UNIVERSITY OF LUZON

Perez Blvd., Dagupan City

College of Accountancy
Bautista, Jamille BSA2–2C(MWF/10:00-11:00)
Bautista, Shannel

Chapter 3: Individual Characteristics

Individual Differences are personal attributes that vary from one person to another. These may
be Physical, emotional or psychological. These individual differences make a person unique from
the rest. The basic categories of individual differences include personality, intelligences, learning
styles, attitudes, values and emotions, perception, and stress.

Concept of Fit

Being good in doing a job is not enough for an individual to last in his career, it is a must that one
must learn to adapt and fit into the organization and workgroup as well.

There are four (4) dimensions of fit:

• Person-Job Fit - the fit between the person’s abilities and the demands of the job,
between a person’s desires and motivations and the attributes and rewards of a job. E.g.
an accountancy graduate applying for the position of an auditor in a company

• Person-Group Fit - the extent to which an individual fit with the workgroup’s and
supervisor’s work styles, skills, and goals. E.g. a Graphic artist placed in a group who makes
illustrations or images for comic books

• Person-Organization Fit- the fit between an individual’s values, beliefs and personality
and the values, norms, and culture of the organization. E.g. an accountant who sees
nothing wrong with minimal adjustments to cater to customer’s desires which contradicts
his organization’s belief that what have been correctly calculated should stay the way it
is

• Person-Vocation Fit- fit between the person’s interest, abilities, values and personality
and a profession. E.g. a person who loves art has a rich fit with architecture

Realistic Job Previews (RJP’s) involve the presentation of both positive and potentially negative
information to job candidates. To practice transparency and trust between the worker and the
organization, an organization presents a job opportunity not only highlighting the positive side,
but also featuring the possible negative side. Companies want to show to applicants what is really
in store for them in the job that they are trying to win. RJP’s helps the company ensure the
competence of an applicant because, despite of knowing the downside of what job he is applying
for, he continues to pursue the job. It just means that he really knows what he is doing and that
he can still work well even with the negative sides present.

Personality and Individual Behavior

Personality- the relatively stable set of psychological attributes that distinguish one from
another. It has been a debate among psychologists whether one’s personality was inherited from
his parents, which is nature, or molded by the society he belongs into, which is nurture. But in
reality, our personalities are both affected by the nature and nurture factors.

Big Five Personality Traits is a set of five fundamental traits that are especially relevant to
organizations.

1. Agreeableness- ability to get along well with others. Understanding, cooperativeness,

gentleness and the like is needed to maintain a harmonious workplace – to be able to
have a pleasant relationship with your co-workers.
2. Conscientiousness- refers to an individual being dependable and organized. This trait
measures how much the organization or workgroup can depend on its member.
3. Neuroticism- characterized by a person’s tendency to experience unpleasant emotions
such as anger, anxiety, depression, and feelings of vulnerability. This trait, in other words,
measures how much one can take until he reaches his straining point.
4. Extroversion- the quality of being comfortable with relationships. This trait reflects
whether a person is an introvert, someone who loves personal space, or an extrovert,
someone who loves interaction between his own space with that of others. Its opposite
is given a name which is introversion, the tendency to be less comfortable in relationships
and social situations.
5. Openness- the capacity to entertain new ideas, and to change as a result of new
information. This trait reflects how rigid a person is when it comes to his beliefs and range
of interests.

The Myers-Briggs Framework is a popular framework that some people use to characterize
personality. It was known through a widely-used questionnaire known as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI). It is based on Carl Jung’s work on psychological types. Carl Jung was a
contemporary of Sigmund Freud and a leading exponent of Gestalt Personality Theory. MBTI was
first developed by Isabel Briggs-Myers and her mother, Katherine Cook Briggs to help people
understand themselves and other people so they could match each other
The MBTI uses four (4) scales with opposite poles to assess four (4) sets of preferences.

1. Extroversion (E) / Introversion (I)

2. Sensing (S) / Intuition (I)
3. Thinking (T) / Feeling (F)
4. Judging (J) / Perceiving (p)

Other Important Personality Traits

Locus of Control is the extent to which one believes one’s circumstances are a function of either
one’s own actions or of external factors beyond one’s control. A person may have internal locus
of control or external locus of control.

 Internal- believes that individuals are in control of their lives

 External- believes that events in one’s life depends on fate, luck, etc.

Self-efficacy is a person’s confidence in his ability to organize and execute the courses of action
needed to accomplish the task. It is possible that someone has high self-esteem but low self-
efficacy. For example, applicant A believes that he is competent enough and that he has a
generally pleasant personality to land a job but during the interview he himself admitted that
when he is under so much pressure, the outcome of his work tends to be lesser than what he can
do compared to when is not.

General Self-efficacy reflects a generalized belief that we will be successful at whatever

challenges or tasks we might face.

It is important that you maintain a positive sense of self-efficacy. Doing so would ensure
improvement on your part as you will push yourself to improve more on the things that you
already do well and recalibrate your skills regarding those that you are poor at.

Self-esteem refers to our feelings of self-worth and our liking and disliking of ourselves. Self-
esteem is positively related to job performance because the more you believe that you are of
high value then you will most likely have the strong urge to prove that through doing your job
well.

Authoritarianism is the extent to which a person believes that power and status are appropriate
within hierarchical social systems such as organizations. For example, a supervisor would only
hear out those who are in higher positions than him but would shut out those inferior to him.