Chapter 2: Individual Behavior, Personality, and Values

1) MARS Model of Influencing Individual Behavior and Performance

Performance describes characteristics that predict individual behavior. A formula used to
calculate performance in the old days were performance= ability * motivation and
performance= person * situation.
MARS:
Motivation,
Ability,
Role perception,
Situational factors (i.e. having the right resources and tools to handle the problem).
These factors are variables used in predicting individual behavior and performance. They affect
voluntary behaviors of individuals and their performance outcomes. If one of the factor in the
MARS is not there, then the outcome is low performance.
2) Types of Individual Behavior
Task performance. These are goal originated behaviors that support the
organizations goals and are within an individuals control.

Organizational citizenship. For a person working in a company, this means going an
extra mile to get the job done. It involves various kinds of cooperation and
helpfulness to others that support the organizations goals.

Counterproductive work behaviors: Workplace conditions that create dysfunction.
These are things like harassing coworkers, having conflicts, stealing, sabotaging,
being tardy, and etc.
Joining and staying with the organization
Maintaining work attendance
3) Personality in Organizations
Personality is both shaped by nature and nurture. Nature refers to our genetic or hereditary
origins, or simply genes we inherited from our parents. Genetics also affect: attitudes,
decisions, and behavior. Nurture refers to a persons socialization, life experiences, and
other interactions with the environment. Personality traits are not completely hereditary;
early life experiences have significant effect on individuals personality traits.

FIVE-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY:
i. Conscientiousness
ii. Agreeableness
iii. Neuroticism
iv. Openness to experience
v. Extraversion
The five-factor model is a good predictor of employee competency and performance at jobs.
For example, people with conscientious personality traits (dependable, organized, goal oriented
etc) usually have high performance at jobs.
The psychiatrist Carl Jung created Jungian Personality Theory and the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator. It predicts personality based on an individuals preferences regarding perceiving and
judging information and among other things below:
Sensing (S)
Intuition (N)
Thinking (T)
Feeling (F)
Perceiving and judging

4) Values in the Workplace
Values shape our perception of what is good or bad, right or wrong, and just or unjust. It is
what we ought to do. Values are learned from socialization, whereas personality traits are from
heredity.
Schwartzs Value Circumplex organized 10 broad categories of values into four
quadrants: conservation, self-transcendence, openness to change, and self-
enhancement
5) Ethical Values and Behavior
Utilitarianism: seek greatest good for the greatest number
Individual rights
Distributive Justice: Those who are similar should receive equal benefits; those who are
not similar should receive compensation and benefits in proportion to their dissimilarity.
Most Fortune 500 companies in the United States and United Kingdom have ethical laws and
standards that their employees must follow.
5) Values Across Cultures
Individualism: valuing personal independence and uniqueness
Collectivism: Extent to which we value the groups to which we belong and to the group
harmony
6) Case study 2.1: Telecom Goes Egalitarian
South Korea had hierarchical management system where people who held senior
positions had titles, and the people who did not have those titles had to be compliant. A
person in a lower position showed deference to a person with title. Changing the old
system to an egalitarian system created openness among people in lower positions with
those in higher ones, and the older titles were taken away.

Advantage of older system: people with title were seen with deference and their
opinion were not question. Disadvantage: if someone had a good idea, they would not
be able to share that idea with a senior management who had a title.
I think this particular value is strong in South Korea because of their culture which
supports deference, humility, and respect to those who are older.
7) Case Study 2.2: Pushing Papers Can Be Fun
Police captain says that he hired new, young officers into the department. The officers
like the work they do; however, they do not like doing the paperwork. And lack of doing
paperwork causes the police department to lose court cases because they do not have
FACTUAL evidence. NO Motivation to perform paperwork jobs that are tedious and
boring; perhaps there is lack of ability (in terms of written communication), which is why
some of the officers are not doing the paperwork, and perhaps the officers are
overworked at the end of the shifts, so they want to hurry out of the office.
Captain is trying to motivate the officers to do their work adequately and to do all
written paperwork. He should investigate the problem, analyze it, and provide incentive
that would encourage the officers to do the paperwork.

Commonalities of