PERSONALITY
Personality refers to the sum total of internal and external traits of an individual, which are
relatively stable and a set of unique characteristics that make an individual different from others.
People have some traits in common with others, and are also different from others in certain other
respects. This is why managers can not follow a uniform pattern of rewards or motivational
techniques to influence every employee’s behavior. By understanding certain dimensions of
personality, managers would, to a great extent, be able to predict the behavior of individual
employees at work.
According to Fred Luthans, “Personality means how a person affects others and how he
understands and views himself as well as the pattern of inner and outer measurable traits,
and the person-situation interaction.”
In psychology, personality is interpreted in different ways by different theorists.
Personality in terms of self, an organized, permanent, subjectively perceived entity, which is
at the very heart of all our experiences.- Cael Rogerss
Personality is what makes individuals unique, it is only through the study of personality that
the relevant differences among persons can be made clear.- Larry A. Hjelle and Daniel J.
Ziegler
The following definitions on personality are typical:
“Personality can be described as how person affects others, how he understands and views
himself, and his pattern of inner and outer measurable traits”. - Floyd L Ruch
“Personality is the dynamic organization within an individual of those psychological systems
that determine his unique adjustments to his environment”. - Gordon W Allport
The major determinants of personality are:
Biological
Hereditary: Personality may be hereditary, that is, transmitted from parents to their children
through genetics. Research done on animals has suggested this theory; however, there is
inconclusive proof whether this theory may work with humans. It is more likely that only human
temperament is transmitted through genetics.
Brain: Psychologists find it difficult to empirically relate brain physiology to personality. However,
from the electrical stimulation of the brain, they have realized that a better understanding of human
personality may come from the study of the brain.
Physical Features: Physical characteristics of a person have a tremendous influence on his/her
personality. Physical characteristics may include height, weight, attractiveness, skin color,
gender,etc.
Cultural
While culture may be considered to play an influential role in the development of one's personality,
psychologists have not found conclusive proof of this concept. Nevertheless, cultural influences on
one's personality may he vast. A person within a culture is expected to behave in a certain way that
is acceptable to the whole community.
For instance, North Americans have had the themes of industriousness, success, competition,
independence, and the Protestant work ethic constantly instilled in them through books, the school
system, family, and friends. North Americans, as a result, tend to be ambitious and aggressive
relative to individuals raised in cultures that have emphasized getting along with others,
cooperation, and the priority of family over work and career.
Familial & Situational
This process is a bit complex and is dependent upon various processes. Social processes such as our
interaction with our parents during childhood may have a great influence on our personalities.
When we interacted with our parents, we picked up their behavior. In face, there is empirical
evidence that the environment parents create at home shapes their child's personality. For
example, a child brought up in a violent home may grow up to be aggressive.
Situations seem to differ substantially in the constraints they impose on behaviour. Some
situations- e.g., church, an employment interview-constrain many behaviours; other situations- e.g.,
a picnic in public park-constrain relatively few.
The Big Five Model:
In recent years, an impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions underlie and
encompass most of the significant variation in human personality. The Big Five Factors are:
1. Extroversion: - This dimension captures one’s comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend
to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
2. Agreeableness: - these dimensions refer to an individual’s propensity to defer to others. Highly
agreeable people are cooperative, warm, and trusting. People who score low on agreeableness are
cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
3. Conscientiousness: - This dimension 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.
4. Emotional stability: - This dimension taps 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.
5. Openness to experience: - The final dimension addresses one’s 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.
In addition to providing a unifying personality framework, research on the Big Five also has found
important relationships between these personality dimensions and job performance.
Job Performance was defined in terms of performance ratings, training proficiency (performance
during training programs), and personnel data such as salary level.
Extroversion predicted performance in managerial and sales positions. This finding makes sense
because those occupations involve high social interaction.
“The preponderance of evidence shows that individuals who are dependable, reliable, careful,
thorough, able to plan, organized, hardworking, persistent, and achievement-oriented tend to have
higher job performance in most if not all occupations.
Employees who score higher in conscientiousness develop higher levels of job knowledge,
probably because highly conscientious people expert greater levels of effort on their jobs. The
higher levels of job knowledge then contribute to higher levels of job performance.
Positive emotional stability was not related to job performance. It would seem that people who
are calm and secure would do better on almost all jobs than people who are anxious and insecure.
Only people who score fairly high on emotional stability retain their jobs.
Openness to experience was found to be important in predicting training proficiency, which, too,
seems logical.
Major Personality Attributes Influencing OB:
We want to more carefully evaluate specific personality attributes that have been found to be
powerful predictors of behaviour in organizations. The first is related to where one perceives the
locus of control in one’s life. The other are Michaivellianism, self-esteem, self-monitoring,
propensity for risk taking, and type “A” personality. These major personality attributes are
briefly discussed below:
1. Locus of Control:
Some people believe that they are masters of their own fate. These types, those who believe that
they control their destinies, have been labeled internals. Other people see themselves as pawns of
fate, believing that what happens to them in their lives is due to luck or chance and see their lives as
being controlled by outside forces, which have been called externals. A person’s perception of the
source of his or her fate is termed locus of control.
A large amount of research comparing internals with externals has consistently shown that
individuals who rate high in externality are less satisfied with their jobs, have higher absenteeism
rates, are more alienated from the work setting, and are less involved on their jobs than are
internals.
Internals exhibit more motivation and willingness to take action in their initial interviews, which
has been shown to relate to significantly more second interviews.
Internals believe that health is substantially under their own control through proper habits, so they
take more responsibility for their health and have better health habits. Consequently, their
incidences of sickness and, hence, of absenteeism, are lower.
Internals search more actively for information before making a decision, are more motivated to
achieve, and make a greater attempt to control their environment.
Externals, however, are most complaint and willing to follow directions. Therefore, internals do
well on sophisticated tasks-which include most managerial and professional jobs-that require
complex information processing and learning. In addition, internals are most suited to jobs that
require initiative and independence of action. Almost all successful sales people, for instance, are
internals. Because it’s pretty difficult to succeed in sales if you don’t believe you can effectively
influence outcomes.
Externals should do well on jobs that are well structured and routine and in which success depends
heavily on complying with the direction of others.
2. Machiavellianism:
The personality characteristic of Machiavellianism (Mach) is named after Nccolo Machiavelli, who
wrote in the sixteenth century on how to gain and use power. An individual high in
Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance.
High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low
Machs. It has been found that high Machs flourish
1.When they interact face to face with others rather than indirectly;
2. When the situation has a minimum number of rules and regulations, thus allowing attitude for
improvisation;
3. When emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning distracts low Machs.
In jobs that require bargaining skills (such as labor negotiation) or that offer substantial rewards
for winning (as in commissioned sales), high Machs will be productive.
3. Self-Esteem: People differ in the degree to which they like or dislike themselves. This trait is
called self-esteem. Self-esteem is directly related to expectations for success. High SEs believe that
they posses the ability they need to succeed at work.
Individuals with high self-esteem will take more risks in job selection and are more likely to choose
unconventional jobs than people with low self-esteem.
Low SEs are more susceptible to external influence than are high SEs. Low SEs are dependent on
the receipt of positive evaluations from others. As a result, they are more likely to seek approval
from others and more prone to conform to the beliefs and behaviours of those they respect than are
high SEs.
In managerial positions, low SEs will tend to be concerned with pleasing others and, therefore, are
likely to take unpopular stands than are high SEs.
4. Self-Monitoring: A personality trait that has recently received increased attention is called self-
monitoring. It refers to an individual’s ability to adjust his or her behaviour to external, situational
factors.
Individuals high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability in adjusting their behaviour to
external situational factors. They are highly sensitive to external cues and can behave differently in
different situations. High self-monitors, are capable of presenting striking contradictions between
their public persona and their private self.
Low self-monitors can’t disguise themselves in that way. They tend to display their true
dispositions and attitudes in every situation; hence, there is high behavioral consistency between
who they are and what they do.
High self-monitors tend to pay closer attention to the behavior of others and are more capable of
conforming than are low self-monitors. In addition, high self-monitoring managers tend to be more
mobile in their careers, receive more promotions (both internal and cross organizational), and are
more likely to occupy central positions in an organization.
We might also hypothesize that high self-monitors will be more successful in managerial positions
in which individuals are required to play multiple, and even contradicting, roles. The high self-
monitor is capable of putting on different “faces” for different audiences.
5. Risk Taking: People differ in their willingness to take chances. This propensity to assume or
avoid risk has been shown to have an impact on how long it takes managers to make a decision and
how much information they require before making their choice.
High risk taking managers made more rapid decisions and used less information in making their
choices than did the low risk-taking managers. Interestingly, the decision accuracy was the same for
both groups.
In general, managers in large organizations tend to be risk averse, especially in contrast to growth-
oriented entrepreneurs who actively mange small businesses. A high risk-taking propensity may
lead to more effective performance for a stock trader in a brokerage firm because that type of job
demands rapid decision making. On the other hand, a willingness to take risks might prove a major
obstacle to an accountant who performs auditing activities. The latter job might be better filled by
someone with a low risk-taking propensity.
6. Type “A” Personality: A person with a Type “A” personality is “aggressively involved in a
chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and, if required to do so,
against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons”.
Type A’s
1. are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly;
2. feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place;
3. strive to think or do two or more things at once;
4. cannot cope with leisure time;
5. are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of
everything they acquire.
Type B’s are “rarely harried by the desire to obtain a widely increasing number of things or
participate in an endless growing series of events in an ever-decreasing amount of time.
Type B’s
1. never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience;
2. feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments unless such
exposure is demanded by the situation;
3. play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost;
4. can relax without guilt.
Type A’s operate under moderate to high levels of stress. They subject themselves to more or less
continuous time pressure, creating for themselves a life of deadlines.
For example, Type A’s are fast workers, because they emphasize quantity over quality. In
managerial positions, Type A’s demonstrate their competitiveness by working long hours and, not
infrequently, making poor decisions because they make them too fast. Type A’s are also rarely
creative. Because of their concern with quantity and speed, they rely on past experiences when
faced with problems. They will not allocate the time necessary to develop unique solutions to new
problems. They rarely vary in their responses to specific challenges in their milieu; hence, their
behaviour is easier to predict than that of Type B’s.
Type A’s do better in job interviews because they are more likely to be judged as having desirable
traits such as high drive, competence, aggressiveness, and success motivation.
Despite the Type A’s hard work, the Type B’s are the ones who appear to make it to the top. Great
salespersons are usually Type A’s; senior executives are usually Type B’s. The answer lies in the
tendency of Type A’s to trade off quality of effort for quantity. Promotions in corporate and
professional organizations “usually go to those who are wise rather than to those who are merely
hasty, to those who are tactful rather than to those who are hostile, and to those who are creative
rather than to those who are merely agile in competitiveness strife.
LEARNING
“Learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs as a result of
prior experience.”
“Generally it is described as the process if having one’s behaviour modified, more or less
permanently, by what he does and the consequences of his actions, or by what he observes.”
Simply told, learning is understood as the modification of behaviour through practice, training, or
experience. This simple meaning needs to be supplemented with five important components of
learning so as to make its import clear.
CHARACTERISTICS OF LEARNING
1. Learning involves a change in behaviour. This may be good or bad from an organizational
point of view.
2. The behavioural change must be relatively permanent. Temporary changes may be reflexive
and fail to represent any learning.
3. The change in behaviour must occur as a result of experience. The change may not be
evident until a situation arises in which a new behaviour can occur.
4. Learning is reflected in behaviour. A change in human’s thought, process, attitude, not
accompanied by behaviour is no learning.
5. The practice of learning must be reinforced in order for learning to occur.
Learning occurs all the time. Any relatively permanent change in behavior indicates that occurs as a
result of experience. Changes in behavior indicate that learning has taken place and that learning is
a change in behavior.
Learning has taken place if an individual behaves, reacts, responds as a result of experience in a
manner different from the way he formally behaved.
Theories of Learning:
Three theories have been offered to explain the process by which we acquire patterns of behavior.
These are:
1. Classical Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning
3. Cognitive Learning
4. Social Learning
1.Classical Conditioning: Classical Conditioning states that behavior is learned by repetitive
association between a stimulus and a response (S-R association).Classical Conditioning grew out of
experiments to teach dogs to salivate in response to the ringing of a bell, conducted at the turn of
the century by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.
I. Before conditioning
(i). Meat (US) Salivation (UR)
(ii). Bell (Neutral stimulus) No response
II. During conditioning
(iii). Meat (US) + Bell (CS) Salivation (UR)
III. After conditioning
(iv). Bell (CS) Salivation (CR)
(Figure: Classical conditioning)
(i). When Pavlov presented a dog with a piece of meat; the dog exhibited a noticeable increase in
salivation.
(ii). When Pavlov withheld the presentation of meat and merely rang a bell, the dog did not salivate.
(iii). Then Pavlov proceeded to link the meat and the ringing of the bell. After repeatedly hearing
the bell before getting the food, the dog began to salivate as soon as the bell rang.
(iv). After a while, the dog would salivate merely at the sound of the bell, even if no food were
offered.
(v). In effect, the dog had learned to respond-that is, to salivate-to the bell.
The meat was an unconditioned stimulus; it invariably caused the dog to react in a specific way.
The reaction that took place whenever the unconditional stimulus occurred was called the
unconditional response (or the noticeable increase in salivation, in this case). The bell was an
artificial stimulus, or what we call the conditioned stimulus.
Using these concepts, we can summarize classical conditioning. Essentially, learning a conditioned
response involves building up an association between a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned
stimulus. When the stimuli, one compelling and the other one neutral, are paired, the neutral one
becomes a conditioned stimulus and, hence, takes on the properties of the unconditioned stimulus.
In an organizational setting, we can also see classical conditioning operating. For example at one
manufacturing plant, every time the top executives from the head office were scheduled to make a
visit, the plant management would clean up the administrative offices and wash the windows. This
went on for years. Eventually, employees would turn on their best behavior and look prim and
proper whenever the windows were cleaned-even in those occasional instances when the cleaning
was not paired with the visit from the top brass. People had learned to associate the cleaning of the
windows with a visit from the head office.
Classical conditioning is passive. Something happens and we react in a specific way. It is elicited in
response to a specific, identifiable event. As such, it can explain simple reflexive behaviors.
2. Operant Conditioning: Operant conditioning argues that behavior is a function of its
consequences. People learn to behave to get something they want or to avoid something they don’t
want. Operant behavior means voluntary or learned behavior in contrast to reflexive or unlearned
behavior (Classical).
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, refers to the process that our behavior
produces certain consequences and how we behave in the future will depend on what those
consequences are. If our actions have pleasant effects, we are less likely to repeat them in the
future. If however, our actions have unpleasant effects, we are less likely to repeat them in the
future. Thus, according to this theory, behavior is the function of its consequences.
Operant conditioning emphasizes voluntary behaviors. Researchers call them “operant behavior”
because they operate on the environment (hence the term operant) they make the environment
respond in ways that we want.
Assume that your boss tells you that if you will work overtime during the next three-week busy
season, you will be compensated for it at the next performance appraisal. However, when
performance appraisal time comes, you find that you are given no positive reinforcement for your
overtime work. The next time your boss asks you to work overtime, you’ll probably decline!
Differences between Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning
S. No. Classical Conditioning Operant Conditioning
1 Responses are elicited from a person (reactive). Responses are emitted by a person (proactive).
2 Responses are fixed to stimulus (no choice). Responses are variable in types and degrees (choice).
3 Conditioned Stimulus (CS) is stimulus such as Conditioned Stimulus (CS) is a situation such as office,
sound, an object, a person a social setting, a specific set of circumstances.
4 Reinforcement is not received by choice. Person of instrumental is securing reinforcement
by “operating” on the environment.
3. Cognitive Learning Theory:
Cognition refers to an individual’s ideas, thoughts, knowledge, interpretations, and understanding
about himself and his environment. Cognitive theory of learning is based on the cognitive model of
human behavior. This model draws heavily from the work done by Tolman. Cognitive model is used
in a number of psychological processes like perception, learning, attitude formation, and
motivation. The cognitive approach emphasis the positive and free will aspects of human behavior.
Applying the concept of cognition in learning implies that organism learns the meaning of various
objects and events and learned responses depend on the meaning assigned to stimuli. Cognitive
theorists argue that the learner forms a cognitive structure in memory, preserves and organizes
information about the various events that occur in a learning situation.
Tolman, in his famous place-learning experiments, trained a rat to turn right in a “T” maze in order
to obtain food. Then he started the rat from the opposite part of the maze; according to operant
conditioning theory, the rat should have turned right because of past conditioning. But the rat,
instead, turned towards where the food had been placed. This phenomenon forced Tolman to
conclude that the rat formed a cognitive map to figure out how to get the food and reinforcement
was not a precondition for learning to take place. Thus, in learning:
1. Stimulus (S) leads to another stimulus or S-S, rather than the classical S-R or the operant R-S
explanation and
2.Learning consists of relationship between cognitive environmental cues and expectation and
behavior is goal-directed.
Cognitive theory of learning has a number of implications. Most of the early human relations
training programmes were based on this concept. Various training programmes were designed to
strengthen three relationships between cognitive cues (organizational, supervisory, and job
procedures) and worker expectations (incentive payments for good performance). In the context of
the modern organizational behavior, this theory has relevance in the field of motivation, as it is a
cognitive process. Thus, various expectancy theories of motivation derive clues from cognitive
theory of learning.
4. Social Learning: Individuals can also learn by observing what happens to other people and just
by being told about something, as well as by direct experiences. For example, much of what we have
learned comes from watching models-parents, teachers, peers, motion picture and television
performers, bosses, and so forth. This view that we can learn through both observation and direct
experience has been called social-learning theory.
Social learning theory assumes that, behavior is a function of consequences-it also acknowledges
the existence of observational learning and the importance of perception in learning. People
respond to how they perceive and define consequences, not to the objective consequences
themselves.
The influence of models is central to the social-learning viewpoint. Four processes have been found
to determine the influence that a model will have on an individual.
1. Attentional Processes: People learn from a model only when they recognize and pay
attention to its critical features. We tend to be most influenced by models that are attractive,
repeatedly available, important to us, or similar to us in our estimation.
2. Retention Processes: A model’s influence will depend on how well the individual
remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.
3. Motor Reproduction Processes: After a person has seen a new behaviour by observing the
model, the watching must be converted to doing. This process then demonstrates that the
individual can perform the modeled activities.
4. Reinforcement Processes: Individuals will be motivated to exhibit the modeled behaviour
if positive incentives or rewards are provided. Behaviours that are positively reinforcement
will be given more attention, learned better, and performed more often.
