Chapter 2 - Personality, Attitudes, and Work Behaviors

CHAPTER 2 – PERSONALITY, ATTITUDES, AND WORK BEHAVIORS
∙ Learning Objectives
o Understand the roles of personality and values in determining work behaviors.
o Explain the process of perception and how it affects work behaviors. o
Identify the major work attitudes that affect work behaviors.
o Define the concept of person-organization fit and how it affects work behaviors.
o List the key set of behaviors that matter for organizational performance. o Be
able to develop your positive attitude skills.
∙ Personality and Values

o Personality encompasses a person’s
relatively stable feelings, thoughts,
and
behavioral patterns. Each of us has
a
unique personality that 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. To manage
effectively, it is helpful to understand the
personalities of different employees.
Having this knowledge is also useful for placing people into jobs and
organizations. o 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, parenting style and attention you have received in early childhood,
successes and failures you experienced over the course of your life, and other life
events. In fact, personality does change 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 tends to decline as we age.
o Values refer to people’s stable life goals, reflecting what is most important to them.
Values are established throughout one’s life as a result of accumulating life
experiences, and values tend to be relatively stable.
o The values that are important to a person tend to affect the types of decisions they
make, how they perceive their environment, and their actual behaviors. Moreover,
a person is more likely to accept a job offer when the company possesses the
values he or she cares about.
o Value attainment is one reason people stay in a company. When a job does not
help them attain their values, they are likely to decide to leave if they are
dissatisfied with the job.
o What are the values people care about? As with personality dimensions,
researchers have developed several frameworks, or typologies, of values. One of
the particularly useful frameworks includes 10 values.
o Values a person holds will affect their employment. For example, someone who
values stimulation highly may seek jobs that involve fast action and high risk, such
as firefighter, police officer, or emergency medicine. Someone who values
achievement highly may be likely to become an entrepreneur or intrapreneur. And
an individual who values benevolence and universalism may seek work in the
nonprofit sector with a charitable organization or in a “helping profession,” such as
nursing or social work. Like personality, values have implications for Organizing
activities, such as assigning duties to specific jobs or developing the chain of
command; employee values are likely to affect how employees respond to
changes in the characteristics of their jobs.
∙ Perception
o Our behavior is not only a function of our
personality and values but also of the
situation. We interpret our environment,
formulate responses, and act
accordingly.
Perception may be defined as the
process by
which individuals detect and interpret
environmental stimuli. What makes human
perception so interesting is that we do not
solely respond to the stimuli in our
environment. We go beyond the information that is present in our environment,
pay selective attention to some aspects of the environment, and ignore other
elements that may be immediately apparent to other people.
o Our perception of the environment is not entirely rational. For example, have you
ever noticed that while glancing at a newspaper or a news Web site, information
that is especially interesting or important to you jumps out of the page and
catches your eye? If you are a sports fan, while scrolling down the pages, you
may immediately see a news item describing the latest success of your team. If
you are the mother of a picky eater, an advice column on toddler feeding may be
the first thing you see when looking at the page. If you were recently turned down
for a loan, an item of financial news may jump out at you. Therefore, what we see
in the environment is a function of what we value, our needs, our fears, and our
emotions.
o In fact, what we see in the environment may be objectively flat out wrong because
of such mental tendencies. For example, one experiment showed that when
people who were afraid of spiders were shown spiders, they inaccurately thought
that the spider was moving toward them.
o In this section, we will describe some common perceptual tendencies we engage
in when perceiving objects or other people and the consequences of such
perceptions. Our coverage of these perceptual biases is not exhaustive—there
are many other biases and tendencies that can be found in the way people
perceive stimuli.
∙ Work Attitudes
o How we behave at work often depends on how
we
feel about being there. Therefore, making
sense of
how people behave depends on understanding
their
work attitudes. An attitude refers to our
opinions,
beliefs, and feelings about aspects of our
environment. We have attitudes toward the food we
eat, people we meet, courses we take, and things we
do. At work, two job attitudes have the greatest
potential to influence how we behave. These are job
satisfaction and organizational commitment.
o Job satisfaction refers to the feelings people have toward their job. If the number
of studies conducted on job satisfaction is an indicator, job satisfaction is probably
the most important job attitude.
o Institutions such as Gallup or the Society for Human Resource Management
(SHRM) periodically conduct studies of job satisfaction to track how satisfied
employees are at work. According to a recent Gallup survey, 90% of the
employees surveyed said that they were at least somewhat satisfied with their
jobs. A recent SHRM study revealed 40% who were very satisfied.
o Organizational commitment is the emotional attachment people have toward the
company they work for. A highly committed employee is one who accepts and
believes in the company’s values, is willing to put out effort to meet the company’s
goals, and has a strong desire to remain with the company. People who are
committed to their company often refer to their company as “we” as opposed to
“they” as in “in this company, we have great benefits.” The way we refer to the
company indicates the type of attachment and identification we have with the
company organizational commitment because things that make us happy with our
job often make us more committed to the company as well.
o Companies believe that these attitudes are worth tracking because they often are
associated with outcomes that are important to the Controlling role, such as
performance, helping others, absenteeism, and turnover.
∙ The Interactionist Perspective: The Role of Fit

o As we have seen in the earlier sections of this chapter, human beings bring in their
personality, values, attitudes, perceptions, and other stable traits to work. Imagine
that you are interviewing an employee who is proactive, creative, and willing to
take risks. Would this person be a good job candidate? What behaviors would you
expect this person to demonstrate?
o The questions we pose here are misleading. While human beings bring their traits
to work, every organization is also different, and every job is different. According
to the interactionist perspective, behavior is a function of the person and the
situation interacting with each other. Think about it. Would a shy person speak up
in class?
o While a shy person may not feel like speaking if he or she is very interested in the
subject, knows the answers to the questions, feels comfortable within the
classroom environment, and knows that class participation is 30% of the course
grade, this person may speak up in class regardless of his or her shyness.
Similarly, the behavior you may expect from someone who is proactive, creative,
and willing to take risks will depend on the situation.
o The fit between what we bring to our work environment and the environmental
demands influences not only our behavior but also our work attitudes. Therefore,
person-job fit and person-organization fit are positively related to job satisfaction
and commitment. When our abilities match job demands, and when our values
match company values, we tend to be more satisfied with our job and more
committed to the company we work for.
o When companies hire employees, they are interested in assessing at least two
types of fit. Person-organization fit refers to the degree to which a person’s
personality, values, goals, and other characteristics match those of the
organization. Person-job fit is the degree to which a person’s knowledge, skills,
abilities, and other characteristics match the job demands. (Human resources
professionals often use the abbreviation KSAO to refer to these four categories of
attributes.) Thus, someone who is proactive and creative may be a great fit for a
company in the high-tech sector that would benefit from risk-taking individuals but
may be a poor fit for a company that puts a high priority on routine and predictable
behavior, such as a nuclear power plant. Similarly, this proactive and creative
person may be a great fit for a field-based job such as marketing manager but a
poor fit for an office job highly dependent on rules such as accountant.
∙ Work Behaviors
o One of the important objectives of the
field of
organizational behavior is to
understand why
people behave the way they do. Which
behaviors are we referring to here? We
will
focus on four key work behaviors: job
performance, organizational citizenship
behaviors, absenteeism, and turnover. Note
that the first two behaviors are desirable ones,
whereas the other two are often regarded as
undesirable. While these four are not the only behaviors organizational behavior
is concerned about, if you understand what we mean by these behaviors and the
major influences over each type of behavior, you will gain more clarity about
analyzing the behaviors of others in the workplace.
o Job performance refers to the level to which an employee successfully fulfills the
factors included in the job description. For each job, the content of job
performance may differ. Measures of job performance include quality and
quantity of work performed by the employee, the accuracy and speed with which
the job is performed, and the overall effectiveness of the person on the job.
o In many companies, job performance determines whether a person is promoted,
rewarded with pay raises, given additional responsibilities, or fired from the job.
Therefore, most employers observe and track job performance. This is done by
keeping track of data on topics such as the number of sales the employee closes,
the number of clients the employee visits, the number of defects found in the
employee’s output, or the number of customer complaints or compliments
received about the person’s work. In some jobs, objective performance data may
not be available, and instead supervisor, coworker, customer, and subordinate
assessments of the quality and quantity of work performed by the person become
the indicators of job performance. Job performance is one of the main outcomes
studied in organizational behavior and is an important variable managers must
assess when they are engaged in the Controlling role.
∙ Developing Your Positive Attitude Skills

o Learn to be happier at work.
o Leverage your attitudes for optimum work performance. Have you ever wondered
how you could be happier at work and how greater work satisfaction could
improve your overall effectiveness? Here are some ideas that may help you
achieve a great sense of peace for yourself as well as when you are working with
a negative coworker.
o Leverage your Big Five traits. Your personality is a big part of your happiness.
Which of the Big Five positive traits are you strongest on? Be aware of them and
look for opportunities to express them at work. Are you high on Neuroticism? If so,
work to overcome this challenge: If you choose to find the negative side of
everything, you will.
o Find a job and company that fit you well. Good fit with the job and company are
important to your happiness. This starts with knowing yourself, your chosen
career, and the particular job in question: What do you want from the job? What
do you enjoy doing?
o Get accurate information about the job and the company. Ask detailed questions
about what life is like in this company. Do your research. Read about the
company; use your social network to understand the company’s culture.
o Develop good relationships at work. Make friends. Try to get a mentor if your
company does not have a formal mentoring program. Approach a person you
admire and attempt to build a relationship with this person. An experienced
mentor can be a great help in navigating life at a company. Your social network
can help you weather the bad days and provide you with emotional and
instrumental support during your time at a company as well as afterward.
o Pay is important, but job characteristics matter more to your job satisfaction. So
don’t sacrifice the job itself for a bit more money. When choosing a job, look at the
level of challenge and the potential of the job to make you feel engaged.
o Be proactive in managing organizational life. If the job is stressful, cope with it by
effective time management and having a good social network, as well as being
proactive in getting to the source of stress. If you don’t have enough direction, ask
for it!
o Know when to leave. If the job makes you unhappy over an extended period of
time and there is little hope of solving the problems, it may be time to look
elsewhere.
∙ Link for Video

Personality and Values https://youtu.be/x6Kh7YY_Fbg Perception
https://youtu.be/se_cPGADeIE Work Attitudes https://youtu.be/AgzWxRBhzoo The
Interactionist Perspective: The Role of Fit https://youtu.be/QT8eCQe1p7Q
Work Behaviors https://youtu.be/jVeiLqWSvsI Developing Your Positive Attitude Skills
https://youtu.be/EoDoBCHscBI
∙ References:
o Principles of management (1St ed.). New York: Flat World Knowledge. Based on
information from Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin. (2009). A brief
history of Goodwill Industries International. Retrieved March 3, 2010
o Walker, R. (2008, November 2). Consumed: Goodwill hunting. New York Times
Magazine, p. 18; Tabafunda, J. (2008, July 26). After 85 years, Seattle Goodwill
continues to improve lives. Northwest Asian Weekly. Retrieved March 1, 2010
o Slack, E. (2009). Selling hope. Retail Merchandiser, 49(1), 89–91
o Castillo, L. (2009, February 24). Goodwill Industries offers employment programs.

Clovis News Journal. Retrieved April 22, 2010

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CHAPTER 2 – PERSONALITY, ATTITUDES, AND WORK BEHAVIORS

∙ Personality and Values

∙ The Interactionist Perspective: The Role of Fit

∙ Developing Your Positive Attitude Skills

∙ Link for Video

o Slack, E. (2009). Selling hope. Retail Merchandiser, 49(1), 89–91

o Castillo, L. (2009, February 24). Goodwill Industries offers employment programs.

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