Interest in personality in work and organizational psychology has never been stronger. A substantial amount of work exploring the links between personality variables and work behavior and attitudes is now available. Much of this work has been conducted within a selection and assessment context, although relevant work has also been done in other areas of research. The selection and assessment paradigm, within work and organizational psychology, emphasizes measurement and prediction, often at the expense of explanation. This paper attempts to redress this balance by providing a review of the evidence concerning personality variables and work-related dependent variables together with an explicit attempt to integrate the work conducted within selection and assessment into a broader empirical and explanatory framework. A framework linking personality to work performance is presented and used to interpret and evaluate the results of the research. A variety of specific current issues are considered, including: the value and benefits of structural frameworks for personality variables (e.g., the big five, big three, and big nine); the importance of considering interactions between personality factors; the extent to which personality variables can be expected to predict work performance directly, and the importance of situational influences. (Author)