Chapter 3: Values, Attitudes, Emotions, and Culture: The Manager as a Person

Personality Traits - tendencies to feel, think, and act in certain ways – tells about a personality of an
individual. Managers’ personalities influence their behavior and their approach to managing people and
resources.

Big Five Personality Traits

 Extraversion: Tendency to experience positive emotions and moods  feel good about oneself
and the world  sees the good even in troubles  shows friendliness and openness to all
 Negative affectivity: Tendency to experience negative emotions and moods, feel distressed, and
be critical of oneself and others  someone who is pessimistic, ready to fail
 Agreeableness: Tendency to get along with others
 Conscientiousness: Tendency to be careful, scrupulous, and persevering
 Openness to experience: Tendency to be original, have broad interests, be open to a wide range
of stimuli, be daring, and take risks

Other Personality Traits

 Internal Locus of control: Belief that you are responsible for your own fate job outcomes
based on own actions and behavior (Essential trait for managers)
 External locus of control: The tendency to locate responsibility for one’s fate in outside forces
own behavior has little impact on outcomes
 Self esteem: The degree to which people feel good about themselves and their capabilities
o High self esteem: feel competent, deserving and capable
o Low self esteem: poor opinions of themselves and are unsure about their capabilities
 Need for achievement  the level where individual perform challenging tasks well to meet
personal standards for excellence.
 Need for affiliation  The level where individual establishes and maintains good interpersonal
relations so that people like and get along with them.
 Need for power  an individual desires to control or influence others
Personality Assessments
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)  Measures introversion versus extroversion, sensation
versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving.
 DiSC Inventory Profile Behavior style is described in terms of dominance, influence,
steadiness, and conscientiousness (DiSC)
Values: Describe what managers try to achieve through work and how they behave
 Terminal values: A lifelong goal that an individual wants to achieve (creates norms)
 Instrumental values: A conduct that an individual seeks to follow. Eg: honesty, fairness
 Value system: Terminal + Instrumental values (guiding principles)
Attitudes: Capture managers’ thoughts and feelings about their jobs and organizations
 Job Satisfaction: A collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about their current jobs.
If managers satisfied
o Perform Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs)  behavior necessary for
necessary for organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and competitive advantage
o Less likely to quit, reducing management turnover
  Organizational commitment: The collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about
their organization as a whole. If managers satisfied:
o Believe in what their organizations are doing
o Proud of what their organizations stand for
o More likely to go above and beyond the call of duty
o Less likely to quit
Moods and Emotions: Encompass how managers actually feel when they are managing. A mood is a
feeling or state of mind. Positive moods provide excitement, elation, and enthusiasm. Negative moods
lead to fear, distress, and nervousness. Emotions are intense, relatively short-lived feelings and are
linked to whatever caused it.
Emotional Intelligence  ability to understand and manage one’s own moods and emotions and the
moods and emotions of other people helps managers carry out their interpersonal roles  managers
should have high emotional intelligence.
Organizational culture: shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, norms, and work routines that
influence how individuals, groups, and teams interact with one another and cooperate to achieve
organizational goals
 Attraction-selection-attrition framework: A model that explains how personality may influence
organizational culture
Factors That Maintain and Transmit Organizational Culture
 Values of Founder
o Shared terminal and instrumental values play a particularly important role in
organizational culture. Terminal values signify what an organization and its employees
are trying to accomplish, and instrumental values guide how the organization and its
members achieve organizational goals.
 Socialization: Process by which newcomers learn organization’s values and norms and acquire
the work behaviors necessary to perform jobs effectively
 Ceremonies and rites: Formal events that show importance of it to company and employees
o Rites of passage: How individuals enter, advance within, or leave the organization
o Rites of integration: Shared announcements of organization successes, build and
reinforce common bonds among organizational members
o Rites of enhancement: how company recognizes and rewards employees’ contributions
 Stories and Language: Communicate organizational culture Reveal behaviors that are valued
 Innovative culture: flexible approach to
planning
Planning
Conservative culture: formal top down
planning

Innovative culture: organic

structure/decentralized
Organizing
Conservative culture: well-defined
hierarchy of authority

Culture affects 4 functions of

management Innovative culture: managers lead by
example and take risks
Leading
Conservative culture: managers
constantly monitor progress toward goals

Innovative culture: managers promote

flexibility and taking initiatives

Controlling

Conservative culture: managers

emphasize caution and maintenance of
status quo