Extraversiontendency to be sociable, outgoing, gregarious, expressive, warmhearted, and talkative.
Coefcient alpha = 0.82.
Image Managementreects a persons disposition to monitor, observe, regulate, and control the selfpresentation and image he or she projects during interactions with other people. Coefcient
alpha = 0.79.
Intrinsic Motivationa disposition to be motivated by intrinsic work factors, such as challenge,
meaning, autonomy, variety and signicance (as opposed to extrinsic factors such as pay and
earnings, benets, status, recognition). Coefcient alpha = 0.81.
Opennessreceptivity/openness to change, innovation, novel experience, and new learning. Coefcient alpha = 0.81.
Optimismhaving an upbeat, hopeful outlook concerning situations, people, prospects, and the
future, even in the face of difculty and adversity; a tendency to minimize problems and persist
in the face of setbacks. Coefcient alpha = 0.83.
Teamwork Disposition (Agreeableness)propensity for working as part of a team and functioning
cooperatively on work group efforts. Coefcient alpha = 0.83.
Tough-Mindednessappraising information and making work decisions based on logic, facts, and data
versus feelings, values and intuition. Coefcient alpha = 0.86.
Visionary Stylefocusing on long-term planning, strategy, and envisioning future possibilities and
contingencies. Coefcient alpha = 0.84.
Work Drivedisposition to work for long hours (including overtime) and an irregular schedule;
investing high levels of time and energy into job and career, and being motivated to extend oneself, if
necessary, to nish projects, meet deadlines, be productive, and achieve job success. Coefcient
alpha = 0.81.

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161

Career satisfaction was measured by a ve-item scale dealing with career progress and trajectory,
career advancement, future career prospects, and career as a whole that has been shown to display
sound reliability and construct validity (Lounsbury and Gibson, 2012). The satisfaction items were
placed on a seven-point scale with verbally opposing anchors at each end (e.g., I am very satised
with the way my career has progressed so far. versus I am very dissatised with the way my career
has progressed so far). Coefcient alpha for the career satisfaction scale = 0.81. The career satisfaction
items were introduced into the data archive in 2006, so there is a smaller sample size of engineers who
completed this measure (n = 519) than in the total sample of engineers.
Results
Table 1 summarizes the results of t tests comparing the mean scores on the personality traits for
non-engineers and engineers and provides the correlations between the study personality traits and
career satisfaction. Engineers scored signicantly lower than non-engineers on Assertiveness,
Conscientiousness, Customer Service Orientation, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Image Management, Optimism, Visionary Style, and Work Drive, and signicantly higher on Intrinsic Motivation and
Tough-Mindedness. There were no signicant differences between engineers and non-engineers on
Openness and Teamwork.
Nine traits were signicantly positively correlated with career satisfaction: Assertiveness,
Customer Service Orientation, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, Optimism, Teamwork,
Tough-Mindedness, and Work Drive. Signicant correlations ranged in value from a high of 0.42
(Optimism) to moderate values of 0.33 (Emotional Stability), 0.31 (Assertiveness), and 0.29 (Work
Drive), to lower values of 0.26 (Extraversion), 0.17 (Teamwork, Tough-Mindedness), 0.16 (Openness)
and 0.14 (Customer Service Orientation). Image Management had a small negative correlation with
Career Satisfaction ( 0.09).
Discussion
Overall, the results of the present study indicate the importance of key personality traits of
engineers both in terms of distinguishing engineering from other occupations and in terms of their
relationship with career satisfaction. Engineers differed from other occupations on 11 of the 13
personality traits under study and nine of these 13 traits were positively and signicantly related to
the career satisfaction of engineers. These ndings will be discussed in terms of related literature on

Table 1
Personality traits of engineers vs. non-engineers and correlations with career satisfaction.a
Engineers

Assertiveness
Conscientiousness
Customer Service Orientation
Emotional Stability
Extraversion
Image Management
Intrinsic Motivation
Openness
Optimism
Teamwork
Tough-Mindedness
Visionary Style
Work Drive
a

Non-engineers

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

3.35
3.27
4.09
3.37
3.49
2.54
3.60
3.73
3.64
3.46
3.78
2.83
3.19

0.82
0.72
0.64
0.75
0.81
0.82
0.79
0.72
0.80
0.79
0.78
0.73
0.76

3.53
3.34
4.21
3.42
3.79
2.64
3.51
3.74
3.82
3.50
3.12
2.91
3.34

0.84
0.73
0.780
0.73
0.73
0.83
0.81
0.74
0.78
0.79
0.83
0.77
0.79

Correlation with
career satisfaction
14.60**
6.06**
11.46**
5.19**
24.98**
7.94**
7.68**
0.90
16.00**
0.86
44.89**
7.60**
12.78**

0.31**
0.04
0.14**
0.33**
0.26**
0.09*
0.06
0.16**
0.42**
0.17**
0.17**
0.04
0.29**

n=80,768 (Df=80,766) for all t-tests except Tough-Mindedness (n=44,836) (Df=44,834). n=519 except for Tough-Mindedness
(n=343) for correlations. Equal variances assumed.
p< 0.05.
**
p< 0.01.
*

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KSAOs and personality traits of engineers, implications for new versus traditional roles of engineers,
and in terms of a prole of key personality traits of engineers.
That the average Conscientiousness score for engineers as a whole were signicantly lower than
that of non-engineers is at variance with typical depictions of engineers as being higher on
Conscientiousness and related traits of orderliness and attention to detail (Kline and Lapham, 1992;
O*NET, 2012; Van der Molen et al., 2007). Since a lower level of Conscientiousness is also interpretable
as reecting exibility and creativity (Lounsbury and Gibson, 2012), these Conscientiousness results
can be seen as supporting calls for engineers to be more creative, exible, and capable of thinking
outside the box (Menzel et al., 2007; Uljin et al., 2007), as well as participating more fully in such nonstandard roles as radical innovation (Kelley et al., 2011), cross-functional teaming (OConnor and
McDermott, 2004), and building social capital for radical innovation (Weber and Weber, 2007). On the
other hand, the current nding of lower average scores on Conscientiousness for engineers compared
to other occupations may reect the growing talent shortage for companies trying to recruit and hire
engineers. According to Manpowers (2011) annual international talent survey, engineering jobs are
fourth among the top ten most difcult jobs to ll, reecting an increasing problem of talent shortage
despite an economic downturn. Given the importance of Conscientiousness for job performance,
academic achievement, and a number of other work-related variables, such as accidents and absences
(Barrick and Mount, 1991; Salgado, 1997), future research should attempt to replicate the present
nding of lower Conscientiousness and clarify possible explanations. In any case, neither high nor low
levels of Conscientiousness should be regarded as a core attribute of engineers since Conscientiousness was not signicantly related to their career satisfaction.
On the other hand, Intrinsic Motivation appears to be a core personality trait of engineers since they
scored higher than non-engineers on Intrinsic Motivation and it was positively related to their career
satisfaction. Moreover, Intrinsic Motivation or Internal Motivation has been described as one of the
new attributes expected of engineers as they move into roles where greater importance is placed on
self-management and self-determination activities in project management and product innovation
(Menzel et al., 2007).
Tough-Mindedness appears to be another key personality trait of engineers, as they had
signicantly higher scores on Tough-Mindedness than non-engineers, and Tough-Mindedness was
positively correlated with the career satisfaction of engineers. The higher levels of Tough-Mindedness
of engineers aligns well with other studies showing that engineering students overwhelmingly had
high scores on the MyersBriggs Thinking preference, which is quite similar to Tough-Mindedness
(e.g., Felder et al., 1993; McCaulley et al., 1987). Conn and Riekes (1994) nding that engineers score
low on Sensitivity is also consistent with the present results, as individuals with low sensitivity tend to
be tough, objective, and unsentimental. The adaptive value (Buss, 1996) of Tough-Mindedness for
engineers arises because engineering professions typically involve logical, scientic, mathematical
thinking, which requires Tough-Mindednessa disposition to perform logical, objective analyses of
information to make decisions and form judgments.
The results for most of the other traits are less auspicious for the new and changing work roles of
engineers, though in most cases they afrm the importance of key attributes ordinarily imputed to
engineers. For example, engineers had lower Extraversion scores than non-engineers. While this result
does not augur well for increasing the social skills or communication effectiveness of engineers, such a
nding is consistent with most characterizations of engineers personalities (O*NET, 2012; Watson
and Clark, 1997) and likely reects the importance of engineers being able to concentrate and focus on
their work in a quiet, attentive, and thoughtful manner without being distracted by opportunities for
social interaction. On the other hand, Extraversion was positively correlated with career satisfaction,
which means that more extraverted engineers reported higher levels of career satisfaction than more
introverted engineers. This is an interesting result and might seem to be at odds with the lower
Extraversion scores we found for engineers compared to other occupations. Why might this be? One
answer may be that Extraversion leads to more satisfying experiences over the course of a career,
perhaps because it results in more acquaintanceships and friendships, greater personal communication with coworkers and bosses, and more positive reception by others at work (Watson and Clark,
1997). Such dynamics would result in a positive correlation between Extraversion and career
satisfaction. Moreover, Extraversion has been found to be positively related to job satisfaction and life

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163

satisfaction for occupations in general. Thus, it may be that while the eld of engineering appears to
attract and recruit mainly introverts, extraverts are more likely to be satised with an engineering
career than introverts. If this nding can be replicated, then the eld of engineering may want to try to
place more emphasis on recruiting and selecting more extraverted individuals for engineering
positions. In any case, the current ndings are consistent with recommendations that interpersonal
and communication skills should be emphasized in engineering professional training and
development (ABET, 2012). Also, organizations could offer engineering employees more opportunities
to socialize, fraternize, and interact with other employees through activities that promote
Extraversion.
Engineers also had signicantly lower mean scores on Assertiveness, though Assertiveness was
positively correlated with career satisfaction for engineers. The lower mean score on Assertiveness is
consistent with vocational interest research which proles engineers as being relatively low on the
related trait of Enterprising interestwhich reects dominance, leadership, and selling (Harmon et al.,
1994). The positive correlation between Assertiveness and career satisfaction likely reects the usual
benets associated with being assertive in organizations, including exerting inuence in meetings and
interactions with coworkers, speaking up for ones own views and interests, confronting problems,
asking for raises, requesting more challenging assignments, and persuading others to accept ones ideas.
Assertiveness is likely to become an increasingly important attribute for engineersparticularly in
producing innovations that customers will value and leading complex, large-scale projects which
involve other professional disciplines. As Farr and Brazil (2009, p. 3) noted, Leadership must be a key
element advancing [sic] for the engineering profession to remain relevant and connected in an era of
heightened outsourcing and global competition. In a similar vein, Hinkle (2007) noted that all
engineers need leadership skills in order to be inuential, lead projects, and mentor less experienced
colleagues, for example. In the future the challenge for the eld of engineering is to increase levels of
Assertiveness among professional engineers so that they can function more effectively in leadership
and other roles requiring this trait. As described earlier, such human resource capital enhancement
might be achieved through recruitment, selection, training, development, and coaching.
Two other personality traits which directly bear on the question of new roles of engineers are
Teamwork and Visionary Style, though in both cases the results are not promising. There was no
signicant difference between engineers and non-engineers in mean scores on Teamwork, and
Teamwork was only modestly related to the career satisfaction of engineers. Visionary Style was
signicantly lower for engineers than non-engineers and Visionary Style was not signicantly related
to engineers career satisfaction. The engineering profession could try to increase levels of Teamwork
and Visionary Style through pre-employment functions like recruitment and selection. Given the low
correlations between these two traits and career satisfaction, any corresponding post-employment
activities should be accompanied by job design or enrichment efforts which link organizational
rewards for behaviors related to the traits. For example, engineers could be recognized and reinforced
for such teamwork-related activities as participation in: matrix organizations, collaborative learning
projects, interdisciplinary teams, international teamwork, and cooperative efforts in groups reecting
ethnic, age, racial, and other forms of diversity. Similarly, engineers could be rewarded for activities
involving Visionary Style, such as planning, forecasting, and developing strategies for new product
development, marketing, and technical management.
On ve of the other personality traits, engineers scored lower than non-engineers and the trait was
positively related to their career satisfaction, leading to mixed implications for the new work roles for
engineers. Thus, engineers scored lower than non-engineers on Emotional Stability, but it was the trait
second most highly correlated with career satisfaction for engineers. Work stress, which can lower
Emotional Stability, is an inherent feature of most engineering jobs, with their task complexity,
multiple demands from different sources, tight deadlines, and high stakes for failure. In fact, an
international survey of stress levels in different types of jobs found engineering to be the third most
stressful occupation worldwide (Jaggs, 2006). Engineers with higher levels of Emotional Stability can
better handle such stress and stay more focused on their work, which, over the course of a career, is
likely to lead to higher levels of satisfaction than for their less stable peers.
In a similar vein, Optimism was lower for engineers than non-engineers, but Optimism was the
personality trait most highly correlated with career satisfaction for engineers. The lower levels of

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Optimism for engineers may be the result of several factors, including the chronic job stress noted
above, the increasing outsourcing of engineering jobs (Bryant, 2006), or, simply, that members of other
occupations have a more optimistic disposition.
Engineers also scored lower on Customer Service Orientation, and this trait was positively
correlated with career satisfaction. Since increased emphasis on internal and external customers is
important for engineers to have in developing their intrapreneurial roles (Menzel et al., 2007),
engineers are likely to benet from more training and development in this area.
While engineers scored lower than members of other occupations on Work Drive, those who
scored higher were more career-satised. There is no ready explanation for the lower Work Drive
levels of engineers, but we suspect it may reect a distinctive feature of individuals who are attracted
to and enter the engineering profession, as we also have data (Lounsbury and Gibson, 2012) indicating
that undergraduate engineering majors have lower Work Drive scores than students in other majors.
This is unfortunate since the eld of engineering is becoming increasingly imbued with what
Dryburgh (1999) terms a work hard engineering culture. The advanced technical nature of
engineering requires hard work to master all the new skills and new role requirements as well as the
myriad demands associated with complex, large-scale projects that add to an engineers workload.
Engineers also scored lower on Image Management than non-engineers, and Image Management
was slightly negatively related to career satisfaction. Focusing on ones personal image as perceived by
others in an organization and engaging in self-monitoring to maintain that image on ones job is not
stereotypically associated with engineering work, but it may become a more important factor as
engineers take on more project management, technical leadership, and intrapreneur roles which
require them to interface more with upper management, interdisciplinary groups, vendors,
customers, and all other members of a corporations value chain.
Finally, there was one trait on which engineers did not differ signicantly from non-engineers, but
which was modestly related to their career satisfactionOpenness. Openness has been and should
continue to be an important trait for engineers since engineering jobs require continual acquisition of
new knowledge and skills and responding to a constant inux of new information. Indeed, the ABET
(2012) accrediting organizations Criterion 3 requires that engineering programs incorporate a
recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning. The half-life of engineering
knowledge and skill is widely regarded as around a few years (National Academies Press, 2005). Thus,
it is not hard to understand why engineers with higher levels of Openness have higher levels of career
satisfaction, especially as they take on new professional roles involved in innovation and new
technology management. As is the case for teamworkand most of the other traits under discussion
the harder challenge will be how to attract and recruit individuals with higher levels of Openness to
the engineering profession.
Implications for engineering management
Managers of engineers could be readily informed by knowledge of engineers personality traits and
what personality traits contribute to their satisfaction with their career as a whole. Selection and
retention of individuals who will be satised with their careers as an engineer can be facilitated by this
knowledge. For example, a company could choose not to select an engineer who was low on ToughMindedness. While a person low on Tough-Mindedness (i.e., more feeling-oriented and tenderminded) might be able to do an engineering job, most likely he or she would not enjoy meeting the
demands consonant with these traits. There might be a higher risk of turnover in such a case, though,
of course, there are many other factors than personality traits that might contribute to career
satisfaction.
The present ndings are also germane to the emerging literature on attributes of intrapreneurs
involved in new product development (e.g., Sayeed and Gazdar, 2003), though they point more toward
challenges than ready opportunities for developing appropriate engineering human resource capital.
More specically, organizations seeking engineers suited for intrapreneurial roles should try to recruit
and select individuals who are more extraverted, teamwork-oriented, open to new learning, and
optimistic, customer-oriented, and visionary than those who have traditionally been lling
engineering positions. However, as noted by Igbaria et al. (1999), it will not be enough just to hire

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the right individuals for intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial roles in the organizationthey will need
to be offered motivating reward systems and exible career paths which accommodate their diverse
career orientations to optimize their long-term contributions.
It poses interesting challenges for engineering management that engineers scored relatively low on
many of the personality traits that contributed to career satisfaction. It may not be easy to increase
traits that may be partly constitutional or developed early in life. Managers could experiment with
promoting activities or experiences associated with these traits and see if satisfaction and/or
performance rise. Or, they could coach and mentor individuals with lower levels of these traits to
encourage the employee to nd ways to ameliorate their impact. For example, in the case of a lower
level of Emotional Stability, managers might suggest counseling for engineers experiencing high levels
of mental distress or they might reduce the employees workload or recommend participation in a
stress management program. Future research could examine whether such efforts might be effective
for different traits.
Traits desirable for recruitment and selection may be different than those desirable for
management and retention. A recruiter may want to attract individuals who meet the typical
engineering prole of lower levels of Extraversion, Optimism, Assertiveness, etc. A manager who
wants to focus on retaining employees may be looking for higher levels of the traits positively related
to career satisfaction, such as Optimism, Extraversion, and Assertiveness. Alternatively, some of the
observed levels of traits for engineers may represent relatively enduring personality characteristics
that were present in engineering majors in college and, likely, even earlier in adolescence (Caspi,
1998), which would place some of the responsibility on primary and secondary education for
attracting individuals with higher personality trait levels into the engineering profession.
Future research
Ultimately, we caution that our ndings should not be over-interpreted. Human resources
management of engineers should look at the total persons, not just their personality traits. Still, our
ndings underscore the importance of key personality traits for engineers and they point toward
interesting avenues for further inquiry on this topic. Future research should build upon the personality
prole of engineers established here to investigate at a more micro level how personality traits are
involved in innovation. For example, case studies could trace the role of individual engineers or groups
of engineers to illustrate how personality traits help or hinder innovation. While case studies have
focused on subsets of engineers attributes, such as communication skills, we believe that our
framework provides a more comprehensive picture of engineers traits that could be used for a holistic
investigation of the role of human capital attributes in innovation.
In addition to micro-level investigations with individual cases as the unit of analysis, we also see
the potential for additional studies relating personality traits to other variables. For example, it would
be useful to examine relationships between personality traits and measures of productivity and/or
career success such as number of patents or dollar value of return on investment of innovative
products. Future research could also compare the personality proles of engineering managers and
non-managers. In addition, we recommend that future research and theorizing on intrapreneurship
and new roles for engineers with respect to innovation consider the personality traits of engineers,
including mean scores on individual traits, trait proles, and relationships between the personality
traits of engineers and important criterion variables such as job and career satisfaction, turnover, job
performance, and career change, inter alia.
Study limitations
Our study used a non-random sample. Thus, generalizations may not be appropriate to the entire
population of engineers. In addition, we did not examine specialties within engineering, which could
have yielded differences in groups personality traits and the traits contribution to career satisfaction.
Our study was not longitudinal. It could be that different traits contribute to career satisfaction at
different points during an engineers career. Engineers race, cultural background, and educational
levels were not studied, all of which could possibly yield differences in personality or career

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satisfaction scores. Also, the single occasion of measurement does not permit us to draw inferences
about causality or correlational directionality.
Conclusion
We found that engineers differed on all but two of 13 personality traits when compared with nonengineers. In addition, all but three of the personality traits under study were correlated signicantly
and positively with career satisfaction. The correlational results generally aligned quite well with and
are readily interpretable by Hollands (1996) vocational t theory. Comparisons of mean trait scores of
engineers with non-engineers were less consistent with Hollands t model and with most traditional
engineering job descriptions. In particular, we were surprised by the lower Conscientiousness scores
of engineers and by its lack of correlation with engineers career satisfaction, though such scores also
could reect higher levels of creativity and exibilitywhich are advantageous for intrapreneurship
and innovation (Lounsbury and Gibson, 2012). Future research is needed to resolve whether such a
result reects a move toward greater emphasis on creativity and non-routine problem-solving in
engineering work rather than orderly, exacting, conscientious work on standard problems, or if it
reects a lower caliber talent pool of qualied candidates for engineering positions. In any case, the
present ndings underscore the challenges of nding engineers with personality traits tting for the
new roles associated with intrapreneurship and technical innovation. Successfully meeting these
challenges may help allaythough by no means resolveconcerns for national competitiveness and
prosperity. To do so will require the combined efforts of the public and private sectors to enhance the
attributes of engineers for innovation and new technology development.
From the present ndings, we can present two different proles of the key personality traits of
engineers, one deriving from the mean differences between engineers and non-engineers; the other,
from correlations with career satisfaction. Based on our interpretations of the meaning of each trait
and compared to other occupations, engineers are more: introverted, intrinsically motivated, exible
and creative, and tough-minded/analytical. They are also less: assertive, emotionally resilient,
optimistic, customer-oriented, concerned with Image Management, hard-working, and visionary in
their thinking style. In addition, engineers who are more satised with their careers are more:
assertive, customer-oriented, emotionally stable and resilient, extraverted, open to new experience,
optimistic, tough-minded/analytical, teamwork-oriented, hard-working; and they are less concerned
with Image Management. These proles depict a more complex, nuanced, and empirically grounded
set of personality attributes of engineers than can be found in most job descriptions and in the current
primary national database on occupational informationO*NET.
In summary, the current results carry manifold implications for engineering management,
engineering job taxonomies, and national policy, in addition to future research in this area. Hopefully,
the present ndings can be utilized to improve human resources management when recruiting,
selecting, placing, training, mentoring, and developing engineers for present-day jobs as well as future
jobs occasioned by the ever increasing need for innovation and new product development.
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