Chapter (5)

Values, Attitudes, Emotions,

and Culture: The Manager as
a Person

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 Chapter (5)
Values, Attitudes, Emotions, and Culture: The Manager as a Person
Introduction
As any person, a manager has certain enduring characteristics that
influence how he/ she thinks, feels, and behaves both on and off the job.
These characteristics are his /her personality traits, values, attitudes, and
culture. That’s why it is important to understand the managerial behavior
as well as the managers’ approach to managing people and resources.
1) Enduring Characteristics: Personality Traits
1-A) Personality:
It is defined as the overall profile or combination of characteristics that
capture the unique nature of a person. It combines a set of physical &
mental characteristics that reflect how a person looks, thinks, acts, and
feels.
1-B) Determinants of Personality:
The question here is what constitutes the personality, is it genetically
determined, or it is determined by experience. The answer to this question
is that the personality attributes are determined by both heredity &
experience.
Heredity: It means those attributes that are determined at conception that
includes physical attributes as well as personal attributes.
Environment: These factors means all the aspects that shape the
personality that may be cultural, social, and situational factors.
1-C) Describing Personality:
Personality can be described through the Nomothetic (Traits)
Approach to personality

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Before going through the detailed explanation of this approach to
personality, we should understand what is meant by "Nomothetic
approach to personality".
It is an approach to locate individuates within "personality types" based
on their traits (characteristics).
The most important model under this approach is called "Big five
model". Big 5’s model is a model that classifies individuals according to
five key dimension of personality.
1-D) Big Five Model:
 Extraversion versus Introversion:
This refers to the extent to which individuals are sociable talkative &
outgoing. Extraverts are sociable, talkative, and outgoing while introverts
are quitter, happier spending time alone or with a few close friends.
 Conscientiousness:
This refers to the extent to which individuals are organized, dependable,
and focused on detail, rather than disorganized, less reliable.
 Agreeableness:
This refers to the extent to which individuals are compliant, friendly,
reliable and helpful, rather than disagreeable and uncooperative
individuals. People who have high degree of agreeableness have favorable
attitudes to team work, helping others, punctuality and are more
adaptable.
 Openness to Experience:
This refers to the extent to which individuals are curious, open, and
interested in a wide range of things, versus resistant to change and less
open to new experiences.

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  Emotional Stability:
This refers to the extent to which individuals are secured and calm versus
nervous and subject to mood swings.
In addition to these personality traits, there are other traits that affect
the managerial behavior
 Locus of Control:
This refers to the extent to which a person believes that he/ she has
control over what happens to or around him/her. People with an
internal locus of control believe they themselves are responsible for
their own fate; they see their own actions and behaviors as being major
and decisive determinants of important outcomes such as attaining levels
of job performance, being promoted, or being turned down for a choice
job assignment. People with an external locus of control believe that
outside forces are responsible for what happens to and around them;
they do not think their own actions make much of a difference.
 Self-Esteem:
This refers to the extent to which individuals feel good about themselves
and their capabilities. People with high self-esteem believe they are
competent, deserving, and capable of handling most situations, People
with low self-esteem have poor opinions of themselves, are unsure
about their capabilities.
 Needs for Achievement, Affiliation, and Power:
McClelland has contributed with the most important set of needs for an
effective manager; which are the needs for achievement, affiliation, and
power.
The need for achievement is the extent to which an individual has a
strong desire to perform challenging tasks well and to meet personal
standards for excellence.

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The need for affiliation is the extent to which an individual is concerned
about establishing and maintaining good interpersonal relations, being
liked, and having the people around him or her.
The need for power is the extent to which an individual desires to
control or influence others.
2) Values
2-A) Defining values:
In general, values are defined as person’s sense of what is right and what
is wrong. It reflects the individual’s broad preferences concerning
appropriate courses of action.
For managers, values describes what they aim to achieve through their
jobs as individuals. Examples of these values are achievement, helping
and concern for others, honesty, and fairness.
2-B) Importance of values:
Values are important because they influence the attitudes as well as the
behavior.
2-C) Types of values:
The two kinds of personal values are terminal and instrumental. Terminal
value is a lifelong goal or objective that an individual seeks to achieve.
Examples of these terminal values are sense of achievement, equality,
self-respect, prosperous life, freedom, and social recognition.
Terminal values often lead to the formation of norms, which are
unwritten, informal codes of conduct, such as behaving honestly or
courteously, that prescribe how people should act in particular
situations and that are considered important by most members of a group
or an organization
While, instrumental value is a mode of conduct that an individual seeks
to follow. Examples of these instrumental values are feeling of

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responsibility, creativity, self-regulation, ambition (being hard working),
and open mindedness.
Both the terminal values and the instrumental values constitutes the value
system; which involves the guiding principles in an individual’s life.
3) Attitudes
In this context attitudes are work attitudes; which are defined as a
collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about their jobs
and organizations. Examples of these work attitudes are job satisfaction
and organizational commitment.
3-A) Job satisfaction:
It is defined as the collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have
about their current jobs. Managers who have high levels of job
satisfaction generally like their jobs, feel they are fairly treated, and
believe their jobs have many desirable features or characteristics (such as
interesting work, good pay and job security, autonomy, or nice
coworkers).
3-B) Organizational commitment:
It is defined as the collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have
about their organization as a whole. Managers who are committed to
their organizations believe in what their organizations are doing, are proud
of what these organizations stand for, and feel a high degree of loyalty
toward their organizations.
4) Moods and Emotions
4-A) Difference between moods and emotions
 Moods: are feelings or states of mind that longer lasting and have
no clear starting point of formation. Moods can be classified into
two main categories; positive moods and negative mood. People
with positive mood are energetic, enthusiastic, active, and excited;

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 while people with negative mood are distressed, fearful, hostile, and
nervous.

 Emotions: are more intense feelings than moods but they are more
short -lived and they evolved from a known cause. Emotions
influence the individual’s actions for a period of time through his
body language, facial expressions, and decision making.
4-B) Importance of moods and emotions
Moods and emotions are important because they influence:
 Performance: subordinates work with managers with positive
moods are more encouraged to perform effectively than those
subordinates who work with managers with negative moods.

 Emphasizing the ethical decision making: some studies find that

when solving problems related to ethical dilemmas, the part of the
brain responsible for moods and emotions is obviously active.

 Providing vital information and signals: moods and emotions

provide information and signals about what is going inside the
organization. Positive emotions and moods signal that things are
going well; while negative emotions and moods signal that there are
problems in need of attention and areas for improvement.
4-C) Emotional Intelligence
It is defined as a form of social intelligence that allows an individual to
understand and manage his/her own moods and emotions and the moods
and emotions of other people. Emotional intelligence helps managers
understand and relate well to other people. It also helps managers
maintain their enthusiasm and confidence and energize subordinates to
help the organization attain its goals.
End of Lecture (6)