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Chapter 5 Personality and Values Page
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.
personality framework and the Big Five model.
5-4. Describe how personality affects job search and unemployment.
5-5. Describe how the situation affects whether personality predicts behavior.
5-6. Contrast terminal and instrumental values.
5-7. Describe the differences between person-job fit and person-organization fit.
5-8. 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?
MyLab Management
oPersonal Inventory Assessments: Core Five Personality Dimensions
oWatch It!: Honest Tea Ethics—Company Mission and Values
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: From Personality to Values to Political Ideology in Hiring
Text Cases
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Case Incident 1: On the Costs of Being Nice
Case Incident 2: The Clash of the Traits
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
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. An understanding of personality can also help you
understand what strengths you may have (and should strive for) when searching for a job.
Values often underlie and explain attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions. Values tend to vary
internationally along dimensions that can predict organizational outcomes; however, an
individual may or may not hold values that are consistent with the values of the national culture.
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.
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Evaluate jobs, work groups, and your organization to determine the optimal personality
fit.
Consider situational factors when evaluating observable personality traits, and lower the
situation strength to better ascertain personality characteristics more closely.
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 Beth Comstock, vice chair (business innovations) at GE. As you can see
from our chapter-opening story, personality is indeed a strong factor for many life and work outcomes. Personality
plays a major role in success in the workplace, although the effects are not always direct; sometimes they are
nuanced. 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?
person’s whole psychological system.
2. Defining personality
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.
collectivist countries like Taiwan, China, and South Korea trend toward
self-diminishment.
than self-ratings alone.
f. However, each can tell us something unique about an individual’s behavior, so a
any one type of information.
4. Personality determinants
a. Introduction
or environment.
ii. Personality appears to be a result of both influences.
b. Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.
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chromosomes.
ii. Enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior include shy,
aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal, and timid. These are
personality traits.
II. Personality Frameworks
A. 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:
natural head for business or mechanics.
4. MBTI is widely used in practice. Some organizations using it include Apple
B. 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:
disagreeable, and antagonistic.
c. Conscientiousness. A measure of reliability. A high conscientious person is
negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
e. Openness to experience. The range of interests and fascination with novelty.
familiar.
2. How do the Big Five traits predict behavior at work?
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performance.
3. Conscientiousness at Work
a. Employees who score higher, for example, in conscientiousness develop higher
levels of job knowledge.
(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.
success.
c. Although conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance, there are
other traits that are related to aspects of performance in some situations.
4. Emotional Stability at Work
a. Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life
satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels.
5. Extraversion at Work
interaction.
6. Openness at Work
ambiguity.
7. Agreeableness at Work
a. 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.
b. The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model appear in almost all
cross-cultural studies.
i. These studies have included a wide variety of diverse cultures such as China,
Israel, Germany, Japan, Spain, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, and the United
States.
ii. 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.
C. 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
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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.
III. Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
A. Core self-evaluation (self-perspective)
and in control.
2. People who have a negative core self-evaluation tend to dislike themselves.
B. Self-monitoring
1. Self-monitoring refers to an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behavior to
external, situational factors.
self.
C. Proactive personality
1. Actively taking the initiative to improve their current circumstances while others sit
by passively.
2. Proactives identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere.
IV. Personality, Job Search, and Unemployment
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time spent unemployed.
1. It appears that extraversion, conscientiousness, and positive affectivity tend to have a
substantial effect on becoming employed and coping with unemployment (with
negative affectivity and hostility having equivalent negative effects).
B. Personality and Situations
works.
2. 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.
than in strong ones.
4. 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.
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.
These constraints are usually appropriate.
6. Trait Activation Theory (TAT)
a. Trait activation theory (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.
V. Values
A. Introduction
1. Values represent basic convictions.
value system.
5. Values have the tendency to be stable.
B. The Importance and Organization of Values
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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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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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.
VII. Cultural Values
A. Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Cultures
1. Five value dimensions of national culture:
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.
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)
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
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.
VIII. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. Personality matters to organizational behavior.
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Chapter 5 Personality and Values Page
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.
values of the national culture.
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.
possibly reduce conflicts.
3. Evaluate jobs, work groups, and your organization to determine the optimal
personality fit.
4. Consider situational factors when evaluating observable personality traits, and lower
the situation strength, to better ascertain personality characteristics.
performs well.
150
