Notwithstanding a recent flurry of organizational research on the
construct of situational strength, research on the other side of
the coinpersonality strengthhas rarely been conducted in
organizational settings, has been scattered across multiple
disciplines, has been called different things by different
researchers, and has not yet been used to test theoretical
propositions paralleling those in recent organizational research on
situational strength. In the present review, drawing from several
disparate research literatures (e.g., situational strength,
personality states, traitedness, cross-situational consistency,
scalability, appropriateness, self-monitoring, interpersonal
dependency, hardiness, attitude strength, and self-concept
clarity), we (a) define personality strength and contrast it with
personality trait, personality strengths (plural), and layperson
conceptualizations of the terms strong personality and weak
personality, (b) briefly discuss the history of research related to
personality strength, (c) identify a common prediction, emanating
largely independently from several literatures, regarding the
interactive effect of personality traits and personality strength
on behavior, (d) articulate three novel predictions regarding the
impact of personality strength on within-person situational and
behavioral variability, (e) develop three broad categories of
personality strength operationalizations (i.e., statistical,
content-general, and content-independent) and discuss potential
interrelationships among them, (f) suggest best practices for
operationalization, thereby providing an agenda for future
research, and, finally, (g) discuss the practical implications of
this work for human resource management.
