Addressing the paucity of studies on the role of personality traits in influencing accounting-related behaviors, this paper investigates the potential impact of managers’ personality traits on their use of performance information in a public-sector context. The results, based on responses by 385 managers from Italian municipalities, show that personality traits explain both the extent and the types of uses of performance information. The main drivers for performance information uses appear to be conscientiousness and openness, with extraversion showing some significant influence for monitoring and attention focusing types of uses. A finer-grained analysis, through the use of the FIMIX-PLS method in combination with PLS-POS, shows the presence of two segments of users (“enthusiasts” and “diligent”), in which personality traits play distinctive roles in driving different uses of performance information. For “enthusiasts”, performance information uses are driven by extraversion and openness, while for “diligent”, conscientiousness and agreeableness.    «

Addressing the paucity of studies on the role of personality traits in influencing accounting-related behaviors, this paper investigates the potential impact of managers’ personality traits on their use of performance information in a public-sector context. The results, based on responses by 385 managers from Italian municipalities, show that personality traits explain both the extent and the types of uses of performance information. The main drivers for performance information uses appear to be...    »