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The role of personality traits, work motivation and organizational safety climate in risky occupational performance of professional drivers
Laura Seibokaite
Department of Theoretical Psychology, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania, and

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Received 4 January 2010 Accepted 12 July 2010

Aukse Endriulaitiene
Department of General Psychology, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to combine individual (personality traits and proles) and organizational (perceived safety climate and work motivation) factors and look for a model that explains safety performance in a sample of professional drivers. The authors hypothesize that the effect of personality on risky driving is moderated by perceived organizational safety climate and work motivation. Design/methodology/approach The sample consisted of 166 professional drivers (males). The subjects completed the self-reported questionnaire that consisted of the Big Five Inventory, Driver Behaviour Questionnaire, Work motivation and Safety Climate Questionnaires. Cross-sectional methodology, analysis of variance, cluster analysis and structural equation modeling were used to predict the relationships between personality traits, organizational factors, and risky driving. Findings The results revealed that personality prole is very important in occupational setting, predicting work motivation, perceived safety climate in organization as well as risky or safe driving. Results encourage making a conclusion that socially oriented drivers drive less riskily if they have higher levels of work motivation and the perception of organizational climate being safe. Emotionally unstable professional drivers are probably driven by neuroticism and are non-responsive to organizational factors. Research limitations/implications The design does not allow making causal statements. In addition, the sample is quite small and may not be representative. Self-report data may bias the results due to social desirability or lack of experience in self-reection. Practical implications The results of the present investigation have expanded understanding of the role of personality and organizational interaction in predicting occupational safety of professional drivers. The main implication for practitioners is to develop such selection procedures that could identify drivers with safe driving personalities. Originality/value The research contributes to the eld of occupational safety by integrating individual attributes with organizational factors by providing empirical ndings and theoretical interpretations. Keywords Lithuania, Occupational safety, Industrial trucks, Buses, Employees attitudes, Personality, Professional drivers, Personality traits, Organizational safety climate, Work motivation, Risky driving, Safe driving Paper type Research paper
Baltic Journal of Management Vol. 7 No. 1, 2012 pp. 103-118 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1746-5265 DOI 10.1108/17465261211195892

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Newnam et al. (2005) state that road crashes are now the most common cause of work-related injury, death, and work absence in a number of countries. Some authors argue that trafc accident is the most signicant cause of accidental deaths at work in Finland (Salminen, 2000), work-related road crashes caused at least from one-quarter to one-third of occupational deaths in the USA, Australia, and EU countries (European Road Safety Observatory, 2007). Although mass media often presents the information about fatalities involving professional drivers on Lithuanian roads, there is no ofcial statistical data on work-related trafc accidents rate in Lithuania (Sadauskas, 2008). But according to the number of general road trafc accidents and casualties of those accidents Lithuania occupies the leading position in Europe. There occur approximately 6,500 road accidents per year in Lithuania, which cause more than 700 deaths and approximately 8,000 injuries (Statistical Department of Lithuania, 2007; Obelenis and Kaveckaite, 2004; Sadauskas, 2006). This shows that the problem needs attention from community, organizations, and researchers. High rates in work-related crashes suggest that road safety should be an important concern for all organizations where employees are engaged in work-related driving. However, surprisingly little research has investigated driving behaviour in an organizational setting. Although management of safety in organization should be one of the management responsibilities, scarce research results about work-related driving can barely contribute to the development of management in this area (Newnam et al., 2005). Avoiding work-related trafc accidents is the major concern of transport-using organizations and their managers, rst of all because those accidents are much more expensive for organization than any other occupational injury; also as any work-related accidents trafc crashes have negative impact upon organizational effectiveness and employee morale (Salminen, 2008). One group of professionals that might contribute to higher or lower safety on the roads is professional drivers (taxi drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers, etc.). Their risky driving (i.e. work performance) might lead to car accidents with tremendous social, environmental, and economic consequences (Patil et al., 2006; Dekker, 2004; Eby, 2004). On the one hand, professional drivers should demonstrate lower levels of risky driving because they have more driving experience; they have obligations to their organization to work effectively (i.e. without accidents). On the other hand, they are more condent in their driving abilities, so may not consider their action to be a risky one even though it increases his or her chances of being in a crash, also they might feel the pressure from work environment to work/drive fast, without rest, etc. Risky driving behaviours are those actions that increase the objective likelihood of a crash or the severity of injury should a crash occur (for example, minor driving lapses like getting into the wrong lane, serious errors like failing to notice the road signs and intentional violations, like over speeding, running red lights, alcohol impaired driving, etc.) (Sumer et al., 2005). Understanding organizational and individual factors that might predict professional drivers risk-taking behaviour might be of crucial importance for managers and supervisors who are responsible for monitoring safety in the organizations and employee health (Wills et al., 2005). Literature analysis reveals several individual factors that contribute to the risky driving behaviour in the general population. Most authors agree that young (Bogg and Roberts, 2004; Eby, 2004; Lawton et al., 2007; Whissell and Bigelow, 2003) male (Eby, 2004; Endriulaitiene and Marksaityte, 2007) drivers with predisposition

to sensation seeking, aggressiveness, anger, and anxiety, impulsiveness, low conscientiousness, more frequent alcohol and drug use are more prone to risky driving behaviour (Bogg and Roberts, 2004; Engstrom et al., 2003; Machin and Sankey, 2006; Oltedal and Rundmo, 2006; Deffenbacher et al., 2003; Krahe, 2005; Skaar and Williams, 2005; Whissell and Bigelow, 2003). Data about risky driving correlates of professional drivers, which might include various organizational factors, are scarce. So, the main purpose of this study is to combine individual (personality traits and proles) and organizational (perceived safety climate and work motivation) factors and look for a model that explains safety performance of professional drivers. There is a body of empirical work exploring the links between personality traits and accident involvement; still the empirical evidence is contradictory and confusing (Clarke and Robertson, 2005). The most common correlates of risky driving, as well as of occupational performance and accidents, studied in previous research are personality traits, usually explored by using ve-factor model. All ve personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) might have positive or negative effect to risky driving in general population, but this relationship might be signicantly moderated by organizational context (Clarke and Robertson, 2005; Lajunen, 2001). Extraversion is described as a trait of sociability, preference of large groups and gatherings, assertiveness, activity, cheerfulness, and optimism. This trait is usually found to be positively correlated with risk-taking behaviour (Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Clarke and Robertson, 2005; Lajunen, 2001; Sumer et al., 2005; Schwebel et al., 2007). However, several studies fail to prove the correlation between extraversion and risky behaviour on the road (Elander et al., 1993). Some authors mention neuroticism as risky driving and accident involvement predictor (Sumer et al., 2005), but much larger amount of research results shows no correlation between neuroticism and risky driving (Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Lajunen, 2001; Stephens and Groeger, 2009). Neuroticism is understood as the general tendency to experience negative affects, such as fear, sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt, and difculties to cope with stress. Clarke and Robertson (2005) in a meta-analytic review report mixed results concerning neuroticism in driving context. Openness (refers to active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, preference for variety, intellectual curiosity, and independence of judgment) is one of the traits, which is less studied in risky behaviour research. However, some evidence is found for signicant positive relationship (Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Sumer et al., 2005). Anyway scholars invite more extensive studies on the role of openness for driving behaviour and its consequences (Clarke and Robertson, 2005; Sumer et al., 2005). People who are low in agreeableness are less able to cooperate with others, usually are less helpful and more selsh, so they demonstrate high levels of risk taking on the road (Clarke and Robertson, 2005; Sumer et al., 2005). Still the research is not extensive and unclear, e.g. Arthur and Graziano (1996) have not found signicant correlation between agreeableness and driving behaviour. Conscientiousness has the clearest and the strongest contribution to the explanation of risk-taking behaviour, as well as risky driving behaviour. Individuals who are low in conscientiousness show the lack of discipline, dutifulness, absence of logical and systematic approach to decision making, lack of goal setting and failure to follow rules. Such personality trait leads to higher involvement in risky driving behaviours

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(Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Clarke and Robertson, 2005; Oltedal and Rundmo, 2006; Sumer et al., 2005). Generalizing the results mentioned above the importance of personality traits for risky driving is obvious; the directions of relationships are equivocal. Also, the attention must be paid that given research results are derived from general population and it is difcult to conclude that the same relationship patterns will be repeated in professionals sample. Based on the previous studies, we propose that higher extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and lower neuroticism and openness lead to less prominent risky driving of professional drivers. Controversial results might be explained by some methodological limitations in previous investigations different assessment tools (Clarke and Robertson, 2005), simple correlations and regression analysis. Here, we hypothesize that composite personality proles have higher predictive value for risky driving behaviour rather than single personality trait. As far as personality proles are not derived in the previous studies, we do not make any presumptions and propose only exploratory results. If the risky driving is studied in professionals, organizational factors should necessarily be taken into account. Scholars suggest that emphasis within safety issue has been shifted away from individual factors, which inuence involvement in crashes and accidents towards organizational factors (Neal et al., 2000). In this paper, organizational safety climate and work motivation are taken as a focus. Safety climate refers to workforce perceptions of the value and importance associated with safety in organization (Newnam et al., 2005). It might include several components like perceptions about how committed managers and supervisors are to employees safety, how well safety policies are communicated to employees, how work pressure is compliant with safety procedures, are employees trained to follow safety rules, etc. (Wills et al., 2005). Research show that at least some components of safety climate predict overall self-reported driver behaviour and accident involvement (Rowland et al., 2007; Wills et al., 2005, 2006; Newnam et al., 2005). In this study, we also expect that risky driving of professionals is related to safety climate and its components those drivers who report poor safety climate in their organizations tend to drive in risky manner. As the sample of professional drivers is not frequent in investigations concerning risky driving and safe behaviour (especially in Lithuania), there are no abundant research results about the importance of work motivation in this area. Some indirect research results (Sjoberg, 2007; Bjorklund, 2007) let us presume that willingness to work might be positively related to safe driving of professionals. Also, it is possible that safe organizational climate increases employees work motivation and interaction of work motivation and safety climate might contribute to risky driving. In this investigation, work motivation was added as an expressed drivers attitude towards work (i.e. willingness to work). Any single variable either individual or organizational does not provide comprehensive understanding of human behaviour and its implications. The integrative model of factors, related to risky driving of professionals might be of greater value. Therefore, based on the existing results, we hypothesize that integrative model might explain risky driving behaviour of professional drivers. We propose that personality of the driver has both direct and indirect inuence on risky driving. Some authors argue that safety procedures and rules might be differently perceived due to different personal characteristics of employees (Newnam et al., 2005). The same goes

for work motivation individual differences of employees predict different levels and sources of work motivation (Liesiene and Endriulaitiene, 2008). Therefore, the effect of personality on risky driving is moderated by perceived organizational safety climate and work motivation. Method Subjects The sample consisted of 166 professional drivers (males) who drive small busses and heavy trucks from different Lithuanian organizations (mean age 41.71, SD 10.10 years). Mean experience in driving was 20.67, SD 9.64 years. Only those organizations and drivers who agreed to participate were included in the study. The overall response rate was close to 75 per cent. Instruments The Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Benet-Martinez and John, 1998) was employed to measure ve personality traits. BFI consists of 44 items, allowing researchers quickly and efciently assess ve personality dimensions neuroticism (Cronbachs a 0.57), extraversion (Cronbachs a 0.60), openness (Cronbachs a 0.80), agreeableness (Cronbachs a 0.56), and conscientiousness (Cronbachs a 0.60). BFI was adapted to Lithuanian language following the standard translation and back translation procedure for an international project. Risky driving behaviour was assessed with the help of Lithuanian version of the driver behaviour questionnaire (Lawton et al., 1997). It is a 24-item inventory that yields three broad factors of self-reported driving behaviour: violations (Cronbachs a 0.75), errors (Cronbachs a 0.77), and lapses (Cronbachs a 0.56). Cronbachs a for the whole scale was 0.81. In this study, we used a two-factor solution, as factors of errors and lapses were correlated (Pearsons rho was 0.40, p , 0.001). The factor errors consisted of 17 items, Cronbachs a 0.80, the factor violations consisted of six items, Cronbachs a 0.74), they explained 30 per cent of data variance. One item was excluded from further analyses due to unsatisfactory factor loading (, 0.30). Work motivation was measured by ten-item scale that was constructed according to the previous research (Sjoberg et al., 2005; Sjoberg, 2007; Storseth, 2006; Bagdoniene et al., 2005). The items were phrased as: do you feel stimulated by your work tasks?, would you like to spend more time at work?, is your work motivating?, etc. (ve-point scales ranging from 1 never to 5 always). The internal consistency (Cronbachs a) of the scale was 0.76. The safety climate questionnaire was 35-item survey with six underlying factors (communication and procedures, work pressure, management commitment, relationships, driver training, and safety rules). In the current study, we used modied for drivers version developed by Wills et al. (2005). The item examples are: driver safety is seen as an important part of eet management in this organization and management are committed to driver safety (ve-point scales ranging from 1 never to 5 always). Six factors explained 69 per cent of data variance, internal consistency of six factors was as follows factor 1 communication and procedures, 13 items, Cronbachs a 0.92; factor 2 work pressure, seven items, Cronbachs a 0.86; factor 3 management commitment, four items, Cronbachs a 0.84; factor

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4 relationships, ve items, Cronbachs a 0.82; factor 5 driver training, three items, Cronbachs a 0.83; factor 6 safety rules, three items, Cronbachs a 0.65. Participants were also asked to indicate their age, frequency of driving, vehicle that they drive for occupational purposes, the number of accidents and offences during the last year. Results First of all the descriptives of driving behaviour, personality traits, work motivation, and components of safety climate are introduced (Table I). As it is seen, means of driving behaviour, work motivation scales are moved towards minimum, while means of safety climate scales are slightly moved towards maximum. Testing the hypotheses about the relationships between risky driving and other variables analysed here, the correlation analysis was run (Table II). As it was expected, risky driving is related with personality traits of the driver (except openness). Those drivers, who scored lower on extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and higher on neuroticism, tend to drive in more risky manner. Interestingly, this refers only to general score of driving behaviour and errors while driving, but not to violations. Driving violations has only small negative correlation with neuroticism. Personality traits have higher overall correlations then other variables, but still from small (0.18) to moderate (0.38). Risky driving is correlated with work motivation of professional drivers. Respondents with lower motivation to work tend to report more frequent violent driving. The correlation between driving behaviour and general score of safety climate is not signicant. Anyway, small negative correlations are observed in some subscales. Drivers, who report that safety rules are followed in their organization under any circumstances, tend to make less driving errors and violations. Those, who experience less work pressure and have good relationships in their organizations, report less frequent errors while driving. Work motivation did not correlate with perceived safety climate and its subscales (except training with correlation 2 0.174, p 0.023).

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n dbq: general score dbq: violations dbq: errors scq: safety rules scq: communication procedures scq: work pressure scq: management commitment scq: relationships scq: training scq: general score Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openess Work motivation 170 170 170 168 168 168 169 168 169 166 170 169 170 170 170 170

Mean 18.1 5.4 11.8 11.9 49.1 27.0 15.0 19.5 11.5 134.0 25.2 28.9 30.2 14.9 23.3 32.1

SD 8.63 3.73 6.14 2.42 10.12 5.04 3.94 3.45 2.99 24.92 3.48 3.98 4.07 3.24 4.66 5.69

Minimum 0 0 0 6 24 11 4 10 3 66 16 17 23 6 12 13

Maximum 44 21 32 15 65 35 20 25 15 175 35 40 40 25 35 44

Table I. Descriptives of driving behaviour, personality traits, work motivation, and safety climate

dbq: general score scq: safety rules scq: communication procedures scq: work pressure scq: management commitment scq: relationships scq: training scq: general score work motivation Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openess 2 0.228 * * 20.086 2 0.205 * * 20.019 2 0.161 * 20.136 20.132 2 0.175 * 2 0.180 * 2 0.187 * 2 0.353 * * * 0.309 * * * 0.110

dbq: violations 2 0.191 * 2 0.011 2 0.089 2 0.026 2 0.007 2 0.107 2 0.049 2 0.173 * 2 0.001 2 0.012 2 0.133 0.191 * 0.012

dbq: errors 2 0.201 * * 20.115 2 0.185 * 20.033 2 0.212 * * 20.129 20.148 20.108 2 0.226 * * 2 0.250 * * * 2 0.378 * * * 0.306 * * * 0.118

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Note: Signicant at: *p , 0.05, **p , 0.01, and ***p , 0.001

Table II. Correlations between driving behaviour and safety climate, personality traits, work motivation

It was hypothesized that higher extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and lower neuroticism and openness is associated with risky driving of professional drivers. The results of the study conrmed this hypothesis except for openness. Univariate analysis was used to explore the amount of variance of driving behaviour explained by each personality trait separately and all traits together. The results are placed in Table III. Single personality traits explain very few (from 3 to 12 per cent) of driving behaviour variance in professionals, but all traits, except openness have statistically signicant contribution in explaining driving behaviour ( p , 0.05). As single variable conscientiousness has the highest explanatory value for driving behaviour (12 per cent), while other traits can explain only 3-6 per cent of driving behaviour. All personality traits together explain 13 per cent of driving behaviour, similar as conscientiousness alone. When all traits are added to analysis, conscientiousness remains only one signicant variable that explains studied occupational behaviour. Literature and results of this study suggests that personality traits are interconnected. So, here it was presumed that personality traits compose different proles of personality. For that purpose, a cluster analysis was conducted, including ve personality traits as grouping variables. In order to make comparable data across the scales, values have been transformed to T scores. K-means cluster analysis was applied. Analysis was started with two-cluster solution, and number of clusters was manually added until the solution became meaningless. Three-cluster solution was dened as the most appropriate (Figure 1), because four-cluster solution revealed two out of four clusters that were hardly differentiable. About 30.2 per cent of sample belongs to the rst cluster titled socially oriented (people belonging to this group have relatively high scores of all traits and low score on neuroticism). The largest group of drivers (almost half of the sample) could be referred to defensive respondents, whose scores of all personality traits is very close to overall mean of sample (second cluster). Finally, the last group (third cluster) includes respondents, who have predominant neuroticism and openness to experience and rather low scores on other personality traits (further this cluster is called emotionally unstable). About 20 per cent of the sample belongs to this group.

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Source Corrected model Intercept Extraversion Error Total Corrected total R 2 0.038 (adjusted R 2 0.032) Corrected model Intercept Agreeableness Error Total Corrected total R 2 0.042 (adjusted R 2 0.036) Corrected model Intercept Conscientiousness Error Total Corrected total R 2 0.126 (adjusted R 2 0.121) Corrected model Intercept Neuroticism Error Total Corrected total R 2 0.063 (adjusted R 2 0.057) Corrected model Intercept Openness Error Total Corrected total R 2 0.003 (adjusted R 2 2 0.003) Corrected model Intercept Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness Error Total Corrected total R 2 0.159 (adjusted R 2 0.133)

Type III sum of squares df Mean square 479.88 2,912.51 479.88 12,109.77 68,392 12,589.65 509.37 2,940.00 509.37 11,598.61 66,792 12,107.98 1,587.32 5,032.67 1,587.32 11,002.33 68,392 12,589.65 792.39 514.64 792.39 11,797.26 68,392 12,589.65 40.83 1,591.64 40.83 12,548.82 68,392 12,589.65 1,919.39 945.04 92.43 2.20 692.54 101.52 169.87 10,188.59 66,792 12,107.98 1 1 1 168 170 169 1 1 1 167 169 168 1 1 1 168 170 169 1 1 1 168 170 169 1 1 1 168 170 169 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 163 169 168 479.88 2,912.51 479.88 72.08

F 6.66 40.41 6.66

Sig. 0.011 , 0.001 0.011

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509.37 2,940.00 509.37 69.45

7.33 42.33 7.33

0.007 , 0.001 0.007

1,587.32 5,032.67 1,587.32 65.49

24.24 , 0.001 76.85 , 0.001 24.24 , 0.001

792.39 514.64 792.39 70.22

11.28 7.33 11.28

0.001 0.007 0.001

40.83 1,591.64 40.83 74.70

0.55 21.31 0.55

0.461 , 0.001 0.461

Table III. Analyses of variance for risky driving and personality traits

383.88 945.04 92.43 2.20 692.54 101.52 169.87 62.51

6.14 15.12 1.48 0.04 11.08 1.62 2.72

, 0.001 , 0.000 0.226 0.851 0.001 0.204 0.101

Driving behaviour of drivers, who belong to different clusters, was compared. One-way ANOVA with post hoc Scheffe test was used. Representatives of clusters did not differ in violations while driving ( p . 0.05). Socially oriented drivers have the lowest scores (15.0) of general driving behaviour scale and driving errors scale (9.3),

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
re ea bl en es s en tio us ne ss ic is m si on ex tra ve r ne ur ot op en ne ss

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1st cluster 2nd cluster 3rd cluster

Note: Cluster centres are displayed

Figure 1. Proles of personality traits in three-cluster solution

ag

when comparing with defensives (18.7 and 12.3) and emotionally unstables (20.7 and 14.1) (F(2,166) 5.503, p 0.005 for driving behaviour; F(2,166) 7.592, p 0.001 for driving errors). Defensive and emotionally unstable drivers did not differ according to driving behaviour and driving errors. Spearman correlations among driving behaviour, safety climate, and work motivation in different clusters were calculated. For drivers, who were referred to defensive and emotionally unstable, only few signicant correlations were found. Driving violations were negatively correlated with work motivation (0.31; p 0.004) and safety rules (2 0.22; p 0.043) for defensive respondents. Driving errors were positively correlated with safety communications and procedures (0.34; p 0.048) for emotionally unstable participants. Almost all signicant correlations among variables were revealed for socially oriented drivers. Driving errors as well as the general score of driving behaviour were related with work motivation and components of perceived safety climate (except management commitment to safety). While correlations for driving errors are bigger than for general score of driving behaviour, correlations for driving errors are presented here. Socially oriented drivers, who have higher work motivation (2 0.32; p 0.02), perceive safety rules as working well in their organization (2 0.45; p 0.001), safety communications and procedures being effective (2 0.46; p 0.001), little pressure at work (2 0.45; p 0.001), relationships at work as good (2 0.49; p , 0.001), receiving training towards safety (2 0.43; p 0.002), tend to make less errors during driving. Finally, a structural equation model was produced for relationships between personality traits, work motivation, perceived safety climate at work, and driving behaviour. As model is saturated due to relations among all variables, data t indexes lose the meaningfulness (x 2 0.000 and df 1) and are not introduced here. Saturated model shows no effect of work motivation and perceived safety climate on driving behaviour, which is explained only by conscientiousness. Conscientiousness, agreeableness,

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ns

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and extraversion account for work motivation, and conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism explain perception of safety climate in organization. Personality traits have signicant covariance, but no covariance have been found between work motivation and safety climate. In order to have the model, which is not saturated, all non-signicant effects were removed, until effects all included in the model became signicant. Model shown in Figure 2 met all goodness of t criteria: x 2 22.384; df 13; p 0.05; comparative t index 0.957; root mean square error of approximation 0.066 (the method of maximum likelihood was used). It is seen from the analysis that work motivation and general score of safety climate have no impact on driving behaviour. The only factor, which contributes to explanation of risky driving, is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness has impact to work motivation and perceived safety climate. Lower agreeableness and higher extraversion are related with higher work motivation. Also, it has to be noted that personality traits have signicant covariance, indicating neuroticism as the most different personality trait in comparison with others (all traits have negative covariance with neuroticism and positive covariance with each other). Separate models were created for prognosis of driving violations and driving errors. While these models revealed very similar results like in prognosis of general scale of driving behaviour, separate models are not introduced here.
1 e2 0.941 0.198 extraversion 0.258 agreeableness 0.359 conscientiousness neuroticism 0.390 openness 0.252 Work motivation 1 e1 0.933 dbq: general score

scq: general score 0.921 1 e3

Figure 2. The model of risky driving behaviour

Note: Standardized regression weights are displayed on the arrows

Discussion This study explored the relationships between professional drivers personality prole, work motivation, perceptions of organizational safety climate and occupational performance risky or non-risky driving. Therefore, the study contributes to the eld of occupational safety by integrating individual attributes with organizational factors. In general, we found that personality is very important in occupational settings, predicting work motivation, perceived safety climate in organization as well as occupational performance (risky or safe driving). Consistent with other research investigating personality traits in driving context (Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Sumer et al., 2005), we have found that conscientiousness had stronger correlations with risky driving behaviour than other personality traits in professional drivers sample. This trait was also related with higher levels of work motivation and higher levels of perceived safety climate. The results supported our hypotheses that drivers with higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism are less prone to risky driving. We supported the ideas that responsiveness of conscientious individuals to social responsibility and performance norms, low aggressiveness, sociability and competent communication of agreeable and extravert individuals make them engage in less risky driving (Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Clarke and Robertson, 2005; Lajunen, 2001; Sumer et al., 2005; Schwebel et al., 2007). Contrary to Sumer et al. (2005) we found moderate correlation between neuroticism and risky driving. Maybe high association between neuroticism and stress, emphasized by Clarke and Robertson (2005), might explain this result in Lithuanian sample. Also, it must be taken into account that neuroticism was important trait, differentiating personality proles of professional drivers, so it is possible that in Lithuania this personality trait acts as an important predictor. Lajunen (2001) paid attention that culture and nationality might be important in trafc safety results. On the other hand, taken into general model and context of all personality traits together, neuroticism was not important predictor of risky driving. So, the result is contradictory and requiring future investigations. Contrary to expectations we did not fount the signicant relation between openness and risky driving. Sumer et al. (2005) stated that openness is associated with training prociency so that it might be desirable for organizational productivity. It might depend upon organization (that was not controlled in our study) that some organizations relate productivity with safety and quality, others with quantity no matter of safety. So, this might eliminate the effect of openness in occupational driving context. Based on current data, we conclude that separate personality traits quite poorly add to the explanation of risky driving of professionals (they accounted only for 13 per cent of variance) possibly due to inter-correlations among them. Therefore, we suggest that composite personality proles may be more reasonable way to analyse the impact of personality to behaviour. Our sample was clustered into three personality proles. As more favourable prole in the context of risky driving (low risk), we treat the group of socially oriented drivers those, who have low neuroticism and high scores of other traits. As it was expected and in line with previous research for these drivers the correlations between work motivation, safety climate, and occupational performance were signicant (Neal et al., 2000; Newnam et al., 2005). Generally stated, higher levels of work motivation and having perception of organizational climate being safe resulted

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in less risky driving. Two other proles of drivers are referred to risk takers emotionally unstable (predominant neuroticism and openness to experience and low other scores) and defensives (mean scores of all traits). Interestingly, rare and inconsistent correlations among investigated variables emerged in these groups. Results encourage making a conclusion, that socially oriented drivers are susceptible to organizational factors and management safety efforts, while emotionally unstable ones are probably driven by neuroticism and non-responsive to external inuences (like, motivating efforts or strengthening safety politics). Following the results of correlation analysis and driving behaviour comparisons we guess, that defensive drivers are quite similar to emotionally unstable, but due to social desirability they do not reveal actual personality predispositions (Owsley et al., 2003). This presumption is still very speculative and calls for future investigations. It has to be noted that in this investigation driving errors mostly account for risky driving behaviour rather than intentional violations. Contrary to previous results (Reason et al., 1990; Sevelyte and Endriulaitiene, 2009) personality traits and proles were more related to driving errors than to violations in the sample of professional drivers. Reason et al. (1990) suggested that violations have more social and motivational nature and should be related to personality, while errors have more information processing background. We presume that our contradictory results were due to special sample and occupational pressure. Professional drivers denied violations they commit, because they try to protect their work position. Errors are perceived as less intentional and less socially threatening by drivers and management, so more acceptable, safe, and overt. Contrary to our expectations the effect of personality on risky driving was not moderated by perceived organizational safety climate and work motivation in the nal model when all variables were employed. As it was mentioned above personality traits (conscientiousness especially) produced the largest number of paths as predictors of work motivation, safety climate, and driving behaviour. Work motivation and perceived safety climate were independent factors and unrelated to risky driving. The possible explanation of unexpected results is that our sample is overrepresented by emotionally unstable and defensive drivers (about 70 per cent of subjects) whose risky occupational performance pattern was not related to organizational factors investigated here. So, the nal model is more suitable to describe the behaviour of drivers who are prone to risky driving, report higher level of neuroticism and are reluctant to disclose themselves. Of course this explanation requires further explorations and conrmation. There were several limitations in the current study, therefore, the results should be interpreted and generalized with caution. The rst issue is measurement based on self-report. Self-report data are the major concern in most psychological studies due to possible reporting biases in answers. Respondents might be not enough experienced in self-reection when they describe their personality traits. Also, professional drivers might be fearful of their supervisors and not to disclose behaviours that might be treated as irresponsible driving style (Wallace et al., 2006). The second limitation is relatively small and not random sample size. We encourage other scientists to replicate the similar procedure in larger and more differentiated samples (e.g. taxi drivers, bus drivers, etc.). Third, cross-sectional methodology does not allow drawing causal statements about relations investigated in this study.

Although structural linear modelling gave the opportunity to assume causal paths in relations, longitudinal design would be more preferable for more condent and sophisticated data. Not withstanding limitations the results of the present investigation have expanded understanding the role of personality and organizational interaction in predicting occupational safety of professional drivers. The main implications for practitioners are two-fold. First of all, it is important to develop such recruitment and selection procedures that help to identify drivers with safe driving personality prole, as drivers personality contribute to their own and organizational safety. Also, drivers personality plays signicant role in organizational factors, such as work motivation, safety climate perceptions that are related to organizational effectiveness (Liesiene and Endriulaitiene, 2008). On the other hand, investments into social and organizational enhancements might be sometimes doomed to failure in advance. Data of our study revealed that only part of drivers are sensitive to safety politics and organizational efforts to enhance safe driving behaviour. Organizations that hire drivers with not safe personality prole should look for different preventive organizational factors, while traditional interventions like promotion of safety climate in organization or motivating to work fail to be effective. Conclusions . Personality is very important in occupational settings, predicting work motivation, perceived safety climate in organization as well as occupational performance (risky or safe driving). The effect of personality on risky driving was not moderated by perceived organizational safety climate and work motivation. Work motivation and perceived safety climate were independent factors related to personality taits, but unrelated to risky driving. . Drivers with higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism were less prone to risky driving. Conscientiousness had stronger correlations with risky driving behaviour, higher levels of work motivation and higher levels of perceived safety climate than other personality traits in professional drivers sample. . Composite personality proles rather than single traits may be more reasonable way to analyse the impact of personality to occupational behaviour. Socially oriented drivers those, who had low neuroticism and high scores of other traits, were less prone to risky driving; for these drivers the correlations among work motivation, safety climate, and occupational performance were signicant. Rare and inconsistent correlations among work motivation, safety climate, and risky driving emerged in emotionally unstable (predominant neuroticism and openness to experience and low other scores) and defensive (mean scores of all traits) groups of drivers who were referred as risk takers.
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