Chapter FOUR

Personality
and
Values

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 What Is Personality?
Personality
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and
interacts with others, measurable traits a person exhibits

Personality
Personality Traits
Determinants
Enduring characteristics • Heredity
that describe an
individual’s behavior • Environment
• Situation

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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
A personality test that taps four characteristics and
classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types

Personality Types
• Extroverted vs. Introverted (E or I)
• Sensing vs. Intuitive (S or N)
• Thinking vs. Feeling (T or F)
• Judging vs. Perceiving (P or J)
Score is a combination of all four
(e.g., ENTJ)

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 Meyers-Briggs (cont’d)

A Meyers-Briggs Score
– Can be a valuable too for self-awareness and career
guidance
BUT
– Should not be used as a selection tool because it has
not been related to job performance!

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 The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions

Extroversion
Sociable, gregarious, and assertive

Agreeableness
Good-natured, cooperative, and trusting

Conscientiousness
Responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized

Emotional Stability
Calm, self-confident, secure under stress (positive), versus
nervous, depressed, and insecure under stress (negative)
Openness to Experience
Curious, imaginative, artistic, and sensitive
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 Measuring Personality
Personality Is Measured by:

 Self-Report Surveys
 Observer-Rating Surveys
 Projective Measures
– Rorschach Inkblot Test
– Thematic Apperception Test

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 Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB

 Core Self-Evaluation
– Self-Esteem
– Locus of Control
 Machiavellianism
 Narcissism
 Self-Monitoring
 Risk Taking
 Type A vs. Type B Personality
 Proactive Personality

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Core Self-Evaluation: Two Main Components

Self-Esteem
Individuals’ degree of liking or disliking themselves

Locus of Control
The degree to which people believe they are masters of
their own fate
•Internals (Internal locus of control)
Individuals who believe that they control what
happens to them
•Externals (External locus of control)
Individuals who believe that what happens to them
is controlled by outside forces such as luck or
chance

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 Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism (Mach)
Degree to which an individual is pragmatic,
maintains emotional distance, and believes that
ends can justify means

Conditions Favoring High Machs

• Direct interaction with others
• Minimal rules and regulations
• Emotions distract for others

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 Narcissism

A Narcissistic Person
• Has grandiose sense of self-importance
• Requires excessive admiration
• Has a sense of entitlement
• Is arrogant
• Tends to be rated as less effective

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 Self-Monitoring

Self-Monitoring
A personality trait that measures an
individual’s ability to adjust his or
her behavior to external, situational
factors

High Self-Monitors
• Receive better performance ratings
• Likely to emerge as leaders
• Show less commitment to their
organizations

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 Risk-Taking
 High Risk-Taking Managers
– Make quicker decisions
– Use less information to make decisions
– Operate in smaller and more entrepreneurial
organizations
 Low Risk-Taking Managers
– Are slower to make decisions
– Require more information before making decisions
– Exist in larger organizations with stable environments
 Risk Propensity
– Aligning managers’ risk-taking propensity to job
requirements should be beneficial to organizations

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 Personality Types
Type As
1. Are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly
2. Feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place
3. Strive to think or do two or more things at once
4. Cannot cope with leisure time
5. Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms
of how many or how much of everything they acquire

Type Bs
1. Never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its
accompanying impatience
2. Feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or
accomplishments
3. Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their
superiority at any cost
4. Can relax without guilt
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 Personality Types

Proactive Personality
Identifies opportunities,
shows initiative, takes
action, and perseveres until
meaningful change occurs
Creates positive change in
the environment,
regardless or even in spite
of constraints or obstacles

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Chapter Check-up: Personality
Which of the following is not a typical
personality trait considered to be
organizationally relevant?
Locus of control
Self-monitoring
Self-enhancing
Self esteem
Machiavellianism

Discuss with your neighbor how each of the three traits above would
influence a college instructor’s behavior, and where you think your
teacher falls with respect to each of them.

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Chapter Check-up: Personality
Alison arrives to class and realizes that she’s
forgotten her homework to turn in. She says “Oh
man, it’s just not my lucky day today.” Alison has
______________.

Alison has a high external locus of control. Alison believes

that things outside of her control determine what happens.

If Alison works on a team with you, and you have a

very high internal locus of control, what kinds of
discussions do you think the two of you might have?
Discuss with a friend.
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Chapter Check-up: Personality

Julia is known for being a go-getter. She never

leaves a task incomplete, and is involved in a
number of activities. Moreover, she’s at the top of
her class. She’s so busy that sometimes, she
forgets to stop and eat lunch. Julia can be easily
characterized as someone that has/is a Type ____
Personality.

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A
Chapter Check-up: Personality
Julia is also likely to not be very:
• Happy?
• Fun?
• Creative?
• Stressed?

In general, Type As are rarely creative because they

generally don’t allocate the necessary time for new solution
development; they usually rely on past experiences to
solve problems in order to be speedy.

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 Values

 Definition: Mode of conduct or end state is personally

or socially preferable (i.e., what is right and good)
– Terminal Values
• Desirable end states
– Instrumental Values
• The ways/means for achieving one’s terminal values

 Value System: A hierarchy based on a ranking of an

individual’s values in terms of their intensity

Note: Values vary by cohort

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 Importance of Values

 Provide understanding of the attitudes, motivation,

and behaviors of individuals and cultures
 Influence our perception of the world around us
 Represent interpretations of “right” and “wrong”
 Imply that some behaviors or outcomes are preferred
over others

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 Types of Values—Rokeach Value Survey

Terminal Values
Desirable end-states of existence;
the goals that a person would like
to achieve during his or her lifetime

Instrumental Values
Preferable modes of behavior or
means of achieving one’s terminal
values

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 Values in
the
Rokeach
Survey

Source: M. Rokeach, The Nature of Human

Values (New York: The Free Press, 1973).

E X H I B I T 4-3

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 Values in
the
Rokeach
Survey
(cont’d)

Source: M. Rokeach, The Nature of Human

Values (New York: The Free Press, 1973).

E X H I B I T 4-3 (cont’d)

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 Mean Value Rankings
of Executives, Union
Members, and Activists

Source: Based on W. C. Frederick and J. Weber, “The Values of

Corporate Managers and Their Critics: An Empirical Description and
Normative Implications,” in W. C. Frederick and L. E. Preston (eds.)
Business Ethics: Research Issues and Empirical Studies (Greenwich,
CT: JAI Press, 1990), pp. 123–44.

E X H I B I T 4-4

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 Values, Loyalty, and Ethical Behavior

Ethical Values and

Behaviors of Leaders

Ethical Climate in
the Organization
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Values Across Cultures: Hofstede’s Framework

 Power Distance
 Individualism vs. Collectivism
 Masculinity vs. Femininity
 Uncertainty Avoidance
 Long-term and Short-term Orientation

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 Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Cultures

Power Distance
The extent to which a society accepts that
power in institutions and organizations is
distributed unequally.
Low distance: Relatively equal power between
those with status/wealth and those without
status/wealth
High distance: Extremely unequal power
distribution between those with status/wealth
and those without status/wealth

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 Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)
Individualism vs. Collectivism
The degree to which A tight social framework in
people prefer to act as which people expect others
individuals rather than a in groups of which they are a
member of groups part to look after them and
protect them

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 Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)
Masculinity vs. Femininity
The extent to which the The extent to which
society values work roles there is little differ-
of achievement, power, entiation between roles
and control, and where for men and women
assertiveness and mater-
ialism are also valued

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 Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)
Uncertainty Avoidance
The extent to which a society feels threatened by
uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid
them
•High Uncertainty Avoidance:
Society does not like
ambiguous situations and tries
to avoid them.

•Low Uncertainty Avoidance:

Society does not mind
ambiguous situations and
embraces them.

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 Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)

Long-term Orientation vs. Short-term Orientation

A national culture attribute A national culture attribute
that emphasizes the future, that emphasizes the present
thrift, and persistence and the here and now

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 Achieving Person-Job Fit
Personality-Job Fit Theory
(Holland)
Identifies six personality Personality Types
types and proposes that the • Realistic
fit between personality type
and occupational • Investigative
environment determines • Social
satisfaction and turnover • Conventional
• Enterprising
• Artistic

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 Holland’s
Typology of
Personality
and
Congruent
Occupations

E X H I B I T 4–8

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 Relationships
Among
Occupational
Personality
Types

Source: Reprinted by special permission of the publisher, Psychological

Assessment Resources, Inc., from Making Vocational Choices, copyright 1973, E X H I B I T 4–9
1985, 1992 by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2007 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

 Organizational Culture Profile (OCP)

 Useful for determining person-organization

fit
 Survey that forces choices/rankings of one’s
personal values
 Helpful for identifying most important values
to look for in an organization (in efforts to
create a good fit)

© 2007 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

 Chapter Check-up: Values
In Country J most of the top management team meets
employees at the local bar for a beer on Fridays, and there
are no reserved parking spaces. Everyone is on a first
name basis with one another. Country J, according to
Hofstede’s Framework, is probably low on what dimension?
• Collectivism
• Lon-term Orientation
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Power Distance

How would a college or university in Country J differ from

your college or university? Identify 3 differences and
discuss with a neighbor.
© 2007 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights reserved.