Personality in information systems professions - identifying archetypal professions with suitable traits and candidates’ ability to fake-good these traits

Sep 17, 2026

Uploaded by Jake

The study examines how personality–job fit theory applies to information systems (IS) recruitment, focusing on whether candidates can manipulate results on personality testing instruments. It aims to identify archetypal IS professions, match them with associated personality types, and evaluate the reliability of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in hiring decisions. A literature review informs job archetypes and traits, followed by an experiment with 452 participants.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Personality in information systems professions

Abstract

Purpose

Design/methodology/approach

Findings

Research limitations/implications

Practical implications

Originality/value

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: [https://www.emerald.com/insight/0959-3845.htm](https://www.emerald.com/insight/0959-3845.htm) Personality in information systems professions: identifying archetypal professions with suitable traits and candidates’ ability to fake-good these traits Luka Tomat, Peter Trkman and Anton Manfreda Academic Unit for Business Informatics and Logistics, School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia Abstract Purpose–The importance of information systems (IS) professions is increasing. As personality–job fit theory claims, employees must have suitable personality traits for particular IS professions. However, candidates can try to fake-good on personality tests towards the desired personality type. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify archetypal IS professions, their associated personality types and examine the reliability of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test in IS recruitment decisions. Design/methodology/approach – The authors reviewed academic literature related to IS professions to identify job archetypes and personality traits for IS professions. Then, the authors conducted an experiment with 452 participants to investigate whether candidates can fake-good on personality tests when being tested for a particular IS profession. Findings – The identified job archetypes were IS project manager, IS marketing specialist, IS consultant, IS security specialist, data scientist and business process analyst. The experimental results show that the participants were not able to fake-good considerably regarding their personality traits for a particular archetype. Research limitations/implications – The taxonomy of IS professions should be validated further. The experiment was executed in an educational organisation and not in a real-life environment. Actual work performance was not measured. Practical implications – This study enables a better identification of suitable candidates for a particular IS profession. Personality tests are good indicators of the candidate’s true personality type but must be properly interpreted. Originality/value – This study enhances the existing body of knowledge on IS professions’ archetypes, proposes suitable MBTI personality types for each profession and provides experimental support for the appropriateness of using personality tests to identify potentially suitable candidates. Keywords Information systems professions, Personality traits, MBTI personality test, Answer reliability, Experiment Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Digital transformation, especially nowadays coupled with COVID-19, has increased the demand for enterprises’ digitalisation and consequently the number of information systems © Luka Tomat, Peter Trkman and Anton Manfreda. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4 .0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and noncommercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at [http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode](http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode) [The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Research Agency of Slovenia](The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Research Agency of Slovenia) ([grant no. J5](grant no. J5)- 9329) . Personality in IS professions Received 17 March 2021 Revised 6 September 2021 Accepted 26 September 2021 Information Technology & People Emerald Publishing Limited 0959-3845 DOI 10. 1108/ITP-03-2021-0212 ITP (“IS”) professionals (Baller et al., 2016; Tomat and Trkman, 2019; Seetharaman, 2020) . The pace of technological change has accelerated growth in the available IS jobs (Moreno et al.

FAQs

What is the main purpose of the study on personality in IS professions?

The study identifies archetypal information systems professions and their associated personality types, and examines how reliably the MBTI can support IS recruitment decisions.

How do the authors investigate whether candidates can fake-good on personality tests?

They review academic literature to derive job archetypes and personality traits, then run an experiment with 452 participants to test whether candidates can fake-good toward a targeted IS profession profile.

What were the key findings regarding fake-good ability and IS archetypes?

The identified archetypes include IS project manager, IS marketing specialist, IS consultant, IS security specialist, data scientist, and business process analyst. Experimental results indicate participants could not fake-good considerably in line with specific archetypes’ personality traits.

Sep 17, 2026

Uploaded by Jake