chapter 5

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CHAPTER 5 Personality, Perception, and

Employee Attitudes

THE MEANING OF PERSONALITY

What is Personality?

Through the years there has not been universal agreement on the exactmeaning of personality;

People in general and those in the behavioural sciences define “personality”from different perspectives;

People tend to equate personality with social success:

having a “good or popular personality,” or having “a lot of personality”

Or describe personality by a single dominant characteristic:

strong, weak, or polite.

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AS PSYCHOLOGISTS DEFINE PERSONALITY

Trait Theory:

Observable patterns of behavior that last over time;

Freud’s psychoanalytic or psychodynamic theory;

The unconscious determinants of behavior

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow’s humanistic Theory;

Self-actualization and the drive to realize one’s potential;

PERSONALITY FROM OB PERSPECTIVE

How people affect others and how they understand and viewthemselves;

Their pattern of inner and outer measurable traits and the person-situationinteraction;

How people affect others depends primarily on their external appearance(height, weight, facial features, color, and other physical aspects) and traits;

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THE ROLE OF HEREDITY AND THE BRAIN

Studies of twins in recent years have led to renewed interest;

Identical twins share the same genetic endowment, but if they are raisedapart, then the similarities and differences can provide insight into heredityversus environment or nature versus nurture;

Behavioral scientists now agree that genes play a role not only in physicalcharacteristics and the brain, but also in personality;

Both evolutionary psychologists and neuropsychologists have traditionally not

played a mainstream role in the study and understanding of personality;


Human beings are, in other words, hardwired. You can take the person out ofthe Stone Age, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person;

Social Evolution:

This suggests that humanity is evolving along the lines of social phenomena such as trust,collaboration, and competition.

As to neuropsychology, recent breakthroughs in brain-scanning technology,called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), allow measurement ofbrain activity by mapping specific regions that are linked to specializedroles;

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Those with brain damage impairing their ability to experience emotion madebetter financial decisions than normal players in a simple investment game;

Other examples include neuroscientific explanations for why employees resistchange (i.e., change taps fear receptors in the brain and taxes the brain’scognitive capacity to learn new ways of doing things)

Research evidence that leaders with high levels of psychological capital (i.e.,confidence, hope, optimism, and resiliency) have different brain activity on avision task exercise than do those with low psychological capital;

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BIG FIVER PERSONALITY TRAITS

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SELF-ESTEEM

People’s attempts to understand themselves are called the self-concept inpersonality theory;

This self is particularly relevant to the widely recognized self-esteem and theemerging self-variables of multiple intelligences, emotion, optimism, and,especially, efficacy, which are all relevant to the field of organizationalbehaviour;

The more established, recognized self-esteem has to do with people’s self-perceived competence and self-image;

Confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect;

SELF-ESTEEM

People with high self-esteem handle failure better than those with low self-esteem;

Earlier study found that those with high self-esteem tended to becomeegotistical when faced with pressure situations and may result in aggressiveand even violent behavior when threatened;

High self esteem can be a good thing, but only if like many other humancharacteristics—such as creativity, intelligence, and persistence—it is nurturedand channeled in constructive and ethical ways. Otherwise, it can becomeantisocial and destructive;

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ORGANIZATION BASED SELF ESTEEM

Organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), it is defined as the “self-perceivedvalue that individuals have of themselves as organization members actingwithin an organization context;

Research and everyday experience confirm that employees with high self-esteem feel unique, competent, secure, empowered, and connected to thepeople around them;

THE SOCIALIZATION PROCESS

There is increasing recognition given to the role of other relevant persons,groups, and, especially, organizations that greatly influence an individual’spersonality;

This continuous impact from the social environment is commonly called thesocialization process;

Evidence is accumulating that socialization may be one of the bestexplanations for why employees behave the way they do in today’sorganizations;

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A study found that the socialization tactics that organizations employ canhave a positive, long-run impact on the adjustment of newcomers (i.e., lowerrole conflict and ambiguity, less stress, and higher job satisfaction andcommitment) and related recent research has found that social processesfacilitate job search behaviour and advancement in management from entrylevel to upper management.

Specific techniques of socializing new employees would include the use ofmentors or role models, orientation and training programs, reward systems,and career planning.


Specific steps that can lead to successful organizational socialization wouldinclude the following:

1. Provide a challenging first job;

2. Provide relevant training;

3. Provide timely and consistent feedback;

4. Select a good first supervisor to be in charge of socialization;

5. Design a relaxed orientation program;

6. Place new recruits in work groups with high morale;

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Evidence shows that those new employees attending a socialization trainingprogram are indeed more socialized than those who do not and have betterperson-organization fit.

PERSONALITY

In summary, personality is very diverse and complex;

Personality is the whole person and is concerned with externalappearance and traits, self, and situational interactions;

Probably the best statement on personality was made many years ago byKluckhohn and Murray:

to some extent, a person’s personality is like all other people’s, like some other people’s, and like no other people’s.

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PERSONALITY TRAITS

There is now considerable support for a five-factor trait-basedtheory of personality;

Many years ago no less than 18,000 words were found to describe

personality.

Even after combining words with similar meanings, there still remained 171personality traits.

Further reduction analysis found five core personality traits called the Five-

Factor Model (FFM), or the “Big Five.”

BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS

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There is also accumulated research that these five best predict performancein the workplace;

Although the five traits are largely independent factors of a personality, likeprimary colours, they can be mixed in countless proportions and with othercharacteristics to yield a unique personality whole;

Most personality theorists would tend to agree that after about 30 yearsof age, the individual’s personality profile will change little over time;

THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

There is general agreement that conscientiousness has the strongestpositive correlation (about 0.3) with job performance;

Individuals who are dependable, persistent, goal directed, and organizedtend to be higher performers on virtually any job;

Viewed negatively, those who are careless, irresponsible, low achievementstriving and impulsive tend to be lower performers on virtually any job;

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THE IMPACT OF THE OTHER TRAITS

The remaining four traits also have some interesting findings;

For example:

Those with high extraversion tend to be associated with management andsales success;

Those with high emotional stability tend to be more effective in stressfulsituations;

Those with high agreeableness tend to handle customer relations and conflictmore effectively;

And those open to experience tend to have job training proficiency andmake better decisions in a training problem solving simulation;


Interestingly, with groups rather than individuals becoming more important intoday’s workplace, the Big Five may also be predictive of teamperformance;

A study found that the higher the average scores of team members on thetraits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and emotionalstability, the better their teams performed;

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MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR (MBTI)

Is widely used and very popular in real-world career counselling, teambuilding, conflict management, and analysing management styles;

The theory goes back to pioneering Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in the1920s;

He felt people could be typed into extraverts and introverts and that theyhad two basic mental processes—perception and judgment;

He then further divided perception into sensing and intuiting and judgmentinto thinking and feeling. This yields four personality dimensions or traits;

(1) introversion/extraversion; (2) perceiving/judging;

(3) sensing/intuition; and (4) thinking/feeling;


In the 1940s the mother-daughter

team of Katharine Briggs and Isabel

Briggs-Myers developed about a

100-item personality test asking

participants how they usually feel

or act in particular situations in

order to measure the preferences on

the four pairs of traits yielding 16

distinct types;

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It is an introspective self-report questionnaire designed to indicate

psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make

decisions;

The questions relate to

How people prefer to focus their energies (extraversion vs. introversion);

Give attention and collect information (sensing vs. intuiting);

Process and evaluate information and make decisions (thinking vs. feeling);

And orient themselves to the outside world (judging vs. perceiving);

THE JUNG THEORY DIMENSIONS AND THEMYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATORS

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MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR (MBTI)EXERCISE-WHAT IS YOUR PERSONALITY TYPE?

MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR (MBTI)EXERCISE-WHAT IS YOUR PERSONALITY TYPE?

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The 16 personality types of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument are

listed here as they are often shown in what is called a "type table."

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PERCEPTION

It is a unique interpretation of the situation, not an exact recording of it;

Perception is a very complex cognitive process that yields a unique picture of

the world, a picture that may be quite different from reality;

Applied to OB, an employee’s perception can be thought of as a filter and

all employees have unique filters;

Same situations/stimuli may produce very different reactions and

behaviours;

PERCEPTION

Your filter tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore; which to love and which to hate. It creates your

innate motivations—are you competitive, altruistic, or ego driven? . . . It creates in you all of your distinct patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. . . . Your filter, more than

your race, sex, age, or nationality!

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SOCIAL PERCEPTION

It is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about

other people;

We learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up on information

we gather from their physical appearance, and verbal and nonverbal

communication;

SOCIAL PERCEPTION-COGNITIVE BIASES

Stereotyping: The term stereotype refers to the tendency to perceive

another person (hence social perception) as belonging to a sngle class or

category;

Halo Effect: It is a cognitive bias in which an observer's overall

impression of a person, company, brand, or product influences the observer's

feelings and thoughts about that entity's character or properties;

It was named by psychologist Edward Thorndike in reference to a person

being perceived as having a halo;

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SOCIAL PERCEPTION-COGNITIVE BIASES

Halo is often discussed in performance appraisal when an appraiser makes

an error in judging a person’s total personality and/or performance on the

basis of a single positive trait such as intelligence, appearance,

dependability, or cooperativeness.

Horns Effect: It is a cognitive

bias that causes you to allow one

bad trait to overshadow other traits,

behaviors, actions, or beliefs.

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES

In psychology, an attitude is an expression of favor or disfavor toward a person,

place, thing, or event (the attitude object);

Specific employee attitudes relating to job satisfaction and organizational

commitment are of major interest to the field of organizational behavior and the

practice of human resource management;

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EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES

Job Satisfaction:

It is “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal

of one’s job or job experience.”

Job satisfaction is a result of employees’ perception of how well their job

provides those things that are viewed as important;

Job satisfaction is the most important and frequently studied employee

attitude;

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES

Five job dimensions have been identified to represent the most important

characteristics of a job about which cause JOB SATISFACTION:

1. The Work Itself. The extent to which the job provides the individual with

interesting tasks, opportunities for learning, and the chance to accept

responsibility.

2. Pay. The amount of financial remuneration #and the degree to which this

is viewed as equitable vis-á-vis that of others in the organization.

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EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES

3. Promotion opportunities. The chances for advancement in the organization.

4. Supervision. The abilities of the supervisor to provide technical assistance

and behavioural support.

5. Co-workers. The degree to which fellow workers are technically proficient

and socially supportive.

OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION

Analysis thus shows a much stronger relationship between employee job

satisfaction and performance;

A meta-analysis of such business units (7,939 in 36 companies) found that

when satisfaction is defined and measured by employee engagement, there

is a significant relationship with performance outcomes of productivity,

customer satisfaction, and even profit;

High job satisfaction will not, in and of itself, keep turnover low, but it does

seem to help while low job satisfaction is more likely to bring about

absenteeism

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IMPROVING JOB SATISFACTION

1. Make jobs more fun. World-class companies such as Southwest Airlines

have a fun culture for their employees.

2. Have fair pay, benefits, and promotion opportunities. These are obvious

ways that organizations typically try to keep their employees satisfied.

3. Match people with jobs that fit their interests and skills. This, of course,

assumes that the organization knows what those interests and skills are.

4. Design jobs to make them exciting and satisfying. Most people do not

find boring, repetitive work very satisfying.

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES

Organizational Commitment:

As an attitude, organizational commitment is most often defined as

a strong desire to remain a member of a particular organization;

willingness to exert high levels of effort on behalf of the organization; and

a definite belief in, and acceptance of, the values and goals of the

organization.

Using this definition, it is commonly measured by the Organizational

Commitment Questionnaire shown below:

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OUTCOMES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Study found a stronger relationship between organizational commitment and

performance for those with low financial needs than for those with high ones;

Another study found that the more tenure the employees had on the job and

with the employing organization, the less impact their commitment had on

performance;

Also, a study found that commitment to supervisors was more strongly related

to performance than was commitment to organizations;

Most researchers would agree that the organizational commitment attitude

may be a better predictor of desirable outcome variables than is job

satisfaction and thus deserves management’s attention;

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IMPROVING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

1. Commit to people-first values. Put it in writing, hire the right-kind

managers, and walk the talk.

2. Clarify and communicate your mission. Clarify the mission and ideology;

make it charismatic; use value-based hiring practices.

3. Guarantee organizational justice. Have a comprehensive grievance

procedure; provide for extensive two-way communications.

4. Create a sense of community. Build value-based homogeneity; share and

share alike; emphasize barn-raising, cross-utilization, get together.

5. Support employee development. Commit to actualizing; provide first-year

job challenge; enrich and empower; promote from within.

ORGANIZATION CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR (OCB)

In Industrial and organizational psychology, Organizational Citizenship

Behavior (OCB) is a concept that describes a person's voluntary

commitment within an organization or company that is not part of his or

her contractual tasks;

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ORGANIZATION CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR (OCB)

OCBs can take many forms, but the major ones could be summarized as:

1. Altruism (e.g., helping out when a co-worker is not feeling well),

2. Conscientiousness (e.g., staying late to finish a project),

3. Civic Virtue (e.g., volunteering for a community program to represent the

firm),

4. Sportsmanship (e.g., sharing failure of a team project that would have

been successful by following the member’s advice), and

5. Courtesy (e.g., being understanding and empathetic even when

provoked).

CONCLUSION

As a summary statement, today’s managers would be very wise in trying to

enhance not only job satisfaction and organizational commitment, but also

prosocial, organizational citizenship behaviours of their employees.

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chapter 5

Documents

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