ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

CHAPTER 3: PERSONALITY AND VALUES

I/ PERSONALITY.
1. What is personality?
- Personality is the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others, the
measurable traits a person exhibits.
- Measuring personality:
+ Useful in hiring decisions and help managers forecast who is best for a job.
+ The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys, with which
individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors.
+ Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of personality – often better predictors.
1.1. Personality determinants.
- Personality is resulted by both determinants: heredity (di truyền) and environment. However, according
to research, heredity is more important.
- Heredity: (according to the book) Factors determined at conception; one’s biological, physiological, and
inherent psychological makeup.
+ Factors determined at conception: physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament,
muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms – considered to be influenced by who
your parents are – by their biological, physiological, and inherent psychological makeup.
+ This “Heredity Approach” argues that genes are the source of personality.
+ Twin studies: raised apart but very similar personalities.
+ There is some personality change over long time periods.
1.2. Personality traits.
- Definition: Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior.
+ The more consistent the characteristic over time, and the more frequently it occurs in diverse
situations, the more important that trait is in describing the individual.
- Two dominant frameworks used to describe personality:
+ The Myers – Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
+ Big Five Model.
2. The Myers – Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
- The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most widely used personality assessment instrument in
the world. It is a 100-question personality test that asks people how they usually feel or act in particular
situations.
- Participants are classified on four axes to determine one of 16 possible personality types, such as ENTJ.
 - Research results on validity mixed.
+ MBTI is a valuable tool for increasing self-awareness and providing career guidance.
+ Results tend to be unrelated to job performance, managers probably SHOULD NOT use it as a
selection test for job candidates.
3. The Big Five Personality Model.
- The Big Five Model – five basic dimensions underlie all others and encompass most of the significant
variation in human personality.
- Test scores of these traits do a very good job of predicting how people behave in a variety of real-life
situations.
3.1. Big Five Factors.
- Extraversion: The extraversion dimension captures our comfort level with relationships.
+ Extraverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable.
+ Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
- Agreeableness: The agreeableness dimension refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to others.
+ Highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm, and trusting.
+ People who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
- Conscientiousness: The conscientiousness dimension is a measure of reliability.
+ A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent.
+ Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
- Emotional stability: The emotional stability dimension – often labeled by its converse, neuroticism –
taps a person’s ability to withstand stress.
+ People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure.
+ Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
- Openness to experience: The openness to experience dimension addresses range of interests and
fascination with novelty.
+ Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive.
+ Those at the other end of the category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.
3.2. How do the Big Five Traits predict behavior at Work?
- 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.

II/ VALUES.
- 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”.
- Attributes of values:
+ The content attribute – the mode of conduct or end-state of existence is important.
+ The intensity attribute – specifies just how important the content is.
- Value system:
+ A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity.
+ Tend to be relatively stable and enduring (or constant and consistent).
1. The Importance of Values.
- Provide understanding of the attitudes, motivations, and behaviors.
- Influence our perception of the world around us.
- Represent interpretations of “right” and “wrong”.
- Imply that some behaviors or outcomes are preferred over others.
 2. Terminal vs. Instrumental Values (Rokeach Value Survey).
- Milton Rokeach created the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS). It consists of two sets of values, each
containing 18 individual value items.
- Terminal values: refers to desirable end-states; the goals a person would like to achieve during his or her
lifetime.
- Instrumental values: refers to preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving the terminal values.
- People in the same occupations or categories (corporate managers, union members, parents, students) tend
to hold similar values.
+ But values vary between groups.
+ Values differences make it difficult for group to negotiate and may create conflict.

3. Linking an Individual’s Personality and Values to the Workplace.

- Managers are less interested in someone’s ability to do a specific job than in that person’s flexibility.
3.1. Person-job fit.
- Tom Holland’s personality-job fit theory:
+ 6 personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Social, Conventional, Enterprising, Artistic.
+ The Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) questionnaire, which contains 160 occupational titles.
Respondents indicate which they like or dislike, and their answers form personality profiles.

- The theory argues that satisfaction is highest and turnover lowest when personality and occupation are
in agreement.
- Three key points to this model:
+ There do appear to be intrinsic differences in personality among individuals.
+ There are different types of jobs.
+ People in jobs congruent with their personality should be more satisfied and less likely to voluntarily
resign than people in incongruent jobs.
 - The relationship among personality types:

- In addition to matching the individual’s personality to the job, managers are also concerned with:
3.2. Person-organization fit.
- The employee’s personality must fit with the organizational culture.
- People are attracted to organizations that match their values.
- Those who match are most likely to be selected.
- Mismatches will result in turnover.
- Can use the Big Five Model personality types to match to the organizational culture.
III/ GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS.
1. Personality.
- Do frameworks like the Big Five Model transfer across culture?
+ Yes, but the frequency of type in the culture may vary.
+ Better in individualistic than in the collectivist culture.
2. Values.
- Values differ across culture.
- Geert Hofstede’s Framework for accessing culture – 5 value dimensions:
2.1. Power distance.
- Describes the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is
distributed unequally.
+ High distance: Extremely unequal power distribution between those with status/wealth and those
without status/wealth.
+ Low distance: Relatively equal power between those with status/wealth and those without
status/wealth.
2.2. Individualism versus Collectivism.
- Individualism is the degree to which 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 others in groups of which they
are a part to look after them and protect them.
 2.3. Masculinity versus Femininity.
- Masculinity is the extent to which the society values work roles of achievement, power, and control, and
where assertiveness and materialism are also valued.
- Femininity is the extent to which there is little differentiation between roles for men and women; and
treats women as the equals of men in all respects.
2.4. Uncertainty avoidance.
- Describe the degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situation.
+ High avoidance: People have an increased level of anxiety about uncertainty and ambiguity and use
laws and controls to reduce uncertainty.
+ Low avoidance: People are more accepting of ambiguity, are less rule oriented, take more risks, and
more readily accept change.
2.5. Long-term versus Short-term orientation.
- Long-term orientation: People look to the future and value thrift, persistence, and tradition.
- Short-term orientation: People value the here and now; they accept change more readily and do not see
commitments as impediments to change.
3. An Assessment of the Hofstede’s Framework.
- There are regional differences within countries.
- The original data is old and based on only one company.
- Hofstede had to make many judgement calls while doing the research.
- Some results do not match what is believed to be true about given countries.
- Despite these problems, it remains a very popular framework.
4. The GLOBE framework for Accessing culture.
- Begun in 1993, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research
program is an ongoing cross-cultural investigation of leadership and national culture.
- It identified nine dimensions on which national cultures differ.
- Similar to Hofstede’s Framework with these additional dimensions:
+ Human orientation: the degree to which a society rewards individuals for being altruistic, generous,
and kind to others.
+ Performance orientation: the degree to which a society encourages and rewards group members for
performance improvement and excellence.
IV/ SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS.
1. Personality.
- Screen for the Big Five traits conscientiousness.
- Take into account the situational factors as well.
- MBTI can help with training and development.
2. Values.
- Often underlie and explain attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions.
- Employees’ performance and satisfaction are likely to be higher if their values fit well with the
organization.
- Managers are more likely to appreciate, evaluate positively, and allocate rewards to employees who fit in,
and employees are more likely to be satisfied if they perceive they do fit in.