Chapter 8: Personality
Learning Objectives
In this chapter, we will:
- Define personality, values, and attitudes.
- Explain the link between personality, values, attitudes, and work behaviour.
- Appreciate the diversity of methods that are used to measure personality characteristics.
- Describe different theories of personality.
- Understand how personality interacts with job, organizational, and situational factors to produce behaviours in the workplace.
Our personality 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. In order to effectively manage organizational behaviour, an understanding of different employees’ personalities is helpful. Having this knowledge is also useful for placing people in jobs and organizations. In this chapter, we will define personality and explore how attitudes, values, and personality influence our behaviours. In addition, we will explore how personality is measured and some well-known theories of personality. Finally, we will bring all this information together to discuss how personality impacts behaviours in the workplace.
