Global Issues: How Others See Americans
Summary: This chapter’s Global Issues feature is from a Newsweek survey reporting the characteristics
foreigners most and least often associate with them. It may give you some insight into how you might be
perceived differently in different parts of the world.
IV. Intelligence
There are many types of intelligence, or mental abilities, including general mental ability,
information processing capacity, verbal ability, and emotional intelligence.
A. General Mental Ability
General mental ability is the capacity to rapidly and fluidly acquire, process, and apply
information.
It involves reasoning, remembering, understanding, and problem solving. It is associated with
the increased ability to acquire, process, and synthesize information and has been defined
simply as the ability to learn.
The strong association between measures of general mental ability and performance in a wide
variety of task domains is one of the most consistent findings in the field of organizational
behavior.
Information processing capacity involves the manner in which individuals
process and organize information.
Information processing capacity also helps explain differences between experts and novices on
task learning and performance, as experts process and organize information more efficiently
and accurately than novices. General mental ability influences information processing capacity.
Age also explains differences in information processing capacity.
Mental ability tests typically use computerized or paper-and-pencil test formats to assess
general mental abilities, including verbal or mathematical reasoning, logic, and perceptual
abilities.
Despite being easy to use and one of the most valid selection methods for all jobs, mental
ability tests produce racial differences that are three to five times larger than other methods that
are also valid predictors of job performance such as structured interviews.
Because hiring discrimination can be legally problematic when using mental ability tests, it is
best to evaluate the effect of mental ability tests on protected groups before using them on job
candidates.
Research has supported the idea that mental ability is most important in complex jobs, when
individuals are new to the job, and when there are changes in the workplace that require
workers to learn new ways of performing their jobs.
B. Multiple Intelligences
Increasingly, researchers and scholars are realizing that there is more than one way to be smart.
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Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences suggests that there are a number of distinct forms of
intelligence that each individual possesses in varying degrees:
1. Linguistic: words and language
2. Logical-mathematical: logic and numbers
3. Musical: music, rhythm, and sound
4. Bodily-kinesthetic: body movement and control
5. Spatial-visual: images and space
6. Interpersonal: other people’s feelings
7. Intrapersonal: self-awareness
The different intelligences represent not only different content domains but also learning
preferences. The theory suggests that assessment of abilities should measure all forms of
intelligence, not just linguistic and logical-mathematical, as is commonly done.
According to this theory, learning and teaching should focus on the particular intelligences of
each person.
The theory also emphasizes the cultural context of multiple intelligences.
Knowing your strongest areas of intelligence can guide you to the most appropriate job and
learning environments to enable you to achieve your potential.
As a manager, it is possible to develop the same skills in different ways for different
subordinates. Using a person’s preferred learning style helps to make learning easy and
enjoyable.
C. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is an interpersonal capability that includes the ability to perceive
and express emotions, to understand and use them, and to manage emotions in oneself and
other people.
Expert Daniel Goleman describes five dimensions of EI that include three personal
competencies (self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation) and two social competencies
(empathy and social skills).
Emotional intelligence involves using emotional regulatory processes to control anxiety and
other negative emotional reactions and to generate positive emotional reactions.
The five dimensions comprising emotional intelligence are:
1. Self-awareness: being aware of what you are feeling
2. Self-motivation: persisting in the face of obstacles, setbacks, and failures
3. Self-management: managing your own emotions and impulses
4. Empathy: sensing how others are feeling
5. Social skills: effectively handling the emotions of others
People differ in the degree to which they are able to recognize the emotional meaning of others’
facial expressions, although seven universal emotions are expressed in the face in exactly the
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same way regardless of race, culture, ethnicity, age, gender, or religion. These emotions are
joy, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, contempt, and disgust.
There is some evidence that components of EI are malleable skills that can be developed,
including facial expression recognition.
The ability to understand what others think and feel, knowing how to appropriately persuade
and motivate them, and knowing how to resolve conflicts and forge cooperation are some of the
most important skills of successful managers.
There is also controversy associated with the concepts of EI.
Some have argued that its overly inclusive, lacks specificity, and it is not clear if it is simply a
learned skill or an innate capability.
Several researchers have also argued that EI is simply a surrogate for general intelligence and
well-established personality traits.
However, a number of studies have supported the usefulness of EI.
EI has been found to be related to, and yet distinct from, personality dimensions; and various
measures of EI provided incremental predictive power regarding life satisfaction and job
performance, even after controlling for Big Five personality dimensions.
CASE STUDY: Emotional Intelligence at FedEx
Summary: Global shipping company FedEx has a “people first philosophy and believes that for the
company to deliver world class customer service its managers must also have an attitude of service in
managing their associates. FedEx recognizes that leadership has grown more complex, and wants to
develop leadership capabilities in its managers to manage its changing workforce. FedEx decided to
increase its focus on emotional intelligence in its leadership development training. The emotional
intelligence training and coaching program focused on showing managers how to manage themselves first
and take charge of their own emotions and behaviors so that they can be effective influencers and role
models.
1. Do you think that emotional intelligence would be important for a manager at FedEx to have?
Explain your answer.
The definition for emotional intelligence (EI) in the text is an interpersonal capability that includes
the ability to perceive and express emotions, to understand and use them, and to manage emotions in
2. How does FedEx develop its new leaders’ emotional intelligence?
FedEx keeps a running measurement of leadership performance with an annual survey where all
employees provide feedback about their managers. The survey’s themes include fairness, respect,
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3. What else do you think that FedEx can do to enhance its managers’ emotional intelligence?
The majority of leaders receiving the leadership development training showed large improvements in
relationships, influence, and decision making as a result of their improved empathy, emotional
V. Learning Styles
Learning style refers to individual differences and preferences in how we process information when
problem solving, learning, or engaging in similar activities.
There are numerous typologies, measures, and models that capture these differences and
preferences
A. Sensory Modalities
One approach addresses our preference for sensory modality. A sensory modality is a system
that interacts with the environment through one of the basic senses.
The most important sensory modalities are:
Visual: learning by seeing
Auditory: learning by hearing
Tactile: learning by touching
Kinesthetic: learning by doing
According to researchers, about 20 to 30 percent of American students are auditory; about 40
percent are visual; and the remaining 30 to 40 percent are either tactile/kinesthetic,
visual/tactile, or some combinations of the above major senses.
B. Learning Style Inventory
A second approach to understanding learning styles, the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, is one
of the more dominant approaches to categorizing cognitive styles.
Kolb suggests that there are four basic learning styles:
1. Convergers: depend primarily on active experimentation and abstract conceptualization to
learn. People with this style are superior in technical tasks and problems and inferior in
interpersonal learning settings.
2. Divergers: depend primarily on concrete experience and reflective observation. People
with this style tend to organize concrete situations from different perspectives and structure
their relationships into a meaningful whole. They are superior in generating alternative
hypotheses and ideas, and tend to be imaginative and people or feeling-oriented.
3. Assimilators: depend on abstract conceptualization and reflective observation. These
individuals tend to be more concerned about abstract concepts and ideas than about people.
They also tend to focus on the logical soundness and preciseness of ideas, rather than the
ideas’ practical values; they tend to work in research and planning units.
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4. Accommodators: rely mainly on active experimentation and concrete experience, and
focus on risk taking, opportunity seeking, and action. Accommodators tend to deal with
people easily and specialize in action-oriented jobs, such as marketing and sales.
There are many differences in how styles are conceptualized, and there have been numerous
criticisms of Kolb’s measures and the underlying theory.
These measures are subject to a variety of statistical and inferential problems, and many show
low reliability.
Most of the research has also focused on children—less work has focused on how the styles
influence adult learning.
Despite these limitations, evidence suggests that cognitive and learning styles may be important
for understanding human behavior and performance in a variety of contexts.
C. Learning Style Orientations
Finally, Annette Towler and Robert Dipboye102 developed a learning style orientation measure
to address some of the limitations of the Kolb inventory and identify key styles and preferences
for learning.
They identified five key factors:
1. Discovery learning: an inclination for exploration during learning. Discovery learners
prefer subjective assessments, interactional activities, informational methods, and active-
reflective activities.
2. Experiential learning: a desire for hands-on approaches to instruction. Experiential
learning is positively related to a preference for action activities.
3. Observational learning: a preference for external stimuli such as demonstrations and
diagrams to help facilitate learning. Observational learning is positively related to
preference for informational methods and active-reflective methods.
4. Structured learning: a preference for processing strategies such as taking notes, writing
down task steps, and so forth. Structured learning is related to preferences for subjective
assessments.
5. Group learning: a preference to work with others while learning. Group learning is related
to preferences for action and interactional learning.
Summary and Application
Understanding individuals in organizations is important for all managers. A basic framework for
facilitating this understanding is the psychological contract—people’s expectations regarding what they
will contribute to the organization and what they will get in return. Organizations strive to achieve an
optimal person-job fit, but this process is complicated by the existence of individual differences.
Personalities are the relatively stable sets of psychological and behavioral attributes that distinguish one
person from another. The Big Five personality traits are agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism,
extraversion, and openness. Myers-Briggs dimensions and emotional intelligence also offer insights into
personalities in organizations. Other important traits are locus of control, self-efficacy, self-esteem,
authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, tolerance for risk and ambiguity, Type A and Type B traits, and
tendencies to bully. The role of the situation is also important. Learning styles, or individual differences
and preferences in how we process information when problem solving, learning, or engaging in similar
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activities, are also important individual differences and preferences, and there are numerous typologies,
measures, and models that capture them.
Everyone is different. We each have different personalities, demographics, and intelligences. By
understanding the characteristics of your coworkers, managers, and subordinates, you will be best able to
choose the OB tool or management style that will be most effective. Remember, flexibility is the key to
effective management. We next continue our discussion of other important individual differences that
affect organizational behavior in Chapter 4. Among the major topics we will cover in that chapter are
attitudes, values, emotions, perception, and stress.