UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE AT WORK: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND

PERCEPTION
Individual differences matter in the workplace. Human beings bring in their
personality, physical and mental abilities, and other stable traits to work. While human
beings bring their traits to work, every organization is different, and every job within the
organization is also different.
When hiring employees, companies are interested in assessing at least two types of fit.
Person–organization fit refers to the degree to which a person’s values,personality, goals,
and other characteristics match those of the organization.
Person–job fit is the degree to which a person’s skill, knowledge, abilities, and other
characteristics match the job demands.

The first thing many recruiters look at is the person–job fit because this is related to a
number of positive work attitudes such as satisfaction with the work environment,
identification with the organization, job satisfaction, and work behaviors such as job
performance. Companies are often also interested in hiring candidates who will fit into the
company culture (those with high person–organization fit). When people fit into their
organization, they tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, more committed to their
companies, and more influential in their company, and they actually remain longer in their
company.
One area of controversy is whether these people perform better. Some studies have
found a positive relationship between person–organization fit and job performance, but this
finding was not present in all studies, so it seems that fitting with a company’s culture will
only sometimes predict job performance. It also seems that fitting in with the company culture
is more important to some people than to others. For example, people who have worked in
multiple companies tend to understand the impact of a company’s culture better, and therefore
they pay more attention to whether they will fit in with the company when making their
decisions. Also, when they build good relationships with their supervisors and the company,
being a misfit does not seem to lead to dissatisfaction on the job.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: VALUES AND PERSONALITY

 Values
Values refer to stable life goals that people have, reflecting what is most important to
them. Values are established throughout one’s life as a result of the accumulating life
experiences and tend to be relatively stable. The values that are important to people tend to
affect the types of decisions they make, how they perceive their environment, and their actual
behaviors. Moreover, people are more likely to accept job offers when the company possesses
the values people care about.
Value attainment is one reason why people stay in a company, and when an organization
does not help them attain their values, they are more likely to decide to leave if they are
dissatisfied with the job itself.
1
What are the values people care about? There are many typologies of values. One of the most
established surveys to assess individual values is the Rokeach Value Survey. This survey lists
18 terminal and 18 instrumental values in alphabetical order.

Figure 1. Sample Items From Rokeach Value Survey

Terminal values refer to end states people desire in life, such as leading a prosperous
life and a world at peace.
Instrumental values deal with views on acceptable modes of conduct, such as being
honest and ethical, and being ambitious.
According to Rokeach, values are arranged in hierarchical fashion. In other words, an
accurate way of assessing someone’s values is to ask them to rank the 36 values in order of
importance. By comparing these values, people develop a sense of which value can be
sacrificed to achieve the other, and the individual priority of each value emerges.
Where do values come from? Research indicates that they are shaped early in life and
show stability over the course of a lifetime. Early family experiences are important influences
over the dominant values. People who were raised in families with low socioeconomic status
and those who experienced restrictive parenting often display conformity values when they
are adults, while those who were raised by parents who were cold toward their children would
likely value and desire security. Values of a generation also change and evolve in response to
the historical context that the generation grows up in. Research comparing the values of
different generations resulted in interesting findings. For example, Generation Xers (those
born between the mid-1960s and 1980s) are more individualistic and are interested in working
toward organizational goals so long as they coincide with their personal goals. This group,
compared to the baby boomers (born between the 1940s and 1960s), is also less likely to see
work as central to their life and more likely to desire a quick promotion.
The values a person holds will affect his or her employment. For example, someone
who has an orientation toward strong stimulation may pursue extreme sports and select an
occupation that involves fast action and high risk, such as fire fighter, police officer, or
2
emergency medical doctor. Someone who has a drive for achievement may more readily act
as an entrepreneur. Moreover, whether individuals will be satisfied at a given job may depend
on whether the job provides a way to satisfy their dominant values. Therefore, understanding
employees at work requires understanding the value orientations of employees.
 Personality
Personality encompasses the relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioral
patterns a person has. Our personality differentiates us from other people, and understanding
someone’s personality gives us clues about how that person is likely to act and feel in a
variety of situations. In order to effectively manage organizational behavior, an understanding
of different employees’ personalities is helpful. Having this knowledge is also useful for
placing people in jobs and organizations.
If personality is stable, does this mean that it does not change? You probably
remember how you have changed and evolved as a result of your own life experiences,
attention you received in early childhood, the style of parenting you were exposed to,
successes and failures you had in high school, and other life events. In fact, our personality
changes over long periods of time. For example, we tend to become more socially dominant,
more conscientious (organized and dependable), and more emotionally stable between the
ages of 20 and 40, whereas openness to new experiences may begin to decline during this
same time. In other words, even though we treat personality as relatively stable, changes
occur. Moreover, even in childhood, our personality shapes who we are and has lasting
consequences for us. For example, studies show that part of our career success and job
satisfaction later in life can be explained by our childhood personality.
Is our behavior in organizations dependent on our personality? To some extent, yes,
and to some extent, no. While we will discuss the effects of personality for employee
behavior, you must remember that the relationships we describe are modest correlations. For
example, having a sociable and outgoing personality may encourage people to seek friends
and prefer social situations. This does not mean that their personality will immediately affect
their work behavior. At work, we have a job to do and a role to perform. Therefore, our
behavior may be more strongly affected by what is expected of us, as opposed to how we
want to behave. When people have a lot of freedom at work, their personality will become a
stronger influence over their behavior.
Big Five Personality Traits
How many personality traits are there? How do we even know? In every language,
there are many words describing a person’s personality. In fact, in the English language,
more than 15,000 words describing personality have been identified. When researchers
analyzed the terms describing personality characteristics, they realized that there were many
words that were pointing to each dimension of personality. When these words were grouped,
five dimensions seemed to emerge that explain a lot of the variation in our personalities. Keep
in mind that these five are not necessarily the only traits out there. There are other, specific
traits that represent dimensions not captured by the Big Five. Still, understanding the main
five traits gives us a good start for describing personality. A summary of the Big Five traits is
presented in Figure 2 "Big Five Personality Traits".

3
1) Openness is the degree to which a person is curious, original, intellectual, creative, and
open to new ideas. People high in openness seem to thrive in situations that require being
flexible and learning new things. They are highly motivated to learn new skills, and they do
well in training settings. They also have an advantage when they enter into a new
organization. Their open-mindedness leads them to seek a lot of information and feedback
about how they are doing and to build relationships, which leads to quicker adjustment to the
new job. When supported, they tend to be creative. Open people are highly adaptable to
change, and teams that experience unforeseen changes in their tasks do well if they are
populated with people high in openness. Compared to people low in openness, they are also
more likely to start their own business.
2) Conscientiousness refers to the degree to which a person is organized, systematic,
punctual, achievement oriented, and dependable. Conscientiousness is the one personality trait
that uniformly predicts how high a person’s performance will be, across a variety of
occupations and jobs. In fact, conscientiousness is the trait most desired by recruiters and
results in the most success in interviews. This is not a surprise, because in addition to their
high performance, conscientious people have higher levels of motivation to perform, lower
levels of turnover, lower levels of absenteeism, and higher levels of safety performance at
work. One’s conscientiousness is related to career success and being satisfied with one’s
career over time. Finally, it seems that conscientiousness is a good trait to have for
entrepreneurs. Highly conscientious people are more likely to start their own business
compared to those who are not conscientious, and their firms have longer survival rates.
3) Extraversion is the degree to which a person is outgoing, talkative, and sociable, and
enjoys being in social situations. One of the established findings is that they tend to be
effective in jobs involving sales. Moreover, they tend to be effective as managers and they
demonstrate inspirational leadership behaviors. A longitudinal study of the moderating role
of extraversion: Leader-member exchange, performance, and turnover during new executive
development. Extraverts do well in social situations, and as a result they tend to be effective
in job interviews. Part of their success comes from how they prepare for the job interview, as

4
they are likely to use their social network. Extraverts have an easier time than introverts when
adjusting to a new job. They actively seek information and feedback, and build effective
relationships, which helps with their adjustment. Interestingly, extraverts are also found to be
happier at work, which may be because of the relationships they build with the people around
them and their relative ease in adjusting to a new job. However, they do not necessarily
perform well in all jobs, and jobs depriving them of social interaction may be a poor fit.
Moreover, they are not necessarily model employees.
4) Agreeableness is the degree to which a person is nice, tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind,
and warm. In other words, people who are high in agreeableness are likeable people who get
along with others. Not surprisingly, agreeable people help others at work consistently, and
this helping behavior is not dependent on being in a good mood. They are also less likely to
retaliate when other people treat them unfairly. This may reflect their ability to show empathy
and give people the benefit of the doubt. Agreeable people may be a valuable addition to their
teams and may be effective leaders because they create a fair environment when they are in
leadership positions. At the other end of the spectrum, people low in agreeableness are less
likely to show these positive behaviors. Moreover, people who are not agreeable are shown to
quit their jobs unexpectedly, perhaps in response to a conflict they engage with a boss or a
peer. If agreeable people are so nice, does this mean that we should only look for agreeable
people when hiring? Some jobs may actually be a better fit for someone with a low level of
agreeableness. Think about it: When hiring a lawyer, would you prefer a kind and gentle
person, or a pit bull? Also, high agreeableness has a downside: Agreeable people are less
likely to engage in constructive and change oriented communication. Disagreeing with the
status quo may create conflict and agreeable people will likely avoid creating such conflict,
missing an opportunity for constructive change.
5) Neuroticism refers to the degree to which a person is anxious, irritable, aggressive,
temperamental, and moody. These people have a tendency to have emotional adjustment
problems and experience stress and depression on a habitual basis. People very high in
neuroticism experience a number of problems at work. For example, they are less likely to be
someone people go to for advice and friendship. In other words, they may experience
relationship difficulties. They tend to be habitually unhappy in their jobs and report high
intentions to leave, but they do not necessarily actually leave their jobs. Being high in
neuroticism seems to be harmful to one’s career, as they have lower levels of career success
(measured with income and occupational status achieved in one’s career). Finally, if they
achieve managerial jobs, they tend to create an unfair climate at work.
***Assigment: How Accurately Can You Describe Your Big Five Personality Factors?
Go to http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/ to see how you score on these factors.