The Mediating Mechanism Of Employees’ Dark Triad On Career Success

Career success is a very important concept in employees’ career,which can be divided into subjective career success and objective career success(including perceived internal and external marketability).In recent years,scholars have paid special attention to the influence of negative personality traits on career success.The dark triad is a common group of negative personality traits that includes narcissism,psychopathy,and Machiavellianism.Foreign studies have found that the three personality traits contained in the dark triad have different influences on career success,and there are different influencing paths.Narcissistic personality has a positive influence on career success.The mechanism of the influence is likely to induce the positive behavior pattern and attitude of employees,and then have a positive influence on career success.Psychopathy and Machiavellianism have a negative impact on career success.The mechanism of the influence is likely to induce negative behavior patterns of employees,which will have a negative impact on career success.The purpose of this study is :(1)to explore the relationship between employee’s Dark Triad personality and career success in a Chinese context;(2)To explore the mediating role of occupational self-efficacy and active behavior in the relationship between narcissism and career success;(3)To explore the mediating role of counterproductive work behavior in the relationship between psychopathy,Machiavellianism personality and career success.This study used "the dark triad questionnaire(DD)","the occupational self-efficacy questionnaire","the active behavior questionnaire","counterproductive work behavior questionnaire","career success questionnaire" as measuring tool.Taking in-service employees all over the country as the research object,a total of 1340 questionnaires were sent out three times successively,and 1263 valid data were finally obtained.Data analysis was conducted through SPSS25.0 and AMOS.The research results were as follows:(1)The Dark Triad has significant differences in gender and education level,while the career success has significant differences in gender,marriage,children and education level.(2)There was a significant correlation between The Dark Triad personality group and career success,but the direction of the correlation between different personality was different.Narcissism is positively correlated with career success,while psychopathy and Machiavellianism are negatively correlated with career success.(3)Employee’s occupational self-efficacy and active behavior played a partial mediating role in the relationship between narcissistic personality and career success.(4)The counterproductive work behavior of employees plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between their psychopathy and subjective career success;The counterproductive work behavior of employees plays a completely mediating role between Machiavellianism and subjective career success,and a complete mediating role between Machiavellianism and the perceived internal marketability dimension of objective career success.