Organizational Behavior

Session 13

Personality

What is personality? Personality refers to a person’s whole

psychological system rather than looking at parts of the person.

Personality traits are relatively stable characteristics that are exhibited in a large number of situations.

However, there are several human factors that are not personality traits.

Main influential factors Heredity

Environment

Big five

Big five and organizational behavior

Conscientiousness has been an important predictor of job knowledge and job performance for variety of occupations.

Among personality dimensions, conscientiousness has been the only predictor of organizational citizenship behavior.

Extroversion has been the predictor of job performance for occupations which need high level of social interaction such as sales positions.

Type A and Type B personality

Type A’s: always walking and eating rapidly; feel impatient, strive to think or do things at once; cannot cope with leisure time; obsessed with measuring their successes, quantity and speed.

Type B’s: patient; feel no need to discuss their successes; can relax without guilt.

Attribution theory (Weiner)

The main assumption of this theory is that when we observe a behavior, we attempt to identify its causes, which is called attribution.

Dimension of attribution

1. Locus of control: Internal (e.g., effort, ability) or external (chance, luck, destiny, powerful people);

2. Stability: whether causes change over time or not;

3. Controllability: contrasts causes one can control, such as skill/efficacy, from causes one cannot control, such as aptitude, mood, others' actions, and luck.

Attribution theory (continued) Research has shown that people who tend to

use internal attribution are more likely to put effort persistently into their activities and to be responsible for their actions than people with external attribution.

When failure is attributed to controllable events, additional effort can be expected in the future. In contrast, when failure is attributed to uncontrollable events, future effort will diminish.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"

Attribution errors

Self-serving bias:A tendency to attribute our own successes

to internal factors and our failure to external factors

Fundamental attribution error:A tendency to underestimate the external

factors and overestimate internal factors when making judgment about other people

Personality-role fit

Personality Organizational roles

Organizational behavior

Example Please have a look at the following

link and identify personality traits that have been identified for some specific jobs.

www.resourceassociates.com

Extra activities Please assess your personality using

the scales provided in the self-assessment library CD.

Think about different jobs that might be consistent with your personality.

Reading Please read page 98 to 124 of the

text book.

Assignment 4 Interview with 4 individuals from three

different organizations and identify factors that impact their work motivation.

Submit a report in minimum 2000 words including your interview questions, demographic variables of interviewees, the factors, explanations, supporting quotes, and theories that possibly explain their work motivation.