Understanding Big Five Personality Traits and Cultural Values
Big Five Personality Traits
Conscientiousness – dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and persevering.
Conscientiousness has the biggest influence on job performance.
Conscientious employees prioritize accomplishment striving, which reflects a strong desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality.
Agreeableness – warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, and courteous.
Prioritize communion striving, which reflects a strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing personality.
Beneficial in some positions but detrimental in others.
Agreeable people focus on “getting along,” not necessarily “getting ahead.”
Neuroticism – nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, and jealous —- second important among the big five personality traits
Synonymous with negative affectivity—a dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance.
Openness to experience – curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated.
Also called “Inquisitiveness” or “Intellectualness” or even “Culture.”
Openness to experience is also more likely to be valuable in jobs that require high levels of creativity, defined as the capacity to generate novel and useful ideas and solutions.
Highly open individuals are more likely to migrate into artistic and scientific fields.
Extraversion – talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant.
Prioritize status striving, which reflects a strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means of expressing personality.
Tend to be high in what’s called positive affectivity—a dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation.
Cultural Values
Measuring National Cultures:
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
INDIVIDUALISM vs. COLLECTIVISM: Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: Everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family only.
Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive large in-groups.
UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE HIGH vs. LOW: the extent to which members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations.
MASCULINITY vs. FEMININITY: Masculine culture values stereotypically male traits such as assertiveness and the acquisition of money and things.
Feminine culture values typically female traits such as caring for others and caring about quality of life.
LONG-TERM ORIENTATION vs. SHORT-TERM ORIENTATION: Long-term orientation culture stresses values that are more future-oriented, such as future rewards, perseverance and thrift.
Short-term orientation culture stresses values that are past or present-oriented, such as fulfilling social obligations.
INDULGENCE vs. RESTRAINT: Indulgence stands for a society that allows basic and natural desires to be gratified in its pursuit of happiness.
The term “indulgence” typifies societies which exercise little constraint in this pursuit
The term “restraint” applies to societies which control desires for happiness and use strict social norms to do so.
High-Context vs. Low-Context Cultures
A high-context culture relies on implicit communication and nonverbal cues. In high-context communication, a message cannot be understood without a great deal of background information.
A low-context culture relies on explicit communication. In low-context communication, more of the information in a message is spelled-out and defined.
Organizational Structure
Organizational structure formally dictates how jobs and tasks are divided and coordinated between individuals and groups within the company.
Functional structure is an organizational form in which employees are grouped by the functions they perform for the organization.
Multi-divisional structures are bureaucratic organizational forms in which employees are grouped into divisions around products, geographic regions, or clients.
Elements of Organizational Structure
Span of control represents how many employees the manager is responsible for in the organization.
Work specialization is the way in which tasks in an organization are divided into separate jobs.
Chain of command within an organization essentially answers the question: “Who reports to whom?”
Centralization reflects where decisions are formally made in organizations.
A company is high in formalization when there are many specific rules and procedures used to standardize behaviors and decisions.
Teamwork
Surface-level diversity refers to diversity regarding observable attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age.
Deep-level diversity refers to diversity with respect to attributes that are less easy to observe initially, but that can be inferred after more direct experience.
Similarity-attraction approach says people tend to be more attracted to others who are perceived as more similar.
Job Satisfaction
Value-percept theory suggests that people evaluate job satisfaction according to specific facets of the job.
Organizational Culture
Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) framework
Potential employees will be attracted to organizations whose cultures match their personality.
Organization will select job candidates based on whether their personalities fit the culture.
People who don’t fit will be unhappy or ineffective which leads to attrition.
Organizational culture is the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shape the attitudes and behaviors of its employees.
Espoused values are the beliefs, philosophies, and norms that a company explicitly states.
Published documents
Verbal statements made to employees by managers…
Organizational Commitment
Emotion-based reasons Affective commitment
A desire to remain a member of an organization due to an emotional attachment to, and involvement with, that organization.
Cost-based reasons Continuance commitment
A desire to remain a member of an organization because of an awareness of the costs associated with leaving it.
Obligation-based reasons Normative commitment
A desire to remain a member of an organization due to a feeling of obligation.
Focus of commitment refers to the various people, places, and things that can inspire a desire to remain a member of an organization.
Affective Commitment
Employees who feel a sense of affective commitment identify with the organization, accept that organization’s goals and values, and are more willing to exert extra effort on behalf of the organization.
The erosion model suggests that employees with fewer bonds will be most likely to quit the organization.
The social influence model suggests that employees who have direct linkages with “leavers” will themselves become more likely to leave.
Continuance commitment exists when there is a profit associated with staying and a cost associated with leaving.
Normative commitment exists when there is a sense that staying is the ‘right’ or ‘moral’ thing to do.
Trust, Justice, and Ethics
Trust in organizational authorities depends on two related concepts.
Justice reflects the perceived fairness of an authority’s decision making.
Ethics reflects the degree to which the behaviors of an authority are in accordance with generally accepted moral norms.
Disposition-based trust means that your personality traits include a general propensity to trust others.
Trust propensity: a general expectation that the words, promises, and statements of individuals and groups can be relied upon.
Cognition-based trust means that it’s rooted in a rational assessment of the authority’s trustworthiness.
Benevolence is the belief that the authority wants to do good for the trustor, apart from any selfish or profit-centered motives.
Integrity is the perception that the authority adheres to a set of values and principles that the trustor finds acceptable
Distributive justice reflects the perceived fairness of decision-making outcomes. Employees gauge distributive justice by asking whether decision outcomes, such as pay, rewards, evaluations, promotions, and work assignments, are allocated using proper norms.
Procedural justice reflects the perceived fairness of decision-making processes.
Interpersonal justice reflects the perceived fairness of the treatment received by employees from authorities.
Informational justice reflects the perceived fairness of the communications provided to employees from authorities.
Moral intent reflects an authority’s degree of commitment to the moral course of action.
Leadership
Legitimate power derives from a position of authority inside the organization and is sometimes referred to as “formal authority”– only within the scope of their authority!
Reward power exists when someone has control over the resources or rewards another person wants.
Coercive power exists when a person has control over punishments in an organization.
Expert power derives from a person’s expertise, skill, or knowledge on which others depend.
Referent power exists when others have a desire to identify and be associated with a person.
Autocratic style: the leader makes the decision alone without asking for the opinions or suggestions of the employees in the work unit.
With a consultative style, the leader presents the problem to individual employees or a group of employees, asking for their opinions and suggestions before ultimately making the decision him- or herself.
With a facilitative style, the leader presents the problem to a group of employees and seeks consensus on a solution, making sure that his or her own opinion receives no more weight than anyone else’s.
With a delegative style, the leader gives an individual employee or a group of employees the responsibility for making the decision within some set of specified boundary conditions.
Transformational leadership involves inspiring followers to commit to a shared vision that provides meaning to their work while also serving as a role model who helps followers develop their own potential and view problems from new perspectives.
Managing Conflict
Interpersonal conflict: between individuals; competition, incompatibility
Intergroup conflict: between teams or informal groups; work-related disputes due to ambiguity
Inter-organizational conflict: between organizations; different organizational interests, different national cultures
Task conflict: related to resources, policies, pressures, judgements, interpretations…
Relationship conflict: related to personal issues, different preferences, dissonant values…
Process conflict: related to task definitions, delegation, role prescriptions…
Stress
Excuses (overloaded work) , stress, causes , Life events positive/negative
Hindrance stressors, or stressful demands, are the stressors that people tend to perceive as hindering their progress towards personal accomplishments or goal attainment.
Challenge stressors are the stressors that people tend to perceive as opportunities for learning, growth, and achievement.
Role conflict refers to conflicting expectations that other people may have of us.
Role ambiguity refers to a lack of information about what needs to be done in a role, as well as unpredictability regarding the consequences of performance in that role…