Chapter 9: Personality and Cultural Values

organizational behavior

What is Personality?

Personality is the structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.

•What a person is like

•Determines their social reputation

•Described by adjectives such as responsible, easygoing, polite

•Traits: recurring trends in people’s responses to their environment

The Big Five Taxonomy

Five broad dimensions or “factors” can be used to summarize our personalities:

•Conscientiousness

•Agreeableness

•Neuroticism (Emotional Stability)

•Openness to Experience

•Extraversion

Extroversion

Outgoing, talkative, sociable, assertive

Agreeableness

Trusting, good-natured, cooperative, soft-hearted

Conscientiousness

Dependable, responsible, achievement-oriented, persistent

Emotional stability

Relaxed, secure, unworried

Openness to Experience

Intellectual, imaginative, curious

Conscientiousness

The biggest influence on job performance

Accomplishment striving—a strong desire to accomplish task-related goals

Correlated to career success, good health

agreeableness

•Communion striving—a strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships

•Not directly related to performance in all jobs or occupations

•Beneficial in service jobs

extraversion

•Status striving—a strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure

•Correlated with leadership emergence and effectiveness

Good with sales job

neuroticism

•Most jobs benefit from employees who are calm, steady, secure

Associated with low levels of job satisfaction and happiness in general

openness to experience

•Beneficial in some jobs but not in others; not related to job performance across all occupations

•Helpful in jobs that are dynamic, creative, opportunities to learn

•Adaptable, good at finding new and better approaches

Situation Strength Theory

•Personality variables tend to be more significant drivers of behavior in weak situations (e.g., daily life) than in strong situations.

“Strong situations (e.g., interview, classroom)” have clear behavioral expectations that make differences between individuals less important

Trait activation Theory

•Some situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given trait.

•Personality variables tend to be more significant drivers of behaviors in situations that provide relevant cues than in situations in which those cues are lacking. 

Personality Frameworks in OB

•Big Five Personality Traits

•Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

•RIASEC Model: Interest framework summarized by six different personality types

Locus of control

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Individuals are classified as:

Extraverted or Introverted

Sensing or iNtuitive

Thinking or Feeling

Judging or Perceiving

The MBTI categories are less predictive of most of the concepts in our integrative model

Not a tool for predicting job performance, but helpful in team building

RIASEC Model

Interest framework summarized by six different personality types

•Realistic

•Investigative

•Artistic

•Social

•Enterprising

•Conventional

Commonly used to provide personality profile and a list of occupations that might be a good match for that profile

Locus of control

Why did something happen? People attribute the causes of events…

1) to the external environment (some environmental occurrence) – External Locus of Control

2) to themselves (something you have done) – Internal Locus of Control

Cultural Values

•Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture.

–Cultural values provide societies with their own distinctive personalities

•Cultural values differ across cultures

–Two frameworks for assessing culture:

1.Hofstede

GLOBE

Hofstede’s Framework

•Analyze data from 116,000 IBM employees from 40 countries

•Employees working in different countries tend to prioritize different values

•Five factors

1.Individualism vs. Collectivism

2.Power Distance

3.Motivation towards Achievement and Success

4.Uncertainty Avoidance

5.Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation

Individualism vs. Collectivism

individualistic - take care of themselves, value uniqueness; collectivism - take care of the members of a group, value harmony within the group

power distance

low - power should be distributed uniformly, strive to equalize the distribution of power

high - power should be distributed unequally within an organizations, accept a hierarchical order

uncertainty avoidance

low - tolerate uncertain and ambiguous situations, values unusual ideas and behaviors

high - feel threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations, prefer formal rules to create stability

Motivation towards Achievement and Success

low - caring for others and caring about quality of life, more consensus oriented, value equality, solidarity and quality in their work lives

high - assertiveness and achievement, more competitive, driven by competition, achievement and success

short term vs long term orientation

short term - past and present oriented, view societal change with suspicion, respect for tradition and fulfiling obligations

long term - future oriented, take a more pragmatic approach, persistence, prudence and thrift

How Important Are Personality Traits?

Conscientiousness has the strongest effect on task performance.

Conscientious employees:

•Have higher levels of motivation 

•Are more self-confident

•Perceive a clearer link between effort and performance

•Are more likely to set goals and commit to them