1 Organizational Behavior
What is Personality?
People differ People seem to
from show some
each other in consistency in
meaningful ways behavior
Personality is defined as distinctive and
relatively enduring ways of thinking,
feeling, and acting
2 Organizational Behavior
What is Personality?
The dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his
environment. - Gordon Allport.
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts
with others, the measurable traits a person exhibits
Measuring Personality
Helpful in hiring decisions
Most common method: self-reporting surveys
Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of
personality
3 Organizational Behavior
Personality
• Personality refers to a person’s unique and
relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and
actions
• Personality is an interaction between biology and
environment
• Genetic studies suggest heritability of personality
• Other studies suggest learned components of
personality
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Personality is:
• Relatively unique to the individual.
• Relatively stable over time.
• Exerts a strong influence over the
individual’s behavior.
• Some aspects are unobservable.
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Personality Determinants
Heredity
◦ Factors determined at conception: physical stature, facial
attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and
reflexes, energy level, and bio-rhythms
◦ This “Heredity Approach” argues that genes are the source of
personality
◦ Twin studies: raised apart but very similar personalities
◦ Parents don’t add much to personality development
◦ There is some personality change over long time periods
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The Big Five Model
• Openness to experience: Addresses ones range of
interests and fascination with novelty. A personality
dimension that characterizes someone in terms of
imagination ,sensitivity and curiosity.
• Conscientiousness: This dimension is a measure of
reliability. A personality dimension that characterizes
someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent
and organized.
• Extroversion: This dimension captures one’s comfort
level with relationships. A personality dimension that
characterizes someone who is sociable , gregarious
and assertive.
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The Big Five Model (contd.)
• Agreeableness : This dimension refers to an
individual’s propensity to defer to others. A personality
dimension that characterizes someone who is good-
natured, cooperative and trusting.
• Emotional Stability : This dimension refers To a
person’s ability to withstand stress. A personality
dimension that characterizes someone as calm, self-
confident , secure (positive) versus nervous , depressed
and insecure.
8 Organizational Behavior
9 Organizational Behavior
What would you do….
You are applying for the job of sales associate. You have just
found out that you will be given a personality assessment as
part of the application process. You feel that this job requires
someone who is very high in extraversion, and someone
who can handle stress well. You are relatively sociable and
can cope with some stress but honestly you are not very
high in either trait. The job pays well and it is a great
stepping-stone to better jobs. How are you going to respond
when completing the personality questions? Are you going
to make an effort to represent yourself as how you truly are?
If so, there is a chance that you may not get the job. How
about answering the questions to fit the salesperson profile?
10 Isn’t everyone doing this to some extent anyway?
Organizational Behavior
Five-Factor Personality and
Organizational Behavior
Conscientiousness and emotional stability
• Motivational components of personality
• Strongest personality predictors of performance
Extroversion
• Linked to sales and mgt performance
• Related to social interaction and persuasion
Agreeableness
• Effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness
Openness to experience
• Linked to higher creativity and adaptability to change
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How Do the Big Five Traits Predict
Behavior?
Research has shown this to be a better framework.
Certain traits have been shown to strongly relate to higher job
performance:
◦ Highly conscientious people develop more job knowledge,
exert greater effort, and have better performance.
◦ Other Big Five Traits also have implications for work.
Emotional stability is related to job satisfaction.
Extroverts tend to be happier in their jobs and have
good social skills.
Open people are more creative and can be good leaders.
Agreeable people are good in social settings.
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Other Key Personality Traits
Locus of control - Belief that life is controlled by oneself vs.
outsiders
Machiavellianism - Tendency to manipulate and maintain
emotional distance
Self-esteem - Degree one likes or dislikes oneself
Self-monitoring - Sensitive to external cues to behave
differently
Risk propensity - Willingness to take chances
Type A personality - Incessantly struggling to achieve more
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LOCUS OF CONTROL
• A person’s perception of the source of his
or her fate is termed as locus of control.
• Internals are those who believe that they
control what happens to them.
• Externals are individuals who believe that
what happens to them is controlled by
outside forces such as luck or chance.
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Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Locus of Control
Internal External
I control what People and
happens to me! circumstances
control my fate!
15 Organizational Behavior
• Core Self-Evaluation
– The degree to which people like or dislike themselves
– Positive self-evaluation leads to higher job performance
• Machiavellianism
– A pragmatic, emotionally distant power-player who believes
that ends justify the means.
– High Machs are manipulative, win more often, and
persuade more than they are persuaded. Flourish when:
• Have direct interaction
• Work with minimal rules and regulations
• Emotions distract others
• Narcissism
– An arrogant, entitled, self-important
person who needs excessive admiration.
– Less effective in their jobs.
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Self-Monitoring Assessment
• You are a new sales person and just made a huge
sale and are very excited. You run into your
boss’s office and start to tell her but she keeps
looking at the computer. You…
a. Keep telling her about the sale excitedly – you
know she wants to know.
b. Say, “I’m sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?”
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Self-Monitoring
Behavior based on cues from people & situations
High self-monitors Low self-monitors
flexible: adjust behavior act from internal states
according to the situation rather than from
and the behavior of situational cues
others show consistency
can appear unpredictable less likely to respond to
& inconsistent work group norms or
supervisory feedback
18 Organizational Behavior
• Type A Personality
– Aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant
struggle to achieve more in less time
• Impatient: always moving, walking, and eating
rapidly
• Strive to think or do two or more things at once
• Cannot cope with leisure time
• Obsessed with achievement numbers
– Type B people are the complete opposite
• Proactive Personality
– Identifies opportunities, shows initiative, takes
action, and perseveres to completion
– Creates positive change in the environment
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Implications for Managers
Personality
–Match personality types with compatible jobs
–Can be difficult to separate personality from
culture
–Personality measures widely used but poorly
understood
22 Organizational Behavior
Personality Assessment
Projective measures give the subject an abstract
or unstructured stimulus
Inkblot or incomplete sentence
Requires subject to interpret the stimulus and
respond
Objective tests are standardized questionnaires
requiring written responses
Usually self-report (NEO- Big Five, MMPI-II)
Task is to answer some specified number of
questions about yourself
23 Organizational Behavior
Rorschach Example
24 Organizational Behavior
TAT Example
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Matching Personalities and jobs:
Sales Representative: This position involves calling existing
customers to ensure that they continue to be happy with your firm’s
products. The representative is expected to get customers to buy
more of your products and to attract new customers. He must be
aggressive.
Office Manager: Expected to oversee the work of a staff of twenty
secretaries, receptionists and clerks. The manager hires them, trains
them, evaluates their performance and sets their pay. The manager
also schedules working hours and when necessary disciplines or
fires workers.
Warehouse Worker: Uploads trucks and carry shipments to shelves
for storage. They also pull orders for customers from shelves and
take products for packing. The job requires that workers follow
orders precisely; there is little room for autonomy or interaction with
others during work.
26 Organizational Behavior
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Most widely used instrument in the world.
Participants are classified on four axes to determine one of
16 possible personality types, such as
Quiet and
Extroverted Introverted Shy
Sociable and (E) (I)
Assertive
Unconscious
Sensing Intuitive Processes
Practical (S) (N)
and Uses Values &
Orderly Thinking Emotions
Feeling (F)
(T)
Use Reason
and Logic
Perceiving Flexible and
Want Order Judging (J) Spontaneous
(P)
27 Organizational Behavior
& Structure
