Chapter 5:

Personality & Values

 What is Personality?
• Personality is the sum total of ways in which an
individual reacts to and interacts with others.
• Personality is the stable characteristics that describe
an individual’s behavior.
• Personality is a stable set of characteristics
representing internal properties of an individual, which
are reflected in behavioral tendencies across a variety
of situations.
• Personality is the collective qualities, characteristics,
disposition, and values of a person which distinguish
him/her from others, and which will affect the
manners he/she reacts toward or interacts with other
people and his/her environment.
 Measuring Personality
Managers need to know how to measure personality because
personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help managers
forecast who is best for a job.
1. Self-Report Surveys: Individuals evaluate themselves by rating
themselves on a series of factors such as “I worry a lot about the
future”. It works well when well constructed. But respondents
might lie or practice impression management. Another problem
is accuracy. Candidate could have been in a bad mood when the
survey was taken.
2. Observer-Ratings Surveys: An independent assessment of
personality. A coworker or another observer does the rating.
Each can tell us something unique about an individual’s
behavior.
It will be wise to use both observer ratings and self-report ratings
of personality when making important employment decisions.
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was constructed by Isabel
Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs. The MBTI is the
most widely used personality-assessment instrument in the world. It is a
100-question personality test that asks people how they usually feel or
act in particular situations. On the basis of their answers, respondents
are classified as -
1. Extraverted (E) or Introverted (I): Extraverted individuals are outgoing,
sociable, and assertive. Introverts are quiet and shy.
2. Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N): Sensing types are practical and prefer
routine and order. They focus on details. Intuitive rely on unconscious
processes and look at the “big picture.”
3. Thinking (T) or Feeling (F): Thinking types use reason and logic to
handle problems. Feeling types rely on their personal values and
emotions.
4. Judging (J) or Perceiving (P): Judging types want control and prefer
their world to be ordered and structured. Perceiving types are flexible
and spontaneous.
The Big Five Model
 The Big Five Model
Lewis Goldberg identified five basic dimensions as
primary factors of personality. The following are the
Big Five factors:
1. Extraversion: The extraversion dimension captures
our comfort level with relationships. Extraverts tend
to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts
tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
2. Agreeableness: The agreeableness dimension refers
to an individual’s propensity to defer to others.
Highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm, and
trusting. People who score low on agreeableness are
cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
 …The Big Five Model
3. Conscientiousness: The conscientiousness dimension is a
measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is
responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who
score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized,
and unreliable.
4. Emotional Stability: The emotional stability taps a person’s
ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional
stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with
high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed,
and insecure.
5. Openness to Experience: The openness to experience
dimension addresses range of interests and fascination with
novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and
artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the category are
conventional and find comfort in the familiar.
 …Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
2. Machiavellianism: The degree to which an
individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional
distance and believes that ends can justify
means.
High machs manipulate more, win more and
persuade more than they are persuaded.
High machs flourish when interact face to
face with others, work with minimal rules
and regulations, irrelevant emotional
involvement.
 …Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB

3. Narcissism: The tendency to be arrogant,

have an unrealistic sense of superiority,
require excessive admiration, and have a
sense of entitlement.
Study found that narcissists thought they
were better leaders than their colleagues.
Narcissists also tend to be selfish and
exploitive. Narcissists are rated by their
bosses as less effective at their jobs.
 …Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
6. Proactive Personality: People who identify
opportunities, show initiative, take action, and
continue until meaningful change occurs.
Proactive individuals create positive change in
their environment, regardless of, or even in
spite of, constraints or obstacles.
Proactive individuals are more likely to be
satisfied with work and help others more with
their tasks, largely because they build more
relationships with others.
 Values
• Values are a collection of guiding principles, what
an individual considers to be morally right and
desirable in life, especially regarding personal
conduct.
• Values represent important and long-lasting beliefs
or ideals shared by the members of a culture about
what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable.
• Values represent basic convictions that a specific
mode of conduct or end-state of existence is
personally or socially preferable to an opposite or
converse mode of conduct or end state of
existence.
 Value System
• Value system means a set of
interrelated values.
• Value system is a hierarchy, based
on a ranking of an individual’s values
in terms of their intensity such as
freedom, pleasure, self-respect,
honesty, obedience, and equality.
 Importance of Values
1. Value provide understanding of the
attitudes, motivation, and behaviors.
2. It influence our perception of the world
around us.
3. It represent interpretations of “right” and
“wrong”.
4. It imply that some behaviors or outcomes
are preferred over others.
5. It influences attitudes and behavior.
 Rokeach Value Survey
Milton Rokeach created the Rokeach Value Survey. It
consists of two sets of values – terminal and instrumental
– each containing 18 individual value items.
1. Terminal Values: It refers to desirable end-states. These
are the goals a person would like to achieve during his or
her lifetime. Example: Prosperity and economic success,
Freedom, Health and well-being, World peace, Social
recognition, and Meaning in life.
2. Instrumental Values: It refers to preferable modes of
behavior, or means of achieving the terminal values.
Example: Self-improvement, Autonomy and self-reliance,
Personal discipline, kindness, Ambition, and Goal-
orientation.
…Rokeach Value Survey
 Hofstede’s Five Value Dimensions
Geert Hofstede, in the late 1970s, surveyed more than
116,000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work-
related values and found that managers and employees
vary on five value dimensions of national culture:
1. Power Distance: Power distance describes the degree to
which people in a country accept that power in
institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
2. Individualism versus Collectivism: Individualism is the
degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather
than as members of groups. Collectivism emphasizes a
tight social framework in which people expect others in
groups of which they are a part to look after them and
protect them.
 …Hofstede’s Five Value Dimensions
3. Masculinity versus Femininity: The degree to which the
culture favors traditional masculine work roles of
achievement, power, and control, as opposed to
viewing men and women as equals.
4. Uncertainty Avoidance: The degree to which a society
feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations
and tries to avoid them.
5. Long-term versus Short-term orientation: Long-term
orientation is a national culture that emphasizes the
future, thrift, and persistence. Short-term orientation is
a national culture that emphasizes the past and
present, respect for tradition, and fulfillment of social
obligations.