Chapter 3

Personality and Values

05/04/2023 1
 Learning Outcomes
1. Understand the nature of personality and how it is
determined by both nature and nurture.
2. Describe the Big Five personality traits and their
implications for understanding behavior in organizations.
3. Appreciate the ways in which other personality traits, in
addition to the Big Five, influence employees’ behaviors in
organizations.

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 2

 The nature of personality

• Personality is the pattern of relatively enduring ways that a

person feels, thinks, and behaves.
• The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and
interacts with others

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 3

 Personality

Personality

Feelings
Thoughts Situational Factors
Attitudes
Behavior

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 4

 Personality

• Personality is an important factor to account for why

employees act the way they do in organizations and why they
have favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward their jobs and
organizations.
• Personality has been shown to influence career choice, job
satisfaction, stress, leadership, and some aspects of job
performance.

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 5

 Personality: Nature and Nurture

Nature Nurture
[biological Personality [Life
heritage] experience ]

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 6

 Personality: Nature and Nurture

• Heredity is the most dominant factor

o Twin studies: genetics more influential than parents
• Environmental factors do have some influence

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 7

 The Big five model of personality

Specific components of personality (traits):

• Openness to Experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 8

 The Big five model of personality

• Openness to experience: the dimension addresses range of

interests and fascination with novelty.
o captures the extent to which an individual is original,
open to a wide variety of stimuli, has broad interests, and
is willing to take risks
o as opposed to being narrow-minded and cautious

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 9

 The Big five model of personality

• Conscientiousness: is a measure of reliability (the extent to

which an individual is careful, scrupulous, and persevering).
o Individuals high on conscientiousness are organized and
have a lot of self-discipline.
o Individuals low on conscientiousness may lack direction
and self-discipline.

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 10

 The Big five model of personality

• Extraversion, or positive affectivity: the dimension captures

the comfort level with relationships.
o Extraverts (people high on the extraversion scale):
sociable, affectionate, and friendly
o Introverts (people low on the extraversion scale): less
likely to experience positive emotional state and fewer
social interactions with others

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 11

 The Big five model of personality

• Agreeableness: refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to

others (the trait that captures the distinction between
individuals who get along well with other people and those
who do not).
o Agreeable individuals generally are easy to get along
with and are team players

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 12

 The Big five model of personality

• Neuroticism, or emotional stability taps a person’s ability to

withstand stress (reflects people’s tendencies to experience
negative emotional states, feel distressed, and generally view
themselves and the world around them negatively).
o People high on the neuroticism scale: are more likely to
experience negative emotions and stress over time and
across situations.
o People with positive emotional stability (low on the
neuroticism scale) tend to be calm, self-confident and
secure.

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 13

 The Big five model of personality

• How do the Big five traits predict behavior at work?

o Research on the Big Five has found relationships between
these personality dimensions and job performance
 Conscientiousness is important in many organizational situations
and has been found to be a good predictor of performance in
many jobs in a wide variety of organizations
 The combination of high openness to experience and high
conscientiousness can be beneficial when employees need to
make difficult decisions in uncertain times
 Agreeableness can be an asset in jobs that hinge on developing
good relationships with other people

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 14

 The Big five model of personality

• Other organizationally relevant personality traits

Locus of control

Self-monitoring

Self-esteem
Organizationally
relevant Type A and Type B personality

personality traits Need for achievement

Need for affiliation

Need for power

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 15

 The Big five model of personality

• Other organizationally relevant personality traits

o Self-monitoring
 Adjusts behavior to meet external, situational factors
o Type A personality
 Competitive, urgent, and driven
o Proactive personality
 Identifies opportunities, shows initiative, takes action and
perseveres
o Core self-evaluation
 Self like/dislike

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 16

 The Big five model of personality

• Personality: A determinant of the nature of organizations

o Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) framework
 Ben Schneider proposes that the “personality” of a whole
organization is largely a product of the personalities of its
employees
 Individuals with similar personalities tend to be attracted to an
organization (attraction) and hired by it (selection), and
individuals with other types of personalities tend to leave the
organization (attrition)

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 17

 The nature of values

• Values are one’s personal convictions about what one should

strive for in life and how one should behave
o Providing a safe working environment for employees
o World at peace

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 18

 The nature of values

• Represent a prioritizing of individual values by:

o Content – importance to the individual
o Intensity – relative importance with other values
• Values are the foundation for attitudes, motivation, and
behavior
• Influence perception

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 19

 The nature of values

• Two kinds of values are especially relevant to OB

o Work values
o Ethical values

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 20

 The nature of values

• Two kinds of values are especially relevant to OB

o Work values
o Ethical values

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 21

 The nature of values

• Work values are an employee personal convictions about

what outcomes one should expect form work and how one
should behave at work.
o A comfortable existence with family security
o A sense of accomplishment
o Self-respect
o Social recognition
o Exciting life
• General and long-lasting feelings and beliefs people have

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 22

 The nature of values

• Why are work values important?

o They reflect what people are trying to achieve through and at
work
• The work values have identified fall into two broad
categories:
o Intrinsic work values are values that are related to the nature
of the work itself
o Extrinsic work values are related to the consequences of work

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 23

 The nature of values

• A comparison of intrinsic and extrinsic work values

Intrinsic work values Extrinsic work values

o Interesting work o High pay
o Challenging work o Job security
o Learning new things o Job benefits
o Making important o Status in wider
contributions community
o Reaching full potential at o Social contacts
work o Time with family
o Responsibility and autonomy o Time for hobbies
o Being creative

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 24

 The nature of values

• Ethical values: are one’s personal convictions about what is

right and wrong
• Such values help employees decide on the right course of
action and guide their decision making and behavior

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 25

 The nature of values

Values

Work values Ethical values

Intrinsic work values Extrinsic work values

o Interesting work o High pay
o Challenging work o Job security
o Learning new things o Job benefits
o Making important contributions o Status in wider community
o Reaching full potential at work o Social contacts
o Responsibility and autonomy o Time with family
o Being creative o Time for hobbies

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 26

 Personality-job fit

• Job satisfaction and turnover depend on congruency between

personality and task
• Vocational Preference Inventory Questionnaire

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 27

 Person-organization fit

• It is more important that employees’ personalities fit with the

organizational culture than with the characteristics of any
specific job
• The fit predicts job satisfaction, organizational commitment
and turnover

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 28

 Discussion Questions

• What are the relationships among the following variables?

o Values
o Attitudes
o Personality
o Job satisfaction
o Job performance

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 29

 Discussion Questions

• Case study 1: Is there a price for being too nice? (page 157,
158, reference book: Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A.
Judge, Organizational Behavior, 15th ed., Pearson Education,
2013, ISNB-13: 978-0-13-283487-2).
• Case study 2: Leadership from an introvert’s perspective
(page 158, reference book: Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy
A. Judge, Organizational Behavior, 15th ed., Pearson
Education, 2013, ISNB-13: 978-0-13-283487-2).

Organizational Behavior – Personality and Values 30