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 Traits Personality

Determinants / (sources)
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, Continued

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
Externals what happenslocus
(External to them.
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 (extravagantly) sense of self-importance
• Requires excessive admiration
• Has a sense of entitlement
• Is arrogant (having or revealing an exaggerated
sense of one's own importance or abilities.)

• 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 A’s
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 B’s
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.

© 2007 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

 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 A’s 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 & 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
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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
A tight social framework in
The degree to which which people expect
people prefer to act as others in groups of which
individuals rather than they are a part to look
a member of groups. 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
of achievement, power, differentiation
and control, and where between roles for
assertiveness and men and women.
materialism 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 & tries
to avoid them.

• Low Uncertainty Avoidance:

Society does not mind
ambiguous situations &
embraces them.

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 Hofstede’s Framework (cont’d)

Long-term Orientation Vs. Short-term Orientation

A national culture A national culture attribute
attribute that that emphasizes the
emphasizes the future, present and the here and
thrift, and persistence. now.
Thrift : the quality of using money and other resources carefully
and not wastefully

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 Achieving Person-Job Fit

Personality-Job Fit
Theory (Holland)
Identifies six personality Personality Types
types and proposes that • Realistic
the fit between personality • Investigative
type and occupational
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)

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 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 each other. Country J, according to
Hofstede’s Framework, is probably low on what dimension?
• Collectivism
• Long 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.
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