Personality and Values in Organizations

Personality and Values Overview

• Personality and values shape behavior
• Managers need to understand employee personalities to predict behavior
• Chapter reviews personality research and its link to behavior
• It also describes how values influence work-related actions

Chapter Objectives

• Discuss personality, its measurement, and shaping factors
• Describe the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Big Five model, covering strengths and weaknesses
• Identify the Dark Triad traits and the approach-avoidance framework
• Discuss how core self-evaluation (CSE), self-monitoring, and proactive personality aid in understanding personality
• Describe situational effects on personality's predictive power
• Contrast terminal and instrumental values
• Describe person-job fit versus person-organization fit
• Identify Hofstede's five value dimensions of national culture

Defining Personality

• Personality refers to the dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person's whole psychological system
• Personality can also be defined as the sum of how an individual reacts to and interacts with others using measurable traits
• Gordon Allport nearly 70 years ago, defined personality as "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine their unique adjustments to their environment."

Measuring Personality

• Managers can use personality trait measurements to select appropriate employees
• Self-report surveys are a common measurement
  • Individuals evaluate themselves on various factors
  • However, self-reports can be potentially inaccurate due to falsehoods, impression management, or the candidate’s emotional state

Personality Determinants

• Personality develops through hereditary and environmental factors, with heredity as the more impactful
  • Hereditary factors, determined at conception include:
    • Physical stature
    • Facial attractiveness
    • Gender
    • Temperament
    • Muscle composition and reflexes
    • Energy level
    • Biological rhythms
  • The heredity approach argues personality is determined at the chromosome level
• Twin studies show separated identical twins have variation associated with genetic factors
  • Genetics have a greater influence on personality development compared to the parental environment
• Personalities change as people age, but more in ability levels
  • Actual rankings of behavioral traits remain stable
• Personality traits are characteristics describing an individual's behavior across situations
  • The MBTI and the Big Five Model are dominant frameworks for describing relevant personality traits

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

• Popular instrument involving situational questions
  • Answers are categorized on four scales, determining personality type

Four Classification Scales

• Extraverted versus Introverted (E or I)

  • Extraverted individuals are more outgoing, social, and assertive
  • Introverted individuals are quieter and shy

• Sensing versus Intuitive (S or N)

  • Sensing individuals are practical, orderly, and detail-oriented
  • Intuitive people are "big picture" oriented and rely on "gut" feelings

• Thinking versus Feeling (T or F)

  • Thinkers use logic to make decisions
  • Feelers use emotions and personal values

• Judging versus Perceiving (J or P)

  • Judgers are control-oriented and enjoy structure
  • Perceivers are flexible and spontaneous

Sixteen Personality Types

• Classifications describe 16 personality types by combining the pairs of the MBTI

• Introverted/Intuitive/Thinking/Judging (INTJs) are visionaries

  • They usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes
  • They are skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubborn

• ESTJs are organizers

  • They are realistic, logical, analytical, decisive, and have a natural head for business or mechanics
  • They like to organize and run activities

• The ENTP type is a conceptualizer

  • They are innovative, individualistic, versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas
  • These people tend to be resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments

Concerns Regarding the MBTI

• Organizations widely use the MBTI
• Evidence is mixed about the MBTI's validity as a measure of personality
• A concern is that it forces a person into one type or another without an in-between
• Provides a tool for increasing self-awareness and career guidance
  • However, managers probably shouldn't use it as a selection test for job candidates as results tend to be unrelated to job performance

The Big Five Model

• This model of personality has a large body of research supporting it
• The model is positively related to job performance and can be used as a screening tool

Five Factors of the Big Five Personality Test

• Extraversion deals with comfort level in relationships similar to the MBTI’s contrast with introversion

  • Someone scoring high in extraversion is more gregarious, assertive, and sociable
  • Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet

• Agreeableness measures deference toward others

  • High scorers are cooperative, warm, and trusting
  • low scorer are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic
  • Agreeableness workers are less likely to be involved in drugs and excessive drinking

• Conscientiousness measures reliability

  • High scorer are responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent
  • Low scorers are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable
  • Key determinant of job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) on the Big Five
  • Conscientious people also tend not to take risks and may find organizational change difficult to handle

• Emotional Stability (or Neuroticism) measures the ability to handle stress

  • The more stable a person, the better able they are to handle stress
  • People with high emotional stability tend to become self-confident and secure
  • Have higher life and job satisfaction
  • Low emotional stability scorers tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure
    • Yet, surprisingly, make better and faster decisions when in a bad mood

• Openness to Experience measures the range of interests and fascination with novelty (a proxy for creativity)

  • People who score low on this factor tend to be conventional and enjoy familiar circumstances
  • High scorers tend to be creative, curious, and artistically sensitive and deal better with organizational change and are more adaptable

How the Big Five Traits Predict Behavior at Work

• Research on the Big Five has found relationships between these personality dimensions and job performance
• Individuals who are dependable, reliable, careful, thorough, able to plan, organized, hardworking, persistent, and achievement-oriented tend to have higher job performance in most occupations
• Employees who score higher in conscientiousness develop higher levels of job knowledge and this helps contribute to higher levels of job performance
• Conscientiousness is as important for managers as for front-line employees
• Conscientiousness traits are persistence, attention to detail, and setting of high standards
• Conscientiousness is the Big Five trait most consistently related to job performance, the other traits are related to aspects of performance in some situations

Other Implications for OB

• People who score high on emotional stability are happier than those who score low

  • of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels
  • High scorers are more likely to be positive and optimistic in their thinking and experience fewer negative emotions

• People low on emotional stability are hyper-vigilant and vulnerable to the physical and psychological effects of stress

• Extraverts tend to be happier in their jobs and in their lives as a whole as they experience more positive emotions

  • Tend to perform better in jobs with interpersonal interaction because they have more social skills
  • Extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership emergence in groups and are more assertive than introverts
  • A downside is extraverts are more impulsive and engage in risky behavior

• Individuals who score high on openness to experience are more creative in science and art than those who score low

  • More like to be effective leaders
  • Comfortable with ambiguity and change
  • Cope better with organizational change and are more adaptable in changing contexts
    • Especially susceptible to workplace accidents

• Agreeable people are happier than disagreeable people

  • Also more liked than disagreeable people, which explains why they tend to do better in interpersonally oriented jobs such as customer service
  • More compliant and less likely to get into accidents as a result and do better in school
  • Also less likely to engage in organizational deviance
  • One downside is agreeableness is associated with lower levels of career success especially earnings

• Conscientious people live longer because they take better care of themselves and engage in fewer risky behaviors

  • do not adapt as well to changing contexts and have more trouble learning complex skills early on
  • They are often less creative than less conscientious people, especially artistically

The Dark Triad

• Socially undesirable traits relevant to organizational behavior are Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy

• Machiavellianism is named for Niccolo Machiavelli and an individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes ends can justify means:

  • High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low Machs
  • High-Mach outcomes are moderated by situational factors
  • Machs flourish when they interact face to face with others rather than indirectly when the situation has a minimal number of rules and regulations, allowing latitude for improvisation and when emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning distracts low Machs
  • High Machs productive when in jobs that require bargaining skills (such as labor negotiation) or that offer substantial rewards for winning (such as commissioned sales)
  • Our ability to predict a high Mach's performance will be severely curtailed if ends can't justify the means

• Narcissism come from the Greek myth of Narcissus which is a person who has a grandiose sense of self-importance, requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement, and is arrogant

  • Study found that although narcissists thought they were better leaders than their colleagues, their supervisors actually rated them as worse
  • Often want to gain the admiration of others and receive affirmation of their superiority, they tend to “talk down” to those who threaten them
  • Tend to be selfish and exploitive and believe others exist for their benefit
  • Their bosses rate them as less effective at their jobs than others, particularly when it comes to helping other people

• Psychopathy is defined as a lack of concern for others, and a lack of guilt or remorse when their actions cause harm

  • Measures of psychopathy attempt to assess the person's motivation to comply with social norms willingness to use deceit to obtain desired ends and the effectiveness of those efforts impulsivity and disregard
  • The literature is not consistent about whether psychopathy or other aberrant personality traits are important to work behavior: Organizations wishing to assess psychopathy or other traits need to exercise caution
  • The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against individuals with “a physical or mental impairment." unless there is a specific guidelines

Approach-Avoidance Framework

• Has cast personality traits as motivations.
  • Approach and avoidance motivation represent the degree to which we react to stimuli whereby approach motivation is our attraction to positive stimuli, and avoidance motivation is our aversion to negative stimuli
  • Organizes traits and help explain how they predict work behavior
  • This framework has provided some important insights into behavior in organizations, there are several unresolved issues

Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB

• Core Self-Evaluation measures to the degree to which a person likes or dislikes themself
  • Positive core self-evaluators like themselves and therefore perform better, because they set ambitious goals
  • Negative evaluators tend to dislike themselves, question their capabilities, and view themselves as powerless over their environment
• Self-Monitoring refers to the ability of people to adjust their behaviors to fit external, situational factors
  • High self-monitors are very adaptable and sensitive to external cues, tend to get better performance ratings, take leadership positions, are more mobile, even though they have less commitment
• Proactive Personality types identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs and are also often leaders

Personality and Situations

• Effect of particular traits in organizational behavior depends on the situation

Situation Strength Theory

• Proposes the way personality translates into behavior depends on the strength of the situation

  • Situations that pressures people to exhibit the right behavior, clearly direct people what to do, or doesn't discourage their behavior
  • In weak situations, “anything goes,” and thus we are freer to express our personality in our behaviors
  • Personality traits better predict behavior in weak situations than in strong ones

• Researchers have analyzed situation strength in organizations in terms of four elements

  • Clarity: the degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are available and clear
  • Consistency: the extent to which cues regarding work duties and responsibilities are compatible with one another
  • Constraints: the extent to which individuals' freedom to decide or act is limited by forces outside their control
  • Consequences: the degree to which decisions or actions have important implications for the organization

• Organizations are, by definition, strong situations because they impose rules, norms, and standards that govern behavior:

  • They can become demotivating, suppress the creativity, the initiative, and discretion prized by some cultures, and is problematic in work that is increasingly complex and interrelated globally

Trait Activation Theory (TAT)

• Predicts that some situations, events, or interventions "activate" a trait more than others
• Research shows that a supportive environment, everyone behaves prosocially, but in an environment that is not so nice, whether an individual has the personality to behave prosocially makes a major difference
• Both is situation strength and trait activation theories are the debate over nature and nurture which affect behavior
  • Personality affects work behavior and the situation affects work behavior, but when the situation is right, the power of personality to predict behavior is even higher

Values

• Values represent basic convictions that "a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence."
  • Contain a judgmental element in that they carry an individual's ideas as to what is right, good, or desirable and have both content and intensity attributes
  • Content says a mode of conduct or end-state of existence is important
• All of us have a hierarchy of values that forms our value system and tend to be relatively stable and enduring
  • Values lay the foundation for understanding people's attitudes, motivation, and behavior and influence our perceptions although they can cloud objectivity and rationality

Classifying Values

• Values can be classified by instruments such as the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS)
  • RVS which has terminal values and instrumental values
  • Terminal Values focuses on desirable end-states which are goals a person would like to achieve
  • Instrumental Values lists preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving terminal values

Linking Personality and Values

• Managers have become concerned with matching both the personality and the values of an employee with those of the organization
  • The hope is to identify workers who are both flexible and committed to the organization

Person-Job Fit and Holland's Personality-Job Fit Theory

• Holland identified six personality types and proposed that job satisfaction and propensity to leave depend on how well the job and personalities are matched (congruency)
• Social individuals belong in jobs requiring social skills
• Vocational Preference Inventory Questionnaire.
  • Used to identify congruent occupations where the six personality types (or fields in Holland's taxonomy) are laid out on a hexagon
  • Holland's theory argues that satisfaction is highest and turnover is lowest when personality and occupation are in agreement.

Person-Organization Fit

• Important to Managers
• Employees are more likely to leave an organization when their personalities do not match the organizational culture
  • Alignment of an employee's personality and values with an organization's culture is positively related to increased job satisfaction, lower turnover, and higher organizational commitment
  • Selecting employees based on this concept, managers can increase organizational outcomes which shows that person-job fit was a strong predictor of lower turnover in the United States, while a combination of person-organization fit and other factors strongly predicted lower turnover in India
  • May be generalizable for individualistic countries like the United States, and collectivistic countries like India

International Values

• The understanding of how values differ across cultures is helpful in explaining and predicting behavior of employees from different countries
• There are Two frameworks to assess culture are Hofstede's Framework and the Globe Framework

Hofstede’s Framework

• Examines five value dimensions of national culture: Power Distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-Term/Short-Term Orientation

• Power Distance is the degree to which people accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally

  • High power distance means that great inequities in power and wealth are tolerated
  • Low power distance cultures stress equality and upward opportunities

• Individualism/Collectivism is the amount of emphasis placed on the individual as opposed to the group

  • Individualism is when people prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups and believe in individual rights above all else
  • Collectivism emphasizes a tight social framework in which people expect group members to look after and protect them

• Masculinity/Femininity is the value a culture places on traditional gender roles

  • Masculine societies have men dominating society, separate roles for men and women, and expressly value achievement, power, and control
  • Feminine cultures value equality among the sexes

• Uncertainty Avoidance is the degree to which people in a culture prefer structured over unstructured situations

  • High uncertainty avoidance cultures are anxious over ambiguity and uncertainty: they emphasize law and controls
  • Low cultures accept a greater variety of opinion and higher levels of risk while relying less on rules: they more readily accept change

• Long-Term/Short-Term Orientation is the degree of long-term devotion to traditional values

  • Long-term cultures are future-oriented and value tradition, thrift, and persistence
  • Short-term cultures are immediate and accept change more readily

Frameworks to Assess Cultures

• There are both regional and national differences in culture as measured by this framework but Hofstede's framework is not without its critics, but it is still highly influential
• Relatively recent and on-going program of research is the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) Framework which uses nine dimensions of national culture
  • Some dimensions from the Hofstede’s such as power distance, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, gender differentiation, and future orientation
  • The GLOBE framework added dimensions such as humane orientation (the degree individuals are rewarded for fair, generous, and altruistic behaviors) and performance orientation (the degree to which group members are rewarded for performance improvement and excellence.)