I. Write a reflection paper on Personality and values. Your reflection paper sho
ID: 3216337 • Letter: I
Question
I. Write a reflection paper on Personality and values. Your reflection paper should include the following points: [Module 5] (15 pts.) [CLO5- CS5 ]
1) Describe of personality, its measurement and the factors that shape it.
2) Describe Myer s-Briggs Type Indicator personality frame work and its strengths and weaknesses
3) Identify the traits in the Big Five personality Model
4) Describe how the five big traits predict behavior at work.
5) Describe how the situation affects whether personality predict behavior
6) Contrast generational differences in values.
7) Identify Hofstede’s five value dimensions of national culture.
Explanation / Answer
ØDefining Personality
Personality is a dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person’s whole psychological system.The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.
ØMeasuring Personality
Managers need to know how to measure personality.Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and help managers forecast who is best for a job.The most common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys.
ØPersonality Determinants
Is personality the result of heredity or environment?Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomesEarly research tried to identify and label enduring personality characteristics.Shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal, and timid.These are personality traits.
ØThe most widely used personality framework is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
ØIndividuals are classified as:
ØExtroverted or Introverted (E or I)
ØSensing or Intuitive (S or N)
ØThinking or Feeling (T or F)
ØPerceiving or Judging (P or J)
ØINTJs are visionaries.
ØESTJs are organizers.
ØENTPs are conceptualizers.
ØThe Big Five Model
ØExtraversion
ØAgreeableness
ØConscientiousness
ØEmotional stability
ØOpenness to experience
An impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions underlie all other personality dimensions. The five basic dimensions are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Let’s look at each of these for a minute.
Extraversion is a comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
Agreeableness is an Individual’s propensity to defer to others. People who are high on agreeableness are cooperative, warm, and trusting. Low agreeableness is indicated by people who are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
Conscientiousness is a measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
Emotional stability describes a person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
And lastly, openness to experience suggests the range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.
All five traits also have other implications for work and for life. Let’s look at these one at a time. Exhibit 5-2 summarizes the points.
Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels.
People with high emotional stability can adapt to unexpected or changing demands in the workplace.
Extraverts tend to perform better in jobs that require significant interpersonal interaction. Extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership emergence in groups. One downside is that extraverts are more impulsive than introverts and may be more likely than introverts to lie during job interviews.
Individuals who score high on openness to experience are more likely to be effective leaders and are more comfortable with ambiguity. They cope better with organizational change and are more adaptable in changing contexts. Agreeable individuals are better liked than disagreeable people, which explains why they tend to do better in interpersonally-oriented jobs such as customer service.
They are also more compliant and rule abiding and less likely to get into accidents as a result. People who are agreeable are more satisfied in their jobs and contribute to organizational performance by engaging in citizenship behavior. They are also less likely to engage in organizational deviance.
One downside is that agreeableness is associated with lower levels of career success (especially earnings).
The five personality factors identified in the Big Five model appear in almost all cross-cultural studies.
These studies have included a wide variety of diverse cultures such as China, Israel, Germany, Japan, Spain, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, and the United States. Generally, the findings corroborate what has been found in U.S. research: of the Big Five traits, conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance.
The Dark Triad is a group of negative personality traits including Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy – all three of which have relevance for organizational behavior.
Machiavellianism is the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. Narcissism refers to the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of entitlement. And psychopathy is the tendency for a lack of concern for others and a lack of guilt or remorse when their actions cause harm.
The Dark Triad is a helpful framework for studying the three dominant dark-side traits in current personality research, and researchers are exploring other traits as well.
One emerging framework incorporates five additional aberrant compound traits based on the Big Five.
•First, antisocial people are indifferent and callous toward others.
Second, borderline people have low self-esteem and high uncertainty.
ØSituation strength theory: indicates that the way personality translates into behavior depends on the strength of the situation.
ØThe degree to which norms, cues, or standards dictate appropriate behavior.
ØClarity
ØConsistency
ØConstraints
ØConsequences
Research shows that the effect of a particular trait on organizational behavior depends on the situation. Two theoretical frameworks that can help explain this are the situation strength theory and trait activation theory.
Situation strength in an organization can be analyzed in terms of:
•Clarity, or the degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are available and clear.
•Consistency, or the extent to which cues regarding work duties and responsibilities are compatible with one another.
•Constraints, or the extent to which individuals’ freedom to decide or act is limited by forces outside their control.
•Consequences, or the degree to which decisions or actions have important implications for the organization or its members, clients, supplies, and so on.
6)
Values represent basic convictions that a person has about what is right, good, or desirable. Values have both content and intensity attributes, and have the tendency to be stable and enduring. An individual’s set of values ranked in terms of intensity is considered the person’s value system. Values lay the foundation for our understanding of attitudes and motivation and generally influence attitudes and behaviors.
Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures suggests five value dimensions of national culture.
•Power distance: is the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
•Individualism versus collectivism: individualism is the degree to which people in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups. Collectivism emphasizes a tight social framework in which people expect others in groups in which they are a part to look after them and protect them.
•Masculinity versus femininity: masculinity is the degree to which values such as the acquisition of money and material goods prevail. Femininity is the degree to which people value relationships and show sensitivity and concern for others.
•Uncertainty avoidance: is the degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situations.
•Long-term versus short-term orientation: long-term orientations look to the future and value thrift and persistence. Short-term orientation values the here and now; they accept change more readily and don’t see commitments as impediments to change.