Individual Behavior,

Personality, and
Values

McGraw-Hill/Irwin
McShane/Von Glinow OB 5e Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
MARS Model of Individual Behavior

Situational
factors
Motivation
Values
Personality
Individual
Perceptions
Ability behavior and
Emotions results
Attitudes
Stress Role
perceptions

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Employee Motivation

§ Internal forces that affect a person’s

voluntary choice ofbehavior
• direction
• intensity
• persistence

S
M
A BAR

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Employee Ability

§ Natural aptitudes and learned capabilities

required to successfully complete a task
§ Competencies - personal characteristics that
lead to superior performance
§ Person - job matching
• selecting
• developing S
M
• redesigning
A BAR

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Role Perceptions

§ Beliefs about what behavior is required to

achieve the desired results:
• understanding what tasks to perform
• understanding relative importance of tasks
• understanding preferred
behaviors to accomplish tasks

S
M

A BAR

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Situational Factors

§ Environmental conditions beyond the

individual’s short-term control that constrain
or facilitate behavior
• time
• people
• budget
• work facilities S
M

A BAR

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Five-Factor Personality Model
(CANOE)

Conscientiousness Careful, dependable

Agreeableness Courteous, caring

Neuroticism Anxious, hostile

Openness to Experience Sensitive, flexible

Extroversion Outgoing, talkative

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Five-Factor Personality and
Organizational Behavior
§ Conscientiousness and emotional stability
• Motivational components of personality
• Strongest personality predictors of performance
§ Extroversion
• Linked to sales and mgt performance
• Related to social interaction and persuasion
§ Agreeableness
• Effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness
§ Openness to experience
• Linked to higher creativity and adaptability to change

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
§ Extroversion versus introversion
• similar to five-factor dimension
§ Sensing versus intuition
• collecting information through senses versus
through intuition, inspiration or subjective sources
§ Thinking versus feeling
• processing and evaluating information
• using rational logic versus personal values
§ Judging versus perceiving
• orient themselves to the outer world
• order and structure or flexibility and spontaneity

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Self-Concept Defined

§ An individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations

§ “Who am I?” and “How do I feel about myself?”
§ Guides individual decisions and behavior

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Three “C’s” of Self-Concept
§ Complexity
• People have multiple self-concepts
§ Consistency
• Improved wellbeing when multiple self-concepts
require similar personality traits and values
§ Clarity
• Clearly and confidently described, internally
consistent, and stable across time.
• Self-concept clarity requires self-concept
consistency

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Four “Selves” of Self-Concept
§ Self-enhancement
• Promoting and protecting our positive self-view
§ Self-verification
• Affirming our existing self-concept (good and bad
elements)
§ Self-evaluation
• Evaluating ourselves through self-esteem, self-
efficacy, and locus of control
§ Social self
• Defining ourselves in terms of group membership

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Values in the Workplace
§ Stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our
preferences
§ Define right or wrong, good or bad
§ Value system -- hierarchy of values

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Values and Behavior
§ Habitual behavior usually consistent with
values, but conscious behavior less so
because values are abstract constructs
§ Decisions and behavior are linked to values
when:
• Mindful of our values
• Have logical reasons to apply values in that
situation
• Situation does not interfere

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Values Congruence

§ Where two or more entities have similar

value systems
§ Problems with incongruence
• Incompatible decisions
• Lower satisfaction/loyalty
• Higher stress and turnover
§ Benefits of incongruence
• Better decision making (diverse perspectives)
• Avoids “corporate cults”

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Values Across Cultures: Individualism
and Collectivism
§ Degree that people value duty to their group
(collectivism) versus independence and
person uniqueness (individualism)
§ Previously considered opposites, but
unrelated -- i.e. possible to value high
individualism and high collectivism

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 Power Distance
High Power Distance § High power distance
Malaysia • Value obedience to authority
Venezuela • Comfortable receiving
commands from superiors
• Prefer formal rules and authority
Japan to resolve conflicts
§ Low power distance
U.S. • Expect relatively equal power
sharing
Denmark
Israel
• View relationship with boss as
interdependence, not
Low Power Distance dependence
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