The relationship between personality, organizational and interpersonal counterproductive work challenges in industry 4.0

between personality traits and counterproductive behavior, which is
especially important for literature concerning Central and Eastern
post-transformation economies. Therefore, the main empirical goal
of the article is to determine how the personality traits
(Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and
Openness to experience) influence the extent of organizational and
interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors (CWB; CWB-O;
CWB-I) and how this relation is moderated by the demographic and
professional characteristics of employees (sex, age, seniority or type
of work). The research objectives were met using a survey
conducted in April 2020 among 454 professionally active people in
Poland. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to analyze
the empirical data. The proposed theoretical model was intended to
determine how particular types of personality impact CWB. Based
on the empirical results, we determined that personality traits
strongly affect counterproductive work behaviors. The strongest
predictors of organizational CWB proved to be Conscientiousness
(negative relation) and Agreeableness (positive relation). There was
no direct effect of personality traits on CWB-I. Moreover, the
relationship between personality traits and CWB-O/I was
significantly moderated by the demographic and professional
characteristics of employees (sex, age, seniority, or type of work).
The discussed result is reached based only on Polish employees'
sample, which can be considered its important limitation. However,
it still contributes significantly to international behavioral
economics literature in the field. Due to many institutional
characteristics and similar social context, the conclusions can be
generalized and attributed at least for other Central European
economies which are at the same level of development and which
are characterized by many social and cultural similarities. From the
practical perspective, the obtained results can be of special
importance for human resource management in the reality of
Industry 4.0 challenges.