A novel constitution-based personality-job fit theory: harmonizing organizational psychology and traditional Chinese medicine theories
Zeng, Yusong, Wang, Zihan, Zhang, Ruifeng, Tu, Lili, and Gan, Samuel Ken En (2025) A novel constitution-based personality-job fit theory: harmonizing organizational psychology and traditional Chinese medicine theories. Discover Psychology, 5 (1). 44.
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Abstract
Employee mental health is closely associated with the interaction between individual personality traits and workplace demands. A poor fit between job requirements and an employee’s personality profile can lead to psychological strain and decreased well-being. Existing psychological frameworks, such as Holland’s Personality-Job Fit Theory and the Big Five Inventory (BFI-2), have been widely applied to optimise this alignment. This study proposes a novel integration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) constitution theory into personality–job matching models. The TCM constitution framework, which encompasses physiological and psychological characteristics and predispositions to disease, offers a holistic perspective on individual differences. We demonstrate conceptual and structural compatibility by mapping the nine TCM constitution types to the Big Five personality dimensions, the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08), and Holland’s vocational typology. Incorporating TCM constitutional theory may enhance the granularity and personalisation of job-matching strategies to improve employee engagement, performance, mental health, and job satisfaction in organisational and human resource contexts.
| Item ID: | 88471 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2731-4537 |
| Keywords: | Big Five personality traits, Job allocation, Psychology, TCM nine constitutions, Well-being |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Apr 2026 03:52 |
| FoR Codes: | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5201 Applied and developmental psychology > 520104 Industrial and organisational psychology (incl. human factors) @ 50% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4208 Traditional, complementary and integrative medicine > 420803 Traditional Chinese medicine and treatments @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 15 ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK > 1503 Management and productivity > 150304 Productivity (excl. public sector) @ 100% |
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