Lecture 2: Personality and Values Flashcards
Personality
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others, measurable traits a person exhibits
Personality determinants
- Heredity
- Environment
- Situation
Personality traits
Enduring Characteristics
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the personality types
A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into one of the 16 personality types
- Extroverted vs Introverted
- Sensing vs intuitive
- Thinking vs Feeling
- Judging vs Perceiving
The Big Five Model of personality dimensions
Is the prediction of work and life behaviour
- Openness to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
Major personality traits relevant to OB
- Core self-evaluation
- Machiavellianism
- Narcissism
- Self-monitoring
- Risk-taking
- Type A personality
- Proactive personality
Core self-evaluation
Individual’s degree of liking or disliking themselves, see themselves as effective, capable and in control of their environment
Machiavellianism (Mach)
Degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance and believes that end can justify means
- Convincing and manipulative
Narcissism
A narcissistic person:
- Has a grandiose sense of self-importance
- Requires excessive admiration
- Has a sense pf entitlement
- Is arrogant
- Tends to be rated as less effective
Self-monitoring
A personality trait that measures an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behaviour to external, situational factors
Risk-taking
High risk-taking managers
- Make quicker decisions
- Use less info to make decisions
- Operate in smaller and more entrepreneurial organisations
Low-risk managers
- Are slower to make decisions
- Require more info before making decisions
- Exist in larger organisations wit stable environments
Type A Personality
Individuals who are “aggressively involved in chronic, incessant struggles to achieve more and more in less and less time and, if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of efforts of other things or other persons”
Type B - Opposite of Type A
Proactive personality
Identifies opportunities, show initiative, takes action and persevere until meaningful change occurs
Values
Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personality or socially preferable to an opposite mode of conduct
Types of Values
- Terminal values
- Desirable end states of existence; the goals that a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime - Instrumental values
- The ways/means for achieving one’s terminal values - Value system
- A hierarchy on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity
Personality-job fit theory (Holland) and the 6 personality types
Identifies six personality types and proposes that the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and turnover
- Realistic
- Investigative
- Social
- Convectional
- Enterprising
- Artistic
Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures
- Power distance
- Individualism vs. collectivism
- Masculinity vs. feminity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Long-term vs. short-term orientation
Power distance (Hofstede’s framework)
The extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organisations is distributed unequally
Low distance - relatively equal power between those with status/wealth and those without status/wealth
High distance - extremely unequal power distribution between those with status/wealth and those without status/wealth
Individualism vs. Collectivism (Hofstede’s Framework)
Individual - the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups
Collectivism - a tight social framework in which people expect others in the group of which they are a part to look after them and protect them
Masculinity vs. Femininity (Hofstede’s Framework)
Masculinity - the extent to which the society values work roles of achievement, power and control, and where assertiveness and materialism are also valued
Femininity- The extent to which there is little differentiation between roles for men and women
Uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede’s Framework)
The extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them
High uncertainty avoidance: society does not like ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them
Low uncertainty avoidance: more accepting of ambiguity, less rule-orientated, takes more risks, readily accepts challenges
Long-term orientation vs. short tem
Long term orientation - a national culture attribute that emphasises the future, thrift and persistence
Short-term orientation - a national culture attribute that emphasises the present, and the here and now
What is the GLOBE project?
- Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness
- 3 industry sectors: telecommunication, finance and food processing
- Focus on culture and leadership
What are the 9 dimensions of GLOBE?
- Power Distance
- The degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally - Uncertainty avoidance
- The extent to which a society, to alleviate unpredictability of future events - Humane orientation
- The degree to which a collective encourages and rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring and kind to others - Collectivism I (Institutional Collectivism)
- The degree to which organisational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action - Collectivism II (In-Group Collectivism)
- The degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organisations or families - Assertiveness
- The degree to which individuals are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in their relationships with others - Gender Egalitarianism
- A collective minimises gender inequality - Future Orientation
- The extent of engaging in future-orientated behaviours Eg. Delaying gratification, planning and investing in the future - Performance
- The degree to which a collective encourages and rewards group members for a performance improvement and excellence
