1.8 Individual Behaviour and Approaches

Organizational behaviour concerns the individual, teams, and the organization itself.  It looks at how people think, feel, and behave.

Individuals bring several differences to work, such as unique personalities, values, emotions, and moods. When new employees enter organizations, their stable or transient characteristics affect their behaviour and performance. Moreover, companies hire people expecting those individuals to have certain skills, abilities, personalities, and values. Therefore, it is important to understand individual characteristics that matter for employee behaviours at work.

When hiring employees, companies are interested in assessing at least two types of fit. Person-organization fit refers to the degree to which a person’s values, personality, goals, and other characteristics match those of the organization. Person-job fit is the degree to which a person’s skill, knowledge, abilities, and other characteristics match the job demands. Thus, a proactive and creative person 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 rewards routine and predictable behaviour, such as accountants. Similarly, this person may be an excellent fit for a job such as a scientist but a poor fit for a routine office job.

Values

Values refer to stable life goals that people have, reflecting what is most important to them. Values are established throughout one’s life because of the accumulating life experiences and tend to be relatively stable (Lusk & Oliver, 1974; Rokeach, 1973). The values that are important to people tend to affect their decisions, how they perceive their environment, and their actual behaviours. Moreover, people are more likely to accept job offers when the company possesses the values people care about (Judge & Bretz, 1992; Ravlin & Meglino, 1987). Value attainment is one reason people stay in a company, and when an organization does not help them attain their values, they are more likely to leave if they are dissatisfied with the job itself (George & Jones, 1996).

Personality

Personality encompasses the relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioural patterns a person has. 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 various situations. To manage organizational behaviour effectively, an understanding of different employees’ personalities is helpful. Having this knowledge is also useful for placing people in jobs and organizations.

Big Five Personality Traits 

How many personality traits are there? How do we even know? In every language, there are many words describing a person’s personality. In fact, more than 15,000 words describing personality have been identified in the English language. When researchers analyzed the terms describing personality characteristics, they realized that many words pointed to each dimension of personality. When these words were grouped, five dimensions seemed to emerge that explain a lot of the variation in our personalities (Goldberg, 1990). Remember that these five are not necessarily the only traits out there. Other specific traits represent dimensions not captured by the Big Five. Still, understanding the main five traits gives us a good start for describing personality. A summary of the Big Five traits is presented in Figure 1.8.1.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Aside from the Big Five personality traits, perhaps the most well-known and most often used personality assessment is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Unlike the Big Five, which assesses traits, MBTI measures types. Assessments of the Big Five do not classify people as neurotic or extrovert: It is all a matter of degrees. MBTI on the other hand, classifies people as one of 16 types (Carlyn, 1977; Myers, 1962). In MBTI, people are grouped using four dimensions. Based on how a person is classified on these four dimensions, it is possible to talk about 16 unique personality types, such as ESTJ and ISTP.

 Self-Monitoring

Self-Monitoring refers to the extent to which a person can monitor his or her actions and appearance in social situations. In other words, high social monitors are social chameleons who understand what the situation demands and act accordingly, while low social monitors tend to act the way they feel (Snyder, 1974; Snyder, 1987). High social monitors are sensitive to the types of behaviours the social environment expects from them. Their greater ability to modify their behaviour according to the demands of the situation and to manage their impressions effectively is a great advantage for them (Turnley & Bolino, 2001). In general, they tend to be more successful in their careers. They are more likely to get cross-company promotions, and even when they stay with one company, they are more likely to advance (Day & Schleicher; Kilduff & Day, 1994). Social monitors also become the “go to” person in their company and they enjoy central positions in their social networks (Mehra, Kilduff, & Brass, 2001). They are rated as higher performers, and emerge as leaders (Day et al., 2002)

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the degree to which a person has overall positive feelings about his or herself. People with high self-esteem view themselves in a positive light, are confident, and respect themselves. On the other hand, people with low self-esteem experience high levels of self-doubt and question their self-worth. High self-esteem is related to higher levels of satisfaction with one’s job and higher levels of performance on the job (Judge & Bono, 2001). People with low self-esteem are attracted to situations in which they will be relatively invisible, such as large companies (Turban & Keon, 1993). Managing employees with low self-esteem may be challenging at times, because negative feedback given with the intention to improve performance may be viewed as a judgment on their worth as an employee. Therefore, effectively managing employees with relatively low self-esteem requires tact and providing lots of positive feedback when discussing performance incidents.

Locus of Control

Locus of control deals with the degree to which people feel accountable for their own behaviours. Individuals with high internal locus of control believe that they control their own destiny and what happens to them is their own doing, while those with high external locus of control feel that things happen to them because of other people, luck, or a powerful being. Internals feel greater control over their own lives and therefore they act in ways that will increase their chances of success.

Personality Testing in Employee Selection

Personality is a potentially important predictor of work behaviour. Matching people to jobs matters because when people do not fit with their jobs or the company, they are more likely to leave, costing companies as much as a person’s annual salary to replace them. In job interviews, companies try to assess a candidate’s personality and the potential for a good match, but interviews are only as good as the people conducting them. In fact, interviewers are not particularly good at detecting the best trait that predicts performance: conscientiousness (Barrick, Patton, & Haugland, 2000). Some companies use personality testing to improve this match and detect the people who are potentially good job candidates.

Yet are these methods good ways of selecting employees? Experts have not yet agreed on this subject, which is highly controversial. Some experts believe, based on data, that personality tests predict performance and other important criteria such as job satisfaction. However, we must understand that how a personality test is used influences its validity.

In any case, if you decide to use these tests for selection, you need to be aware of their limitations. Relying only on personality tests for the selection of an employee is a bad idea, but if they are used together with other tests such as tests of cognitive abilities, better decisions may be made.

Perception

Our behaviour is not only a function of our personality, values, and preferences but also of the situation. We interpret our environment, formulate responses, and act accordingly. Perception may be defined as the process with 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 in our environment, pay selective attention to some aspects of the environment, and ignore other elements that may be immediately apparent to other people. 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 interesting or important to you jumps out of the page and catches your eye?

Visual Perception:  You may have realized that our visual perception is faulty and may make witness testimony faulty and biased. How do we know whether the employee you judge to be hardworking, fast, and neat is really like that? Is it true, or are we comparing this person to others in the immediate environment? Our biased visual perception may lead to the wrong inferences about the people around us.

Self-Perception: Human beings are prone to errors and biases when perceiving themselves. Moreover, the type of bias people have depends on their personality. Many people suffer from self-enhancement bias. This is the tendency to overestimate our performance and capabilities and see ourselves in a more positive light than others see us.  At the same time, other people have the opposing extreme, which may be labelled as self-effacement bias. This is the tendency for people to underestimate their performance, undervalue capabilities, and see events in a way that puts them in a more negative light.

Motivation (Employee Engagement)

Employee Engagement is an individual’s motivation on a cognitive (logical) and emotional (feelings) level to work toward organizational goals. Employees make a commitment to their employer and to their job tasks. Motivated employees believe they have the skills, clear goals and the resources to complete their work. Engaged employees are enthusiastic to come to work, are dedicated to their job, are productive and dedicated workers. Employee engagement is critical to a company’s success. Employers can encourage employee engagement through effective communication, offering rewards and career advancement.

Human Resources plays a critical role in engaging employees and can have an impact through:

• Transparency and inclusion:  ensure everyone has a “voice” to share ideas, acknowledge differences among employees, create opportunities for employees to meet/gather, ensure all employees understand the goals, values and beliefs in the company and provide employees with a sense of purpose within the organization.
• Communication: ensure employees have a clear sense of the job and the expectations, share information with employees, have regular conversations with employees (formal and informal, provide training in communication
• Recognition: ensure employees are recognized for achievements and accomplishments, reward employees through advancement, and celebrate accomplishments (big and small).
• Well-being: create and promote a learning culture of well-being through meetings, informal chats, break periods, and organization activities (annual picnic, sports days, etc.), model the behaviours that are expected to promote well-being, identify signs of stress and eliminate toxic environments.
• Connectedness: develop relationships with employees, develop cross-department relationships, build rapport within teams, form project teams/working groups that promote team building, provide training in team building, and host events that create shared experiences professionally and socially.

Human Resources can send out engagement surveys to identify interests or issues with employees.  The employees have an opportunity to voice their opinions to assist in improving job satisfaction and “happy” employees.  Regardless of the engagement tactic, engaged employees feel connected to their work because they can relate to and are committed to the organization’s overall success.

“3.2 The Interactionist Perspective: The Role of Fit”  & “3.3 Individual Differences: Values and Personality” & “3.4 Perception” from Organizational Behavior by University of Minnesota are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.