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INTRODUCTION
Personality
When psychologists talk of personality, they mean a dynamic concept describing the
growth and development of a person's whole psychological system. Rather than looking
at parts of the person, personality looks at some aggregate whole that is greater than
the sum of the parts. Almost everyday we describe and assess the personalities of the
people around us. Whether we realize it or not, these daily musings on how and why
people behave as they do are similar to what personality psychologists do.
Components of Personality
While there are many different theories of personality, the first step is to understand
exactly what is meant by the term personality. A brief definition would be that
personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors
that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the
individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.
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than just behavior. It can also be seen in out thoughts, feelings, close relationships and
other social interactions.
Theories of Personality
There are a number of different theories about how personality develops. Different
schools of thought in psychology influence many of these theories. Some of these major
perspectives on personality include:
• Type theories are the early perspectives on personality. These theories suggested
that there are a limited number of "personality types" which are related to biological
influences.
• Trait theories viewed personality as the result of internal characteristics that are
genetically based.
• Psychodynamic theories of personality are heavily influenced by the work of
Sigmund Freud, and emphasize the influence of the unconscious on personality.
Psychodynamic theories include Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual stage theory and
Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development.
• Behavioral theories suggest that personality is a result of interaction between the
individual and the environment. Behavioral theorists study observable and
measurable behaviors, rejecting theories that take internal thoughts and feelings into
account. Behavioral theorists include B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson.
• Humanist theories emphasize the importance of free will and individual
experience in the development of personality. Humanist theorists include Carl
Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
Personality Determinants
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An adult's personality is now generally considered to be made up of both hereditary and
environmental factors, moderated by situational conditions.
Heredity
Physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and
reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are generally
considered to be either completely or substantially influenced by who your parents
were, that is, by their biological, physiological, and inherent psychological makeup. The
heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual's personality is
the molecular structure of the genes,
located in the chromosomes. Recent studies of young children lend strong support to the
power of heredity. Evidence demonstrates that traits such as shyness, fear, and distress
are most likely caused by inherited genetic characteristics. This finding suggests that
some personality traits may be built into the same genetic code that affects factors such
as height and hair color. Further support for the importance of heredity can be found in
studies of individual job satisfaction, which we discussed in the previous chapter.
Individual job satisfaction is found to be remarkably stable over time. This result is
consistent with what you would expect if satisfaction is determined by something
inherent in the person rather than by external environmental factors.
Environment
Among the factors that exert pressures on our personality formation are the culture in
which we are raised, our early conditioning, the norms among our family, friends, and
social groups, and other influences that we experience. The environment to which we
are exposed plays a substantial role in shaping our personalities.
Situation
An individual's personality, although generally stable and consistent, does change in
different situations. The varying demands of different situations call forth different
aspects of one's personality.
Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB
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Some people believe that they are masters of their own fate. Other people see
themselves as pawns of fate, believing that what happens to them in their lives is due to
luck or chance. The first type, those who believe that they control their destinies, have
been labeled internals, whereas the latter, who see their lives as being controlled by
outside forces, have been called externals. A person's perception of the source of his or
her fate is termed locus of control. A large amount of research comparing internals with
externals has consistently shown that individuals who have high scores in externality
are less satisfied with their jobs, have higher absenteeism rates, are more alienated from
the work setting, and are less involved on their jobs than are internals. Internals search
more actively for information before making a decision, are more motivated to achieve,
and make a greater attempt to control their environment. Externals, however, are more
compliant and willing to follow directions. Therefore, internals do well on sophisticated
tasks – which include most managerial and professional jobs – that require complex
information processing and learning. In addition, internals are more suited to jobs that
require initiative and independence of action.
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observers are spouses or peers (Funder & West, 1993; John & Robbins, 1993; Kenny,
1994; McCrae & Costa, 1987). Somewhat conflicting results, however, were obtained
by Soldz, Budman, Demby, and Merry (1996) with a clinical population of personality-
disordered patients in group psychotherapy.1 In general, the evidence indicates that, at
least for nonclinical populations, the Big Five traits have a replicable factor analytic
structure and exhibit considerable consensual validity. Once a broad onsensus on the
structure of the trait domain developed, work on traits moved on to examining stability
and change in the traits over time and to explicating the meaning of these traits for
individual functioning over the life course. Among the questions asked are: To what
degree do
these traits change over time? Are any apparent changes noted meaningful or are they
merely random noise? What are the relationships between these traits and other aspects
of individual functioning over the life course? Do the relationships between traits and
life course functioning change over time? The present study seeks to illuminate these
questions using data from a cohort
of men who have been followed from 1942 to 1995.
Conflict
It is a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively
affected, or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about.
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It is that point in an ongoing activity when an interaction “crosses over” to become an
interparty conflict. It encompasses a wide range of conflicts that people experience in
organizations like-
•Incompatibility of goals
Types of Conflict
Task Conflict
Conflicts over content and goals of the work.
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Relationship Conflict
Conflict based on interpersonal relationships.
Process Conflict
Conflict over how work gets done
• Communication
–Semantic difficulties, misunderstandings, and “noise”
• Structure
–Size and specialization of jobs
–Jurisdictional clarity/ambiguity
–Member/goal incompatibility
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–Leadership styles (close or participative)
–Dependence/interdependence of groups
• Personal Variables
–Differing individual value systems
–Personality types
Perceived Conflict
Felt Conflict
Intentions
Cooperativeness:
•Attempting to satisfy the other party’s concerns.
Assertiveness:
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Dimensions of Conflict-Handling Intentions
Competing
A desire to satisfy one’s interests, regardless of the impact on the other party to the
conflict.
Collaborating
A situation in which the parties to a conflict each desire to satisfy fully the concerns of
all parties.
Avoiding
The desire to withdraw from or suppress a conflict.
Accommodating
The willingness of one party in a conflict to place the opponent’s interests above his or
her own.
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Compromising
Conflict Management
The use of resolution and stimulation techniques to achieve the desired level of conflict.
Conflict in the workplace is unavoidable. Destructive conflict -long term damage not
just to personal relationships at work, but also to your business. Leads to mistrust,
tension and can be a major block to progress.
On the other hand, constructive conflict is a very healthy process to have in a business.
It makes people ask "Why?" and it leads to fresh thinking. It doesn’t matter if you work
with machines or not, in an average workplace buttons are going to get pushed. These
are human buttons, of course, with names like Anger, Hurt and Fear. Once tripped any
one of them can lead to conflict. One way to stay out of the fray is knowing where your
own buttons are and what they will do.
The fifferent conflict management techniques are problem solving, superordinate goals,
expansion of resources, avoidance, smoothing, compromise, authoritative command,
altering the human variable, altering the structural variables, communication, bringing
in outsiders, restructuring the organization and appointing a devil’s advocate.
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Stage V: Outcomes
Functional outcomes from conflict are increased group performance, improved quality
of decisions, stimulation of creativity and innovation, encouragement of interest and
curiosity, provision of a medium for problem-solving and creation of an environment
for self-evaluation and change.
Creating functional conflict includes rewarding dissent and punish conflict avoiders.
Dysfunctional outcomes from conflict are development of discontent, reduced group
effectiveness, retarded communication, reduced group cohesiveness and infighting
among group members overcomes group goals.
Techrune [1970] was the first who mentioned about the personality as a prediction
factor of conflict management style of conflict. Previous researcher could not manage
with way of defining as well as measuring dimension of personality and conflict. Big
Five factor model became a new age in measuring personality because of its five
dimensions combining individual’s disposition in order to create complex and overall
personality structure [McCrae and Costa, 1987]. The most suitable for this study are
research conducted by David Antonioni focused on relationship between The Big Five
personality factors and conflict management styles based on ROCI II [Antonioni, 1998].
The Big Five factors are neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and
agreeableness.
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extraversion is assertiveness which is necessary conditions to gain collaborating style of
conflict. Agreeableness also might be predictable for this style because of components
such as rectilinear and being helpful [Zawadzki with team, 1998; Van de Vliert and
Euwema, 1994].
Conscientiousness might be significant because of its traits such as strong will and high
motivation to act in order to find the most suitable solution for both sides of conflict.
The most important factor might be openness. The collaborating style assumed that
individuals communicate with each other and are open for vary solutions and work
together in order to find their real needs. Individual with high openness are inventive,
curious, have vivid imagination, exploring new ideas and independent in their opinion
[Zawadzki and team, 1998]. The tires might be determining factors for collaborating
style.
Low neuroticism might be also meaningful because of calmness and ability to face the
stressful situation helps to find better solutions.
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1994]. Strong will and high motivation to reach the goal might provide to dominating
because of possibility of lack concentration on the other side in conflict situation.
Low score in openness scale also can be predictive to domination. Individuals with
inflexible, conservative attitude can act as despot to fight for his/her only rightful
position. High score on neuroticism might provide to dominating because of such traits
as lack of calm and inability to face the stress.
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compromising style. Neuroticism also might influence compromising because of the
tensions, anxiety and negative emotions which must be reduced by compromising style.
Antonioni [1998] in his article assumed that conscientiousness because of laziness and
unwillingness to explore others needs might be predictor of compromise. This
presupposition is based only on one trait of conscientiousness and others description
traits do not suit to this assumption. So we do not include this trait as predictor of
compromising.
Big Five Model was able to identify three personality prototypes. It was possible
irrespective of country, age of the participants and Big Five diagnosis. Resilient
prototype was characterized by low Neuroticism, high Extraversion, Agreeableness and
Conscientiousness. Under controlled prototype was described by low Agreeableness
and Conscientiousness while Over controlled prototype was labeled as high
Neuroticism and Introversion. Openness and culture was low importance.
Interpersonal conflict occurs when individual have different opposite goals and prevent
each other from achieving .In situation of conflict individual tend to employ one
consistent way of reaction. Research focused on conflict generated several different
models and schemas o resolving conflict .In one model five types of styles were
identified: Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding and Accommodating.
The main problem stated in this research study is whether personality – the Big Five
factors predict styles of handling interpersonal conflict. Big Five factor model became a
new age in measuring personality because of its five dimensions combining individual’s
disposition in order to create complex and overall personality structure. The most
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suitable for this study are research conducted by David Antonioni focused on
relationship between The Big Five personality factors and conflict management styles.
Literature Review
2. The study entitled “Is there a relationship between personality type and preferred
conflict-handling styles?” undertaken by Bobbie Sue Whitworth, PhD, MSN, RNC
was conducted to determine the relationship between different personality factors of
female registered nurses and their method of dealing with conflict. Ninety-seven
female registered nurses working in three health care facilities in south Mississippi
participated in this quantitative study. The instruments used were the Myers Briggs
Type Indicator and the Thomas Kilmann Mode Instrument, which are forced choice
questionnaires resulting in numerical data. There was not a statistically significant
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correlation between female registered nurses’ personality factors and methods of
dealing with conflict. The literature reveals that interpersonal conflict among nurses
is a significant issue for the nursing profession. However, according to this study,
there is no relationship between registered nurses’ personality factors and methods
used to deal with conflict. The United States is faced with a serious nursing shortage,
in part due to job dissatisfaction related to conflict in the workplace. Understanding
conflict management styles can increase registered nurses’ positive conflict outcomes
and lead to improved relationships, increased job satisfaction, and increased retention
of registered nurses.
3. This study entitled” Relationship between the Big Five Personality Factors and
Conflict Management Styles” undertaken by David Antonioni, (University of
Wisconsin, Madison, was conducted to examine the relationship between the Big
Five personality factors and five styles of handling interpersonal conflict. The Big
Five factors are extroversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and
neuroticism, and the five conflict styles are integrating, obliging, dominating,
avoiding, and compromising. A total of 351 students completed questionnaires. As a
check on generalizing the results beyond students, 110 managers also completed the
same surveys. The main results indicate that extroversion, conscientiousness,
openness, and agreeableness have a positive relationship with integrating style.
Extroversion has a positive relationship with dominating, while agreeableness and
neuroticism have negative relationships with dominating. Extroversion, openness,
and conscientiousness have a negative relationship with avoiding, while
agreeableness and neuroticism have a positive relationship with avoiding.
Implications of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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This study is helpful in finding out the correlation between the personality type and
conflict management style of employees at Tulip Telecom Ltd. The study makes use of
the Big Five model to identify personality types and Rahim’s model to identify conflict
management styles. It also strives to suggest to employees better ways to handle
conflicts in accordance with their personality types. This study will help both
management and employees to find out what kind of relationships exist in the
organization and what can be done for it’s betterment.
The study strives to look into the personality types and conflict management styles of
employees at Tulip Telecom Ltd.
Methodology
The study conducted is of descriptive nature. The entire employees in the organization
constitute the population. A sample of 30 employees is drawn from the population using
systematic sampling technique. Primary data was collected by survey method through
two questionnaires, one for assessing the personality type and one for assessing the
conflict management style, which was distributed to the employees and secondary data,
was collected from company records, company website, the internet, books, previous
dissertations etc. Analysis of data is done by using SPSS software, charts, bar-diagrams
and tables.
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