The Impact of Adversity Quotient Profile on Employee

Performance-The Case of Egyptian Telecom Industry.

Prof. Dr. Ammar Hamed, Visiting Professor,

The Nile University, Egypt

Email: ammarsha@aucegypt.edu, Tel: +201005450661

Khaled A. Bekhet, DBA Scholar,

The Maastricht School of Management, (MSM), The Netherlands

Email: Kbekhet@gmail.com, Tel: +2010015002249

Ayman Amiri, DBA Scholar,

The Maastricht School of Management, (MSM), The Netherlands

Email: aamiri@mobinil.com, Tel: +201223269291

Abstract
The main purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between Adversity Quotient
Profile and employee performance among the customer service agents in telecom business
sector of Egypt. A total of 300 questionnaires were randomly distributed out to customer service
agents with at least 12 months tenure working in of the largest GSM network operators in Egypt
with different age group, experience and educational level. Out of the 300 questionnaires, 242
were returned and usable. T-test and linear regression analyses were then employed to analyze
the data, whereby the dependent variable is employee performance , and the independent
variable is employee Adversity Quotient Profile. The empirical finding offers the evidence of a
direct, positive and significant relationship between the level of Adversity Quotient Profile and
employee performance. The implication, limitation and future research area in the study also
described.

Key words: Telecommunication Business, Adversity Quotient, Adversity Response Profile,

Customer Service Agents, Performance.

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1.Introduction
“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might
otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward
we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”― Arthur Golden, 
Memoirs of a Geisha

Adversity is no thing you like it, it is any hardship, or difficulty you may encounter at any time in
your life. But “Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they
become more extraordinary of it.” ―Robertson Davies

Life these days is a mixture of all sorts, on one hand there is knowledge explosion, technology
revolution, and progress in every field while, on the other hand we see poverty, scarcity of food
and resources, increase in crime, social and political turbulences etc. The combined effects of
such changes are powerful, bewildering, and essentially unpredictable. This transition affects
the viability of all institutions particularly the business community and specifically those who
are working as sales agents in business organizations.

The last several years have been challenging times for salespeople, regardless of their company
or industry. The global economic slowdown has changed customers’ buying behaviors as well as
their expectations of salespeople including customer service agents . Companies have delayed
and cut back spending, demanded price concessions, and involved more players in the buying
process. Salespeople have had to work harder to demonstrate the unique value of their
products (which are increasingly viewed as commodities), and to provide high levels of service
simply to retain customers. Even as the economy improves, many sales organizations are
finding that selling is as demanding as ever. The rules of the game have changed.

As an essential pillar of sales operation, customer service agents are often forced to deal with
recurrent internal and external problems in their daily work -related environment. How these
problems are resolved is highly dependent upon the individual principal’s personal qualities
express in attitude and actions toward these problems. As the driving wheel to any for profit
organization, the sales mangers, supervisors, sales staff and customer service agents are in a
critical position to the organizational development and growth. According to Sojka & Deeter-
Schmelz ( 2002) Success in sales in today’s turbulent and dynamic environment requires
salespeople to possess a competitive advantage. Specifically in sales fields that require continual
high growth, such as the telecom business industry (Cohen, Stolk, & Niezen, 2007; Pearce, 2008;
Wettermark, Godman, Andersson, Gustafsson, Haycox, & Bertele, 2008; Young & Dixon, 2008)
with aggressive growth goals, there is a need for these organizations to possess an effective
sales force to achieve and exceed goals, therefore enhancing the overall organization’s
performance.

As globalization brings the world closer together, these pressures increase. A recent Aberdeen
survey (2007) on telecom business challenges revealed; companies that implement mobile sales
force automation solutions are 1.5 times more likely to see an improvement in sales force
productivity versus those that do not. Sales teams are looking at Mobile Sales Force Automation
(SFA) technologies to arm their customer service agents to be able to handle the ever increasing
customer demands on a global basis. However, this also could be a more challenging burden to

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customer service agents which make the situation for them even worse and more stressful.
Further, the same survey noted that, customers are demanding faster sales decisions, best-in
Class (BIC) companies are addressing this pressure by re-aligning the customer service agents to
meet customer demand and arming them with the necessary technologies to gain access to data
in the global marketplace. The World Wide Web has provided information access to customers
who at one time had no access at all. Customers are looking for responses to their inquiries in
hours not days and location can no longer be used as an excuse for lack of responsiveness.
Companies today are relying increasingly on their sales teams and customer service agents as
engines of growth and productivity. The sales role has never been more difficult—customers
are more demanding, products more sophisticated, competitors more aggressive. Not
surprisingly, many sales organizations are delivering disappointing results; they have not been
able to find the right formula for success in today’s business environment (Aberdeen survey,
2007).
Employees of any organization must be encouraged to meet and beat all adversities brought by
the work place, economical, and political changes that are currently taking place and take an
active and sustained interest in the broad span of the future. Understanding the deep-seated
changes opens up to develop positive and forward-looking business employees in the twenty-
first century.

According to Stoltz’s theory (1997), one with high adversity quotient respond most effectively to
adversity and will prevail in work and in life. Adversity Quotient (AQ) is a relatively new area of
research that has gained popularity in the last ten years, specifically in examining AQ and its
relationship to sales force performance. Adversity Quotient is defined as the capacity of the
person to deal and respond with the different adversities of life. AQ refers to the total score
obtained on the Adversity Quotient Profile (ARP) developed by Dr Paul Stoltz version 8.1 (2009)
to get the sum of the scores obtained on four scales namely; Control, Ownership, Reach and
Endurance(CORE)---which are measured on the AQ profile®.

Previous studies by Stoltz and others linking AQ to performance have attempted to understand
the characteristics of the emerging sales environment and what it takes to succeed in that
environment. An extensive review of recent research was conducted and a number of themes
was identified. These include the need to move toward a consultative, relationship-based sales
model.

While there is general agreement that selling today involves something new and different, there
is no single formula for success. How can companies best prepare their sales teams to succeed
in the current “dark curtains” sales environment? We set out to build on prior research by
identifying the role of AQ as new key factor that accelerate sales performance in business today
and recommending ways in which companies can improve their sales effectiveness by focusing
on this factor. Employee attitudes toward waves of daily adversities, work-related and societal
stress have changed. As a result, Skilled sales staff and sales managers are operating under
severe conditions of fierce fight competition, rapid technological change, and above all, the
current political and economical problems that strike many places in the world particularly in
the Middle East and specifically in Egypt. Telecom business organizations hire customer service

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agents to increase their number of potential customers, thus generate more sales revenue and
achieve goals. So, the need is felt, if management could screen sales force motivation and
predict sales performance success by improving employees’ Adversity Quotient Profile scores,
the telecom sales organizations could be more successful.

1.2 Adversities face Telecom business organizations

Telecom organizations are facing many striking challenges today, including the following:

1. The worldwide economic downturn has placed pressure on the profitability of the larger
telecommunications companies and has hampered the industry’s ability to invest in innovation,
capital programs and new product offerings.

2. Containing costs while delivering increasingly more complex services and providing a
consistently higher level of customer service across wide geographical areas;

3. Enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of communications with citizens and other
stakeholders;

4. Utilizing emerging technologies to improve staff productivity;

5. Ensuring the reliability, availability, survivability and security of telephone, data network and
Internet platforms and services;

6. Implementing centralized administration of services provided at satellite sites. Customer

service departments provide the information and support for sales teams with their instant
interaction with customers which make them one of the most important and comprehensive
infrastructure and assets in telecommunications business environment. Customer service
departments are also under pressure to support their sales teams in order to achieve
organization’s goals and insuring to provide enhanced customer service. With increasingly
limited resources and time, customer service staff is challenged to stay current with the fast
pace of technological change. The performance of customer service department in any
telecommunications and information technology organization can no longer be viewed as
merely a job function but as a strategic asset to an organization’s goals.

7. The risks that telecommunications companies face, whether they are customer loyalty,
reputation or pricing and revenue, appear to be common among companies large and small.
Although scale may make a difference to an operator’s long-term chances of success, the risks
themselves are the same. Size also doesn’t seem to play a role in the sophistication of risk
management practices. Often, smaller companies have stronger risk programs, and larger
companies have weaker risk management systems.
Telecom business organizations spend millions each year training and developing sales force,
and with the changing economy, companies are expected to do more with less (Zoltners &
Lorimer, 2000). Recruiting an effective sales force can be one of the most important

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investments a telecom sales organization can make. However, if the sales force are
unproductive or if there is excessive turnover, an organization can face great losses in financial
and market momentum (Walker, Churchill, & Ford, 1977).

According to Cravens and Woodruff (1973), “while the needs for methods of predicting and
evaluating the salesmen is great, previous research has not been particularly successful in
identifying variables associated with salesmen performance” (p. 242).

On the same notion, customer driven organizations need a method to identify, screen and
motivate potential candidates for high level performance, which could be critical to the success
of hiring practices and the improvement of employees’ core competencies development
programs. From this point of view it comes as no surprise that many companies experience a
workforce shortage, or perhaps shortcoming. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
knowledge-intensive industry sector such as telecom industry, where the scarcity of well-
educated, talented sales staff has been a growing source of dismay for quite some time. The lack
of technically well-educated and talented sales staff, combined with the fact that many
employers seek to insure the regeneration of their organizations by bringing in ‘new blood’, has
helped make young talented sales force one of the most wanted groups of employees in the
labor market of today. (Paré & Tremblay, 2000; Niederman et al., 2007).

1.3 Statement of the problem

Sales teams and customer service agents are under constant pressure to meet customer
expectations, while bringing in revenue for the company.

In the case of Egypt, the decline in profits of some of the major companies in Egypt is a new sign
of the negative effects caused by the Egyptian revolution and upheaval which have started in
January 2011 and still casts shadows on the country's economy. Analysts say that the banking,
manufacturing and real estate sectors have been hit the hardest by the revolution and political
uncertainty. These situations, are part of the challenges that sales force including customer
service agents of telecom business industry organizations face today. They go through
numerous adverse situations as such, at societal level (political and economical turbulent), at
work place level (workers’ frequent demonstrations for pay increase and improve work
conditions, undesirable labor relations and the tendency towards conflict and violence,
temporary disruption of economic activity, below-capacity production) and finally at individual
level (lack of necessary technical information and support from their companies to instantly
satisfy an ever demanding and angry customer, and above all, the fierce competition with their
peers to achieve targeted goals and success by bringing in new customers in a continuously
saturating and shrinking local market).

So, customer service agents of Egyptian telecom companies are like any other business sectors,
face different adversities unique with respect to time and work place. Some of them can pass

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through to the other side unscratched while others fail. In other words, the output of a sales
man under these pressures is differing from one to another. This is the phenomenon
understudy. Is this phenomenon relates to one’s perceived adversity stress therefore the rate of
his effectiveness as sales agent? Another important question is leaping to the mind, will the
ability of a sales agent to handle such adversities can be used as predictor of his overall
performance and goal achievement? This study was meant to answer such questions and find
out the impact of measuring customer service agent’s AQ profile scores on personal
performance and goal achievement.

The research was guided by two main objectives, which are derived from Stoltz’s theory (1997)
of AQ approach to improving sales performance.

1.3 Objectives of the study

The objectives of this study were:

1) To ascertain the impact and relationship of measuring customer service agents’ overall AQ on
the level of personal performance and goal achievement in Egypt’s telecommunications
industry;

3) To examine the extent at which each factor of CORE dimensions of one’s AQ has led to a
significant impact in calculating his overall AQ with respect to customers service agents in
Egypt’s telecommunications industry.

2. AQ model,
Adversity Quotient model of Stoltz (1997) as shown in figure (1) explains the three levels of
adversity in a pyramid shaped model which categorizes the challenges in life into the “Three
Levels of Adversity”. This model begins from the top and works down to the individual
explaining the two effects. First, it shows and describes societal, workplace and individual
adversities people face every day in their lives, and second, it shows how an individual changes
positively, affecting the workplace and the larger scale, the society. According to Stoltz, “We are
experiencing a profound shift in wealth, a pervasive sense of uncertainly about the future, a
dramatic rise in crime, a heightened sense of anxiety about our economic security,
unprecedented environmental destruction, a radical redefinition of the home, a nationwide
moral crisis, a and a loss of faith in our institutions, including our educational system.” This he
calls as societal adversity. Workplace adversity includes the challenges that go along with a
job. Individual adversity includes the adversities at a more personal level. (Stoltz, 1997)

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According to AQ model, the three levels of Adversity also shows that positive change at all three
levels starts with the individual, and works up, affecting the workplace, and ultimately society at
large. In order to create change, one must have the relentless fortitude to climb through
adversity. In that case, one must develop a sufficiently high AQ (Stoltz, 1997).

Figure :1 The AQ Model

Source: (Stoltz, 1997)

As can be noticed from the above figure:1, , AQ begins with individual, but goes beyond as one is
exposed to an organization. Stoltz (2000) advised that these skills can be applied to oneself, to
others, and to organization. The theory discovered that AQ can be measured and enhanced the
effectiveness of teams, relationships, families, organizations, communities, cultures, and
societies Making it one of the most important tools that can be relied upon to develop and
improve the performance of human resources.

2.2 The call for AQ

The traditional measure of intelligence is always thought to be IQ, i.e., Intelligence Quotient. It
has always been taken for granted to predict the chances of success of a person. Yet there is
large number of people who have high IQs but they haven’t been successful always. It
means IQ isn’t enough to succeed. There must be something more and over and above IQ that is
required for consistently successful people. Then came the idea of EQ, i.e. Emotional Quotient
or Emotional Intelligence. EQ is the measure of how well you control your emotions , how

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will you empathize with others , your level of self –awareness, your control on your impulses,
your persistence and how effectively you interact with others. Therefore, possessing high EQ
with a high IQ can strengthen one’s chances of success because to be successful one not only
requires intellectual capabilities but also emotional abilities. AQ is something in addition to
these two, it can answer the question, why some people persist and keep on striving hard in
tough situations while others who are high on IQ and are emotionally well- adjusted still fail and
give up? AQ can be useful to predict performance, motivation, empowerment, creativity,
productivity, learning, energy, hope, happiness, vitality, emotional health, physical health,
persistence, resilience, attitude, longevity and response to change (Phoolka & Kaur, 2012) .

Sales teams including customer service agents are under constant pressure to meet customer
expectations, while bringing in revenue for the company. As globalization brings the world
closer together, these pressures increase. Therefore, the need for a new measure that can
control and enhance one’s intellectual, emotional, resilience, optimism, hardiness, locus of
control, explanatory style, self efficacy, and learned helplessness capabilities is strongly
required.

According to the AQ theory, the causes of events are perceived along four dimensions: C, O, R
and E. C stands for “control,” O stands for “ownership,”R stands for “reach,” and E stands for
“endurance.” Together, the four dimensions of C,O, R and E stand for your CORE and make up
your overall Adversity Quotient or AQ (Stoltz, 1997). When adversity strikes, "the higher one’s
AQ, the more likely one is to perceive some way to influence the situation (Control), take it upon
oneself to make it better (Ownership), and perceive it as limited and fleeting (Reach and
Endurance). The lower one’s AQ, the less control one perceives, and the less ownership one will
take for dealing with what appears to be a far-reaching, long-lasting setback” (Stoltz, 2000a,
p.39). One’s Adversity Quotient profile addresses the importance of remaining resilient in the
face of adversity. Merriam-Webster’s (2005) defines resilience as “tending to recover from or
adjust easily to misfortune or change.”

AQ profile has its own measure that is used to better understand which factors are most
important in determining who will succumb to the obstacles in life and who will thrive as
measured by the magnitude of the correlations. The Adversity Response Profile (ARP) is used to
measure AQ (Stoltz, 2000). The Adversity Response Profile (ARP) measures a person’s AQ based
on his responses to questions about negative events only. The ARP yields a score for each of the
CORE dimensions along with a total AQ score, which is the sum of all the CORE dimension
scores. This measure has been used in studies which have tried to better understand what
makes a person successful in one of the most adversity-ridden occupations, sales (Stoltz, 1997).
These studies have included insurance sales, retail sales and business to business sales, thus in
this study we add one more challenging category of sales in telecom industry which is customer
service agents. It is unlikely that any other occupation deals with more adversity in the form of
rejections and obstacles on a daily basis than customer service agents. It is inherently part of the
salesperson's job to be subjected to particularly stressful events. The salesperson’s role is one in

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which resistance and rejection come with the territory. It would make sense that in order to be
successful in a position that is fraught with adversity, one must be resilient (Johnson, 2005).

Since resilience seems to be more the exception than the rule, this could explain why almost
every business in every industry exhibits the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule: 20% of the sales
force produces 80% of the company revenues. According to the research that has been
conducted within each framework mentioned, salespeople on average are more resilient in
terms of optimism and AQ than any other group tested, higher than managers and even higher
than world class athletes (Schulman, 1999; Stoltz, 2000). However, even the most resilient
person, when faced with the constant adversity that is so prevalent in the world of sales, may
become overwhelmed and develop pessimistic beliefs at times. This may again be the reason
for the 80/20 rule within sales organizations (Johnson, 2005).

While there appears to be some increasing interest in the AQ concept, relatively few studies
have explored the relationship between AQ and sales performance, and the current body of
research concerning this topic has yielded some consistent results (Stoltz, 1997).

According to Stoltz’s theory, AQ builds on the Explanatory Style model and incorporates
elements of additional models as well including hardiness, learned helplessness, resilience, and
locus of control, etc. In addition, Weiner’s attribution theory also lends important components
to this model (i.e., the Control and Ownership dimensions, which assess the individual’s
perceived control and their ability to take ownership to improve the situation).

2.3 AQ and performance

Telecom operators are facing huge challenges. In saturated and highly competitive markets,
their services are quickly becoming a commodity. At the same time, margins are shrinking. Many
operators are launching "customer-first" or "customer-centric" initiatives. But often they are not
able to deliver the goods. Telecom operators have very complex and non-harmonized data
structures that result from legacy systems and incoherent processes. Drawing valuable
knowledge from such data today still involves a lot of manual work. Against this backdrop, sales
teams and customer service agents suffer enormous pressure exerted on them in order to be
effective and customer satisfaction remains elusive concept.

According to Stoltz (2009) as cited on peak learning incorporation website, Adversity quotient
has a positive influence on performance at work in ones society, workplace (Lazaro, 2003) and
self. In contrast to many constructs and measures, AQ model was developed through the
acquisition of data acquired through research and application in numerous organizations. Some
of the corporations who have participated in AQ studies are: Cellular One (SBC
Telecommunications), Deloitte & Touche, LLP, and Diversified Collection Services, Inc. (Stoltz,
1997). Also study on ADC Telecommunications (2004) was conducted to measure the
relationship between AQ and performance.

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In the SBC Telecommunications study, the relationship between AQ and sales performance
within their Cellular One division was examined. Performance was measured in three ways:
percentage of top-line (new sales), percentage of quota and percentage of net sales,
respectively. The results found a statistically significant difference between the means of those
scoring in the top half of AQ and those scoring in the bottom half of AQ in all three categories.
Those who scored in the top half of AQ sold 166% more in the percentage of top-line category,
they sold 106% more in the percentage of quota category, and 150% more in the percentage of
net category (Stoltz, 2000).

In a study with Deloitte & Touche, the relationship between AQ and performance was assessed
among 125 new experienced hires. Additionally, it was hypothesized that higher AQ employees
would be promoted sooner than low AQ employees. Results showed AQ significantly correlated
with performance and promotion.

The relationship between AQ and performance was also examined in a study with Diversified
Collection Services. Among 450 subjects, AQ significantly predicted performance: the AQs of top
performers were significantly higher than low performers.

Finally, A study on AQ Performance, morale, and retention in highly volatile, extremely

demanding global business was conducted at ADC Telecommunications (2004), the study was
conducted on 237 sales professionals across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The
purpose of the study was to examine the predictive strength and overall influence of AQ
regarding performance, morale, and retention in a highly volatile, extremely demanding global
business. ADC Telecommunications was facing unprecedented challenges in the global telecom
market. The company hired PEAK learning to assess and strengthen the AQ of its global sales
force. ADC’s goal was to determine the potential predictive strength and, ultimately, the effect
AQ could have on its people. This longitudinal study tracked sales professionals over 3 years,
with a particular focus on the AT&T Global Sales Team, because of its size and strategic
importance to the business. The results of the study revealed that AQ can be improved
dramatically as the study resulted in a significant increase in the performance of the sales team
over the time line of the study (3 years), Sales rose from below quota (before program) to 230%
and 147% of quota in succeeding years. Also during the time line of the study, predicted
desirable retention of the sales force was improved by 74%. And finally, the level of employee
attrition was significantly improved; one’s reported intention to leave the job within 6 months—
dropped from 73% to 19% of the entire sales organization, representing a significant reduction.

Today the world is facing global economic crisis and radical political turbulent which affected
society including the economical system. The work related adversity now demands more
education, well training, reengineering, restructuring, rightsizing, downsizing, revitalizing and
decentralization. Sales teams are faced with constant change that calls to upgrade knowledge
and skills. Individual adversity is the accumulated burden sales man carries due to societal and
work related adversities. The accumulated effects of large-scale adversities are sometimes
inspiring for many but to others the danger of losing hope. Changes begin at the individual and

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controlling one’s AQ is instigated to make a difference. Therefore, base on previous research, we
formulated the following relationship between AQ and customers service agent’s performance
in telecom sector of Egypt.

Figure: 2 Relationship between Adversity Quotient Profile and Employee Performance

Employee
Adversity Quotient
Performance
Profile (AQ)

Adversity Quotient Profile is taken as an independent variable, which has an overall score as
well as four dimensions (CORE); Control, Ownership, Reach, and Endurance. This AQ has the
positive and strong relationship with Employee Performance and Employee Performance is
serving as a dependent Variable. Base on Literature Review and model to following hypothesis
has been generated for this study.

H 1: There is positive & strong relationship between Adversity Quotient Profile and Employee
Performance.

3. Methodology
3.1 Sampling & sample size

The research was conducted in the telecom sector of Egypt and was carried out by using an
email survey approach. For the purpose of anonymity, the authors will refer to the company
under this study with a different name (FONATIM) , is a leading wireless telecom and cellular
service provider in Egypt, and has 32.m.4mn subscribers as of March 2012 (32.9mn as of
December 2011), which translates into approximately 38.95% of market share. Its network of
5299 sites at the end of 2011 and 34 switches currently covers most of the urban areas in Egypt,
or 99.66% of the population. . FONATIM is listed in Egypt Stock Exchange and is considered one
of the most actively traded companies in the market.

The study used self-administered questioners. The respondents were selected among full time
employees who were currently pursuing the customer service job, specifically, the customer
service agents. Respondents were drawn from the pool of all customer service function

11
departments employees as they fairly represented a wide variety of industries that
encompassed all private sector businesses. The simple random sampling method was also
employed where a full list of candidates were requested from the company contains all names
and details of customer service agents working for FONATIM company. Only 000 questionnaires
were completed and returned, giving a response rate of approximately 00 percent. Table 1
presents the demographic profile of respondents. Majority of the respondents were highly
educated with more than 00% having at least a Bachelor’s degree or postgraduate qualification.
This may be due to the respondents being highly competing in the labor market for a highly
compensated job in a swell established company. None of the respondents had a secondary
school level of qualifications. This finding supports this study’s underlying notion that the
workforce are becoming more knowledge-based and therefore may be ready for a
transformation in the way they are thinking about their lives.

We had an approximately ?????? distribution of male (000 %) and female customer service
agents (000%). A ????? proportion of respondents (000%) had worked in their current company
and with their immediate manager for 0-0 years. A ???? distribution in the industry sector was
noted with most respondents working in sectors such as ITC, Internet, manufacturing and
professional services. In terms of organization size, most of the respondents were from the large
scale companies which had above 150 employees and locally owned or multinational company.

There were two sections in the questionnaire—one section looks at the demographic
information of respondents whereas the second section focused on the independent measure
(AQ).

Table 1 below provides a demographic summary of the respondents in the study.

Characteristics Frequency Percentage

Gender
 Female
 Male
Total
Education
 College
 Graduate
Total
Age
 25 years or less
 26-30 years
 31-35 years
 36-40 years
Total
Length of employment
 1-2 years
 3- years
 5-6 years

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  6-above
Total
Marital status
 Single
 Married
Total

3.2 Process & Measurement

The measurement for customer service agent performance included actual performance reports
from direct managers or supervisors to each respondent. In order to link each respondent’s
performance report to his survey, a simple coding system was followed. For instance ranking the
respondents’ performance reports which was collected from their direct managers or
supervisors with simple numeric codes 1,2,3 … and using the same numbers s to respondents by
giving them the same codes when distrusting the surveys. A pre-consent was obtained from the
management of the company to send the authors a complete list with the names of potential
candidates for the study and to attach their performance reports for the last 12 month to each
name of the candidate in order to facilitate coding and insure anonymity for the respondents.

The measure for Adversity Quotient Profile was adopted from The Stoltz’s ARP® (2009) which is
a self-rating questionnaire to measure an individual’s style of responding to adverse situations.

ARP measure was submitted to a pilot test to 20 candidates that looked into the Adversity
Response Profile® describes 30 scenarios. Each scenario represents a hypothetical event, which
can be answered on a 5-point bipolar scale, (1-not responsible at all to 5-completely
responsible). That was in order to insure understanding and clarity of concepts prior to be fully
distributed to all respondents. Of the three hundred questionnaires that were distributed,
0000000 were returned (response rate 00 percent), but only 000000 were complete and can be
used in further analysis.

3.3 Procedure

Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to customers service agents in FONATIM

company. The respondents were asked to choose the appropriate answer to each scenario of
the survey questions in terms of their personal perception and behavior Spontaneously with
respect to each scenario. .

We ensured that only respondents who had worked for FONATIM company for more than 1
year received the survey. This was to ensure that the respondents had spent enough time to be
evaluated in terms of all performance aspects and therefore would be able to provide a more
accurate assessment.

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4.Findings and Discussion

5. Limitations & Future Research

6. Conclusion

To be continued

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