CHAPTER 5
Personality and Values
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
5-1. Describe personality, the way it is measured, and the factors that shape it.
5-2. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
personality framework and the Big Five model.
5-3. Discuss how the concepts of core self-evaluation (CSE), self-monitoring, and
proactive personality contribute to the understanding of personality.
5-4. Describe how the situation affects whether personality predicts behavior.
5-5. Contrast terminal and instrumental values.
5-6. Describe the differences between person-job fit and person-organization fit.
5-7. Compare Hofstede’s five value dimensions and the GLOBE framework.
INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter.
Text Exercises
Career OBjectives: How Do I Ace The Personality Test?
Personal Inventory Assessments: Personality Style Indicator
Myth or Science?: “We Can Accurately Judge Individual’s Personalities a Few Seconds
After Meeting Them”
An Ethical Choice: Do You Have a Cheating Personality?
Point/Counterpoint: Millennials Are More Narcissistic Than Their Parents
Questions for Review
Experiential Exercise: Your Best Self
Ethical Dilemma: Millennial Job Hopping
Text Cases
Case Incident 1: On the Costs of Being Nice
Case Incident 2: The Power of Quiet
Instructor’s Choice
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student’s textbook. Instructor’s Choice
reinforces the text’s emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor’s Choice activities are
centered on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be
used in class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student’s part.
The course instructor may choose to use these at any time throughout the class—some may be
more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered
in the chapter.
Web Exercises
At the end of each chapter of this Instructor’s Manual, you will find suggested exercises and
ideas for researching OB topics on the Internet. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the
Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to your class, and
make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity
or as lab activities with your class.
Summary and Implications for Managers
Personality matters to organizational behavior. It does not explain all behavior, but it sets the
stage. Emerging theory and research reveal how personality matters more in some situations than
others. The Big Five has been a particularly important advancement, though the Dark Triad and
other traits matter as well. Every trait has advantages and disadvantages for work behavior and
there is no perfect constellation of traits that is ideal in every situation.
Personality can help you understand why people (including yourself!) act, think, and feel the way
we do, and the astute manger can put that understanding to use by taking care to place employees
in situations that best fit their personality. Values often underlie and explain attitudes, behaviors,
and perceptions.
Consider screening job candidates for high conscientiousness—as well as the other Big
Five traits—depending on the criteria your organization finds most important. Other
aspects, such as core self-evaluation or narcissism, may be relevant in certain situations.
Although the MBTI has faults, you can use it for training and development; to help
employees better understand each other, open up communication in work groups, and
possibly reduce conflicts.
Evaluate jobs, work groups, and your organization to determine the optimal personality
fit.
Take into account employees’ situational factors when evaluating their observable
personality traits, and lower the situation strength to better ascertain personality
characteristics.
The more you consider people’s different cultures, the better you will be able to
determine their work behavior and create a positive organizational climate that performs
well.
This chapter opens with a discussion about Mark Josephson, the founder and CEO of Bitley, a Web link shortening
service. As you can see, personality plays a major role in Mark Josephson’s entrepreneurial success. Personality is
indeed a strong factor for many life and work outcomes. We will explain traits such as extraversion,
conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism—the most defined traits—that were discussed in the
story. We’ll also review frameworks that describe an individual’s personality and tendencies.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Personality
A. What Is Personality?
1. Personality is a dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a
person’s whole psychological system.
2. Defining personality
a. The text defines personality as the sum total of ways in which an individual
reacts to and interacts with others.
3. Measuring personality
a. Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help managers forecast who is
best for a job.
b. The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys,
in which individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors.
c. Research indicates our culture influences the way we rate ourselves. People in
individualistic countries trend toward self-enhancement, while people in
collectivist countries like Taiwan, China, and South Korea trend toward
self-diminishment.
d. Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of personality. Here,
a coworker or another observer does the rating.
e. Though the results of self-reports and observer-ratings surveys are strongly
correlated, research suggests observer-ratings surveys predict job success more
than self-ratings alone.
f. However, each can tell us something unique about an individual’s behavior, so a
combination of self-reports and observer reports predicts performance better than
any one type of information.
4. Personality determinants
a. Introduction
i. An early argument centered on whether personality was the result of heredity
or environment.
ii. Personality appears to be a result of both influences.
b. Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.
i. The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s
personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the
chromosomes.
ii. Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior include shy,
aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal, and timid. These are
personality traits.
B. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
1. The most widely used personality frameworks is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI).
2. Individuals are classified as:
a. Extroverted or Introverted (E or I).
b. Sensing or Intuitive (S or N).
c. Thinking or Feeling (T or F).
d. Perceiving or Judging (P or J).
3. These classifications are then combined into sixteen personality types. For example:
a. INTJs are visionaries. They usually have original minds and great drive. They are
characterized as skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubborn.
b. ESTJs are organizers. They are realistic, logical, analytical, decisive, and have a
natural head for business or mechanics.
c. The ENTP type is a conceptualizer. He or she is innovative, individualistic,
versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas. This person tends to be
resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments.
4. MBTI is widely used in practice. Some organizations using it include Apple
Computer, AT&T, Citigroup, GE, 3M Company, and others.
C. The Big Five Personality Model
1. An impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions underlie all other
personality dimensions. The five basic dimensions are:
a. Extraversion. Comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be gregarious,
assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
b. Agreeableness. Individual’s propensity to defer to others. High agreeableness
people—cooperative, warm, and trusting. Low agreeableness people—cold,
disagreeable, and antagonistic.
c. Conscientiousness. A measure of reliability. A high conscientious person is
responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this
dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
d. Emotional stability. 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.
e. Openness to experience. The range of interests and fascination with novelty.
Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at
the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the
familiar.
2. How do the Big Five traits predict behavior at work?
a. Research has shown relationships between these personality dimensions and job
performance.
b. Employees who score higher, for example, in conscientiousness develop higher
levels of job knowledge.
c. Conscientiousness is as important for managers as for front-line employees.
(Exhibit 5-1)
i. The study found conscientiousness—in the form of persistence, attention to
detail, and setting of high standards—was more important than other traits.
ii. These results attest to the importance of conscientiousness to organizational
success.
d. Although conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance, there are
other traits that are related to aspects of performance in some situations.
3. All five traits also have other implications for work and for life. Let’s look at these
one at a time. (Exhibit 5-2)
a. Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life
satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels.
b. Extraverts tend to perform better in a job with significant interpersonal
interaction.
c. Open people are more likely to be effective leaders – and more comfortable with
ambiguity.
d. Agreeable individuals are better liked than disagreeable people, which helps
explain why they tend to do better in interpersonally-oriented jobs such as
customer service.
4. The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model appear in almost all
cross-cultural studies.
a. These studies have included a wide variety of diverse cultures such as China,
Israel, Germany, Japan, Spain, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, and the United States.
b. Generally, the findings corroborate what has been found in U.S. research: of the
Big Five traits, conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance.
D. The Dark Triad
1. With the exception of neuroticism, the Big Five traits are what we call socially
desirable, meaning we would be glad to score high on them.
2. Researchers have found that three other socially undesirable traits, which we all have
in varying degrees, are relevant to organizational behavior.
a. They are: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
b. Owing to their negative nature, researchers have labeled these three traits the
“Dark Triad.”
3. Machiavellianism
a. An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional
distance, and believes that ends can justify means.
b. High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others
more.
4. Narcissism
a. Narcissism describes a person who has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
b. They “think” they are better leaders.
c. Often they are selfish and exploitive.
5. Psychopathy
a. In the OB context, psychopathy is defined as a lack of concern for others, and a
lack of guilt or remorse when their actions cause harm.
i. 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, that is, lack of
empathic concern, for others.
6. Other Traits
a. The Dark Triad is a helpful framework for studying the three dominant dark-side
traits in current personality research, and researchers are exploring other traits as
well.
b. One emerging framework incorporates five additional aberrant compound traits
based on the Big Five.
i. First, antisocial people are indifferent and callous toward others.
ii. Second, borderline people have low self-esteem and high uncertainty.
iii. Third, schizotypal individuals are eccentric and disorganized.
iv. Fourth, obsessive compulsive people are perfectionists and can be stubborn,
yet they attend to details, carry a strong work ethic, and may be motivated by
achievement.
v. Fifth, avoidant individuals feel inadequate and hate criticism.
II. Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
A. Core self-evaluation (self-perspective)
a. People who have a positive core self-evaluation see themselves as effective,
capable, and in control.
b. People who have a negative core self-evaluation tend to dislike themselves.
2. Self-monitoring
a. This refers to an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to external,
situational factors.
b. Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability. They are
highly sensitive to external cues, can behave differently in different situations, and
are capable of presenting striking contradictions between their public persona and
their private self.
3. Proactive personality
a. Actively taking the initiative to improve their current circumstances while others
sit by passively.
b. Proactives identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere.
III. Personality and Situations
A. Increasingly, we are learning that the effect of particular traits on organizational behavior
depends on the situation. Two theoretical frameworks help explain how this works.
1. Situation strength theory
a. Situation strength theory proposes that the way personality translates into
behavior depends on the strength of the situation.
i. By situation strength, we mean the degree to which norms, cues, or standards
dictate appropriate behavior.
2. Research suggests that personality traits better predict behavior in weak situations
than in strong ones.
3. Researchers have analyzed situation strength in organizations in terms of four
elements:
a. Clarity, or the degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are
available and clear.
b. Consistency, or the extent to which cues regarding work duties and
responsibilities are compatible with one another.
c. Constraints, or the extent to which individuals’ freedom to decide or act is limited
by forces outside their control.
d. Consequences, or the degree to which decisions or actions have important
implications for the organization or its members, clients, supplies, and so on.
4. Some researchers have speculated that organizations are, by definition, strong
situations because they impose rules, norms, and standards that govern behavior.
These constraints are usually appropriate.
5. Trait Activation Theory (TAT)
a. TAT predicts that some situations, events, or interventions “activate” a trait more
than others.
b. Exhibit 5-3 shows jobs in which certain Big Five traits are more relevant.
IV. Values
A. Introduction
1. Values represent basic convictions.
2. The content attribute says a mode of conduct or end-state of existence is important.
The intensity attribute specifies how important it is.
3. They have both content and intensity attributes.
4. An individual’s set of values ranked in terms of intensity is considered the person’s
value system.
5. Values have the tendency to be stable.
B. The Importance and Organization of Values
1. Values lay the foundation for the understanding of attitudes and motivation.
2. We enter an organization with preconceived notions of what “ought” and “ought not”
be.
a. These notions are not value-free; on the contrary, they contain our interpretations
of right and wrong and our preference for certain behaviors or outcomes over
others.
3. Values influence attitudes and behavior.
C. Terminal Versus Instrumental Values
1. How can we organize values?
2. Milton Rokeach separates them into:
a. Terminal Values—refer to desirable end states.
b. Instrumental Values—refer to preferable modes of behavior.
D. Generational Values
1. Contemporary work cohorts
i. Exhibit 5-4 segments employees by the era during which they entered the
workforce.
ii. Because most people start work between the ages of 18 and 23, the eras also
correlate closely with employee age.
(a) Boomers (Baby Boomers)—entered the workforce during the 1960s
through the mid-1980s.
(b) Xers—entered the workforce beginning in the mid-1980s.
(c) The most recent entrants to the workforce are the Millennials.
2. Though it is fascinating to think about generational values, remember these
classifications lack solid research support.
3. Generational classifications may help us understand our own and other generations
better, but we must also appreciate their limits.
V. Linking an Individual’s Personality and Values to the Workplace
A. The Person-Job Fit
1. This concern is best articulated in John Holland’s personality-job fit theory.
2. Holland presents six personality types and proposes that satisfaction and the
propensity to leave a job depends on the degree to which individuals successfully
match their personalities to an occupational environment.
3. The six personality types are: realistic, investigative, social, conventional, enterprising,
and artistic. (Exhibit 5-5)
a. The Vocational Preference Inventory questionnaire contains 160 occupational
titles. Respondents indicate which of these occupations they like or dislike; their
answers are used to form personality profiles. (Exhibit 5-6)
i. The key point of this model is that people in jobs congruent with their
personality should be more satisfied and less likely to voluntarily resign than
people in incongruent jobs.
B. The Person-Organization Fit
1. The person-organization fit essentially argues that people are attracted to and
selected by organizations that match their values, and they leave organizations that
are not compatible with their personalities.
C. Other Dimensions of Fit
1. Although person-job fit and person-organization fit are considered the most salient
dimensions for workplace outcomes, other avenues of fit are worth examining.
2. These include person-group fit and person-supervisor fit.
a. Person-group fit is important in team settings, where the dynamics of team
interactions significantly affect work outcomes.
b. Person-supervisor fit has become an important area of research since poor fit in
this dimension can lead to lower job satisfaction and reduced performance.
VI. Cultural Values
A. Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Cultures
1. Five value dimensions of national culture:
a. Power distance: the degree to which people in a country accept that power in
institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
b. Individualism versus collectivism: individualism is the degree to which people
in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups;
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.
c. Masculinity versus femininity: masculinity is the degree to which the culture
favors traditional masculine roles such as achievement, power, and control, as
opposed to viewing men and women as equals.
d. Uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which people in a country prefer structured
over unstructured situations.
e. Long-term versus short-term orientation: long-term orientations look to the
future and value thrift and persistence. In a short-term orientation, people value
the here and now; they accept change more readily and don’t see commitments as
impediments to change.
2. Hofstede’s research findings (Exhibit 5-6)
a. Asian countries were more collectivistic than individualistic.
b. United States ranked highest on individualism.
c. Germany and Hong Kong rated high on masculinity.
d. Russia and The Netherlands were low on masculinity.
e. China and Hong Kong had a long-term orientation.
f. France and the United States had short-term orientation.
3. Research suggests Hofstede’s framework may be a valuable way of thinking about
differences among people, but we should be cautious about assuming all people from
a country have the same values.
B. The GLOBE Framework
1. The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) began
updating Hofstede’s research with data from 825 organizations and 62 countries.
2. Variables similar to Hofstede’s.
C. Comparison of Hofstede’s Framework and the GLOBE Framework
1. Which framework is better?
a. We give more emphasis to Hofstede’s dimensions here because they have stood
the test of time and the GLOBE study confirmed them.
VII. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. Personality matters to organizational behavior.
1. It does not explain all behavior, but it sets the stage.
B. Emerging theory and research reveal how personality matters more in some situations
than others.
C. The Big Five has been a particularly important advancement, though the Dark Triad and
other traits matter as well.
1. Every trait has advantages and disadvantages for work behavior and there is no
perfect constellation of traits that is ideal in every situation.
D. Personality can help you understand why people (including yourself!) act, think, and feel
the way we do, and the astute manger can put that understanding to use by taking care to
place employees in situations that best fit their personality.
E. Values often underlie and explain attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions.
1. Consider screening job candidates for high conscientiousness—as well as the other
Big Five traits—depending on the criteria your organization finds most important.
Other aspects, such as core self-evaluation or narcissism, may be relevant in certain
situations.
2. Although the MBTI has faults, you can use it for training and development; to help
employees better understand each other, open up communication in work groups, and
possibly reduce conflicts.
3. Evaluate jobs, work groups, and your organization to determine the optimal
personality fit.
4. Take into account employees’ situational factors when evaluating their observable
personality traits, and lower the situation strength, to better ascertain personality
characteristics.
5. The more you consider people’s different cultures, the better you will be able to
determine their work behavior and create a positive organizational climate that
performs well.
EXPANDED CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Personality
A. What Is Personality?
1. Personality is the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts
with others.
2. Measuring personality
a. The most important reason managers need to know how to measure personality is
that research has shown personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help
managers forecast who is best for a job.
b. The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys,
with which individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors.
c. Research indicates our culture influences the way we rate ourselves. People in
individualistic countries trend toward self-enhancement, while people in
collectivist countries like Taiwan, China, and South Korea trend toward
self-diminishment.
d. Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of personality. Here,
a coworker or another observer does the rating.
e. Though the results of self-reports and observer-ratings surveys are strongly
correlated, research suggests observer-ratings surveys predict job success more
than self-ratings alone.
f. However, each can tell us something unique about an individual’s behavior, so a
combination of self-reports and observer reports predicts performance better than
any one type of information.
3. Personality determinants
a. Introduction
b. An early argument centered on whether personality was the result of heredity or
environment.
c. Personality appears to be a result of both influences.
d. Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.
e. The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s
personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.
f. Early work on personality revolved around attempts to identify and label enduring
characteristics.
g. Popular characteristics include shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal,
and timid. These are personality traits.
h. The more consistent the characteristic, the more frequently it occurs, the more
important it is.
II. Personality Framework
A. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
1. One of the most widely used personality frameworks is the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI).
2. It is a 100-question personality test that asks people how they usually feel or act in
particular situations.
3. Individuals are classified as:
a. Extroverted or Introverted (E or I).
b. Sensing or Intuitive (S or N).
c. Thinking or Feeling (T or F).
d. Perceiving or Judging (P or J).