SEU Employee Performance Question

‫المملكة العربية السعودية‬
‫وزارة التعليم‬
‫الجامعة السعودية اإللكترونية‬
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Education
Saudi Electronic University
College of Administrative and Financial Sciences
Assignment 2
Organizational Behaviour (MGT 301)
Due Date: 09/04/2022 @ 23:59
Course Name: Organizational Behaviour
Student’s Name:
Course Code: MGT301
Student’s ID Number:
Semester: Second
CRN:
Academic Year:2021-22-2nd
For Instructor’s Use only
Instructor’s Name: Suliman Albawardi
Students’ Grade: 00/ 10
Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low
General Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated
folder.
Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented, marks may be reduced
for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
Late submission will NOT be accepted.
Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other
resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No
pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.
Learning Outcomes:
1 Describe management issues such as diversity, attitudes and job satisfaction, personality,
and values in organizational behaviour. (CLO2).
Reference Source:
Textbook:Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2021). Organizational behavior:
Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (7th ed). Burr Ridge, IL:
McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Case Study: –
Case: MARRIOTT
Please read the case “MARRIOT” from Chapter 9 “PERSONALITY AND CULTURAL
VALUES” Page: – 292 given in your textbook – Organizational behaviour: Improving
performance and commitment in the workplace (7th ed). by Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A.,
& Wesson, M. J. (2021) and Answer the following Questions:
Assignment Question(s):
Part:-1
1. Can you think of other jobs in Marriott where Big Five dimensions other than
agreeableness and conscientiousness would be vital? (02 Marks ) (Min words 150-200)
2. If you applied for a job that involved a personality assessment, would you be honest in
your responses or would you exaggerate your answers to appear more desirable? Why?
(02 Marks ) (Min words 150-200)
3. What other approaches might companies use to assess personality during hiring, other
than an interview or assessment? What strengths and weaknesses might those other
approaches have? (02 Marks ) (Min words 150-200)
Important Note: – Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and
theories from the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.
Part:-2
Discussion questions: Please read Chapter 9 “PERSONALITY AND CULTURAL
VALUES” carefully and then give your answers on the basis of your understanding.
4. Assume that you applied for a job and were asked to take a personality test, like the
one offered by Kronos. How would you react? Would you view the organization with
which you were applying in a more or less favorable light? Why? (2 Marks) (Min words
200-300)
5. If you owned your own business and had a problem with employee theft, would you
use an integrity test? Why or why not? (2 Marks) (Min words 150-200)
Important Note: – Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and
theories from the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.
Due date for the submission of Assignment:- 2
• Assignment should be posted in the Black Board by end of Week-07.
• The due date for the submission of Assignment- end of Week-11.
Answers
1. Answer-
2. Answer3. Answer4. Answer5. Answer-
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9
Personality and
Cultural Values
ORGANIZATIONAL
MECHANISMS
Organizational
Culture
Organizational
Structure
INDIVIDUAL
MECHANISMS
GROUP
MECHANISMS
Job
Satisfaction
Leadership:
Styles &
Behaviors
Leadership:
Power &
Negotiation
Teams:
Processes &
Communication
Teams:
Characteristics &
Diversity
Stress
INDIVIDUAL
OUTCOMES
Job
Performance
Motivation
Trust, Justice,
& Ethics
Organizational
Commitment
Learning &
Decision Making
INDIVIDUAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Ability
Personality &
Cultural Values
LEARNING GOALS
After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:
9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
9.5
9.6
9.7
What is personality? What are cultural values?
What are the “Big Five”?
Is personality driven by nature or by nurture?
What taxonomies can be used to describe personality, other than the Big Five?
What taxonomies can be used to describe cultural values?
How does personality affect job performance and organizational commitment?
Are personality tests useful tools for organizational hiring?
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MARRIOTT
W
hat kinds of personality traits would you look for
in a server? How about for an entry-level salesperson? Or how about for a vice president or chief
operating officer? Those are the sorts of questions human
resource professionals at Marriott ponder when making
hiring decisions. Indeed, those sorts of questions wind up
being especially critical at Marriott because people hired
into one job often wind up staying long enough to hold
other jobs—many other jobs. For example, Bob McCarthy, a
former chief operating officer, started his career at Marriott
as a server. As another example, Erika Alexander, a vice
president, started out as a salesperson. That sort of long
career is common at Marriott, where the average tenure for
a hotel general manager is 25 years. Such long stays are
understandable given the key perk that comes with joining
the Quarter Century Club: free weekend hotel stays for life.
To hire into such potentially long careers, Marriott has a
simple philosophy: “hire friendly, train technical.” The company tries to screen for people who are helpful, cordial,
Randy Duchaine/Alamy
kind, and sociable, reasoning that such traits will be beneficial in most jobs in a hospitality company. Once that’s
done, the company can worry about imparting the specific
skills needed in a particular job. Marriott’s philosophy makes
sense given that job-relevant skills can be trained but fundamental traits are more hard-wired.
How does Marriott go about screening for friendliness?
Aside from its interview process, it uses an online assessment. “It tests personality,” explains David Rodriguez—
Marriott’s chief human resource officer. Although he admits
that the assessment is not “foolproof,” he also notes, “We
tell general managers, ‘If you hire more of the top-scoring
people, you will see less turnover.’” In addition to screening
for friendliness, Marriott’s assessment measures dependability. After all, it’s hard to chart out a long and successful
career in any company if you can’t be counted on to follow
through. As Stephanie Linnartz, Marriott’s chief commercial
marketing officer summarizes, “There’s the idea that anyone
can make it to the top here if you work really hard.”
263
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CHAPTER 9
Personality and Cultural Values
PERSONALITY AND CULTURAL VALUES
9.1
What is personality? What are
cultural values?
As the opening illustrates, a company can gain from paying close attention to the personality of its
employees when making decisions about hiring and development. Personality refers to the structures and propensities inside people that explain their characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.1 Personality creates people’s social reputations—the way they are perceived
by friends, family, coworkers, and supervisors.2 In this way, personality captures what people are
like. That’s in contrast to ability, the subject of Chapter 10, which captures what people can do.
Although we sometimes describe people as having “a good personality,” personality is actually
a collection of multiple traits. Traits are defined as recurring regularities or trends in people’s
responses to their environment.3 Adjectives such as “responsible,” “easygoing,” “polite,” and
“reserved” are examples of traits that can be used to summarize someone’s personality.
As we’ll describe later, personality traits are a function of both your genes and your environment. One important piece of the environmental part of that equation is the culture in which you
were raised. Cultural values are defined as shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of
conduct in a given culture.4 You can think of cultural values as capturing what cultures are like.
Adjectives such as “traditional,” “informal,” “risk averse,” or “assertive” are all examples of values
that can be used to summarize a nation’s culture. Cultural values can influence the development
of people’s personality traits, as well as how those traits are expressed in daily life. In this way, a
responsible person in the United States may act somewhat differently than a responsible person
in China, just as an easygoing person in France may act somewhat differently than an easygoing
person in Indonesia.
HOW CAN WE DESCRIBE WHAT
EMPLOYEES ARE LIKE?
We can use personality traits and cultural values to describe what employees are like. For example,
how would you describe your first college roommate to one of your classmates? You’d start off
using certain adjectives—maybe the roommate was funny and outgoing or maybe frugal and organized. Of course, it would take more than a few adjectives to describe your roommate fully. You
could probably go on listing traits for several minutes, maybe even coming up with 100 traits or
more. Although 100 traits may sound like a lot, personality researchers note that the third edition
of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary contained 1,710 adjectives that can be used to describe someone’s traits!5 Was your roommate abrasive, adulterous, agitable, alarmable, antisocial, arbitrative,
arrogant, asocial, audacious, aweless, and awkward? We hope not!
THE BIG FIVE TAXONOMY
9.2
What are the “Big Five”?
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With 1,710 adjectives, you might be worrying about the length of this chapter (or the difficulty
of your next exam!). Fortunately, it turns out that most adjectives are variations of five broad
dimensions or “factors” that can be used to summarize our personalities.6 Those five personality
dimensions include conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and
extraversion. Collectively, these dimensions have been dubbed the Big Five.7 Figure 9-1 lists the
traits that can be found within each of the Big Five dimensions. We acknowledge that it can be
hard to remember the particular labels for the Big Five dimensions, and we wish there was some
acronym that could make the process easier. . . .
Would you like to see what your Big Five profile looks like? Our OB Assessments feature will
show you where you stand on each of the five dimensions. After you’ve gotten a feel for your
personality profile, you might be wondering about some of the following questions: How does
personality develop? Why do people have the traits that they possess? Will those traits change
over time? All of these questions are variations on the “nature vs. nurture” debate: Is personality
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CHAPTER 9
FIGURE 9-1
Personality and Cultural Values
265
Trait Adjectives Associated with the Big Five
C
A
N
O
E
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness
Extraversion
• Dependable
• Organized
• Reliable
• Ambitious
• Hardworking
• Persevering
NOT
• Careless
• Sloppy
• Inefficient
• Negligent
• Lazy
• Irresponsible
• Kind
• Cooperative
• Sympathetic
• Helpful
• Courteous
• Warm
NOT
• Critical
• Antagonistic
• Callous
• Selfish
• Rude
• Cold
• Nervous
• Moody
• Emotional
• Insecure
• Jealous
• Unstable
NOT
• Calm
• Steady
• Relaxed
• At ease
• Secure
• Contented
• Curious
• Imaginative
• Creative
• Complex
• Refined
• Sophisticated
• Talkative
• Sociable
• Passionate
• Assertive
• Bold
• Dominant
NOT
• Uninquisitive
• Conventional
• Conforming
• Simple
• Unartistic
• Traditional
NOT
• Quiet
• Shy
• Inhibited
• Bashful
• Reserved
• Submissive
Sources: Saucier, G. (1994). “Mini-Markers: A Brief Version of Goldberg’s Unipolar Big-Five Markers.” Journal of Personality
Assessment 63 , pp. 506–16; Goldberg, L. R. (1992). “The Development of Markers for the Big-Five Factor Structure.”
Psychological Assessment 4, pp. 26–42; McCrae, R. R., and P. T. Costa Jr. (1987). “Validation of the Five-Factor Model of
Personality Across Instruments and Observers.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52, pp. 81–90; and Gill, C. M.,
and G. P. Hodgkinson. (2007). “Development and Validation of the Five-Factor Model Questionnaire (FFMQ): An AdjectivalBased Personality Inventory for Use in Occupational Settings.” Personnel Psychology 60, pp. 731–66.
a function of our genes, or is it something that we develop as a function of our experiences and
environment? As you might guess, it’s sometimes difficult to tease apart the impact of nature and
nurture on personality. Let’s assume for a moment that you’re especially extraverted and so are
your parents. Does this mean you’ve inherited their “extraversion gene”? Or does it mean that you
observed and copied their extraverted behavior during your childhood (and were rewarded with
praise for doing so)? It’s impossible to know, because the effects of nature and nurture are acting
in combination in this example.
One method of separating nature and nurture effects is to study identical twins who’ve been
adopted by different sets of parents at birth. For example, the University of Minnesota has been
conducting studies of pairs of identical twins reared apart for several decades.8 Such studies find,
for example, that extraversion scores tend to be significantly correlated across pairs of identical
twins.9 Such findings can clearly be attributed to “nature” because identical twins share 100 percent of their genetic material, but cannot be explained by “nurture” because the twins were raised
in different environments. A review of several different twin studies concludes that genes have a
significant impact on people’s Big Five profile. More specifically, 49 percent of the variation in
extraversion is accounted for by genetic differences.10 The genetic impact is somewhat smaller for
the rest of the Big Five: 45 percent for openness, 41 percent for neuroticism, 38 percent for conscientiousness, and 35 percent for agreeableness.
Another method of examining the genetic basis of personality is to examine changes in personality traits over time. Longitudinal studies require participants to complete personality assessments at multiple time periods, often separated by several years. If personality has a strong
genetic component, then people’s Big Five profiles at, say, age 21 should be very similar to their
profiles at age 50.
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9.3
Is personality driven by
nature or by nurture?
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Personality and Cultural Values
OB Assessments
THE BIG FIVE
What does your personality profile look like? This assessment is designed to measure the five
major dimensions of personality: conscientiousness (C), agreeableness (A), neuroticism (N),
openness to experience (O), and extraversion (E). Listed below are phrases describing people’s
behaviors. Please write a number next to each statement that indicates the extent to which it
accurately describes you. Answer each question using the response scale provided. Then subtract
your answers to the boldfaced questions from 6, with the difference being your new answer for
those questions. For example, if your original answer for question 6 was “2,” your new answer is
“4” (6–2). (Instructors: Assessments on locus of control, collectivism, and power distance can
be found in the PowerPoints in the Connect Library’s Instructor Resources and in the Connect
assignments for this chapter.)
1
VERY
INACCURATE
2
MODERATELY
INACCURATE
3
NEITHER
INACCURATE
NOR ACCURATE
4
MODERATELY
ACCURATE
5
VERY
ACCURATE
1. I am the life of the party.
2. I sympathize with others’ feelings.
3. I get chores done right away.
4. I have frequent mood swings.
5. I have a vivid imagination.
6. I don’t talk a lot.
7. I am not interested in other people’s problems.
8. I often forget to put things back in their proper place.
9. I am relaxed most of the time.
10. I am not interested in abstract ideas.
11. I talk to a lot of different people at parties.
12. I feel others’ emotions.
13. I like order.
14. I get upset easily.
15. I have difficulty understanding abstract ideas.
16. I keep in the background.
17. I am not really interested in others.
18. I make a mess of things.
19. I seldom feel blue.
20. I do not have a good imagination.
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CHAPTER 9
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267
SCORING AND INTERPRETATION
Conscientiousness: Sum up items 3, 8, 13, and 18. _____
Agreeableness: Sum up items 2, 7, 12, and 17. _____
Neuroticism: Sum up items 4, 9, 14, and 19. _____
Openness to Experience: Sum up items 5, 10, 15, and 20. _____
Extraversion: Sum up items 1, 6, 11, and 16. _____
Now chart your scores in the figure below to see whether you are above or below the norm for
each dimension.
C
20
19
18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
A
N
O
E
Norms
Source: Donnellan, M. B., F. L. Oswald, B. M. Baird, and R. E. Lucas. (2006). “The Mini-IPIP Scales:
Tiny-Yet-Effective Measures of the Big Five Factors of Personality.” Psychological Assessment 18, pp.
192–203. American Psychological Association.
Figure 9-2 summarizes the results of 92 studies that assessed personality changes in more
than 50,000 people.11 The figure notes personality changes across seven time periods, including
teenage years (age 10–18); college years (18–22); and people’s 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. The
y-axis expresses changes in personality in standard deviation terms, ranging from +1 (one standard deviation increase on a given dimension) to −1 (one standard deviation decrease on a given
dimension). In standard deviation terms, a change of .20 is generally considered small, a change
of .50 is generally considered medium, and a change of .80 is generally considered large.12
Figure 9-2 reveals that extraversion typically remains quite stable throughout a person’s life.
Openness to experience also remains stable, after a sharp increase from the teenage years to
college age. The stability of those two dimensions makes sense because extraversion and openness are most dependent on genes.13 The other three dimensions, however, change quite significantly over a person’s life span. For example, Figure 9-2 shows that people get more conscientious
as they grow older.14 In addition, people become more agreeable and less neurotic over time.
Although those changes may be encouraging if you dislike your own personal Big Five profile, it’s
important to realize that any changes in personality are very gradual. Consider this question: Can
you detect any personality changes in your closest friends? Chances are you can’t, unless you’ve
known those friends for a period of several years. That long-term lens is needed to spot gradual
fluctuations in Big Five levels. The sections that follow provide more detail about each of the Big
Five dimensions.
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CHAPTER 9
FIGURE 9-2
Personality and Cultural Values
Changes in Big Five Dimensions over the Life Span
Standardized Mean Changes in Personality
1
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
0
Neuroticism
Openness
Extraversion
−1
10-18
18-22
22-30
30-40
40-50
Age Ranges
50-60
60-70
Source: Adapted from Roberts, B. W., K. E. Walton, and W. Viechtbauer. (2006). “Patterns of Mean-Level Change in
Personality Traits across the Life Course: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies.” Psychological Bulletin 132, pp. 1–25.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS As shown in Figure 9-1, conscientious people are dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and persevering.15 It’s difficult, if not impossible, to envision a job in which those traits will not be beneficial.16 That’s not a claim we make about all of
the Big Five because some jobs require high levels of agreeableness, extraversion, or openness,
while others demand low levels of those same traits. We don’t want to spoil the “how important
is personality?” discussion that concludes this chapter, but suffice it to say that conscientiousness
has the biggest influence on job performance of any of the Big Five. Of course, the key question
therefore becomes: Why is conscientiousness so valuable?
One reason can be found in the general goals that people prioritize in their working life.
Conscientious employees prioritize accomplishment striving, which reflects a strong desire to
accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality.17 People who are “accomplishment strivers” have a built-in desire to finish work tasks, channel a high proportion of their
efforts toward those tasks, and work harder and longer on task assignments. As evidence of their
accomplishment-striving nature, one research study showed that conscientious salespeople set
higher sales goals for themselves than unconscientious salespeople and were more committed
to meeting those goals.18 Another study of salespeople showed that conscientious salespeople’s
organizational skills were particularly valuable during their first year of employment, and their
ambitious nature became more critical as they gained tenure and experience.19
A third research study provides particularly compelling evidence regarding the benefits of conscientiousness.20 The study used data from the University of California–Berkeley’s
Intergenerational Studies Center, which collected data about a set of children in the late 1920s
and early 1930s. Those researchers gathered personality data using interviews and assessments of
the children by trained psychologists. Follow-up studies collected data on the same sample as they
reached early adulthood, middle age, and late adulthood. This last time period included assessments of career success, which included ratings of annual income and occupational prestige. The
results of the study showed that childhood conscientiousness was strongly correlated with ratings
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CHAPTER 9
Personality and Cultural Values
of career success five decades later! In fact,
those conscientiousness effects were roughly
twice as strong as the effects of the other Big
Five dimensions.
Such findings show that it pays to be conscientious; other research even suggests that
conscientiousness is good for your health.
For example, one study gathered data about
the conscientiousness of 1,528 children in the
early 1920s.21 Data on health-relevant behaviors were then gathered in 1950 for 1,215 of
the original participants. By 1986, 419 of the Ingram Publishing/Getty Images
participants had died and 796 were still living. The results of the study revealed that childhood conscientiousness was negatively related
to mortality, including death from injuries, death from cardiovascular disease, and death from
cancer. Why did conscientious participants live longer? The study also showed that conscientiousness was negatively related to alcohol consumption and smoking during adulthood. Other
research has shown that conscientious people are less likely to abuse drugs, more likely to take
preventive steps to remain healthy, and less likely to perform risky behaviors as a driver or
pedestrian.22
269
Research suggests that
conscientious ­individuals
actually live longer. One
potential reason is that
conscientiousness is
­associated with less risky
driving behavior.
AGREEABLENESS Agreeable people are warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, and
courteous. Agreeable people prioritize communion striving, which reflects a strong desire to
obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing personality. Put differently,
agreeable people focus on “getting along,” not necessarily “getting ahead.”23 Unlike conscientiousness, agreeableness is not related to performance across all jobs or occupations.24 Why not? The
biggest reason is that communion striving is beneficial in some positions but detrimental in others. For example, managers often need to prioritize the effectiveness of the unit over a desire to
gain acceptance. In such cases, effective job performance may demand being disagreeable in the
face of unreasonable requests or demands.
Of course, there are some jobs in which agreeableness can be beneficial. The most obvious
example is service jobs—jobs in which the employee has direct, face-to-face, or verbal contact with
a customer. How many times have you encountered a customer service person who is cold, rude,
or antagonistic? Did you tend to buy the company’s product after such experiences? Research
suggests that agreeable employees have stronger customer service skills.25 One reason for their
effectiveness in customer service environments is that they’re reluctant to react to conflict with
criticism, threats, or manipulation.26 Instead, they tend to react to conflict by walking away, adopting a “wait-and-see” attitude, or giving in to the other person.
One study provides unique insights into the effects of agreeableness. The study used a variation of “lived day analysis,” where a portion of a participant’s daily routine is recorded and analyzed.27 Ninety-six undergraduates completed assessments of the Big Five personality dimensions
before being fitted with a digital recorder and an electronic microphone that could be clipped
to their shirt collar. The microphone recorded 30 seconds of footage at 12-minute intervals over
the course of two weekdays, with participants unable to track when footage was actually being
recorded. Trained coders then rated the sounds and conversations recorded on the microphone.
The results of the study revealed a number of interesting expressions of agreeableness. Agreeable
participants were significantly less likely to be at home in their apartment during recordings;
instead, they spent more time in public places. They were also less likely to use swear words and
more likely to use words that conveyed personal rapport during conversations.
EXTRAVERSION Extraverted people are talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and
dominant (in contrast to introverts, who are quiet, shy, and reserved). Of the Big Five, extraversion is the easiest to judge in zero acquaintance situations—situations in which two people have
only just met. Consider times when you’ve been around a stranger in a doctor’s office, in line at
a grocery store, or in an airport terminal. It takes only about 5 minutes to figure out whether that
stranger is extraverted or introverted.28 Extraversion is also the Big Five dimension that you knew
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your standing on, even before taking our self-assessment. People rarely consider how open they
are to new experiences or how agreeable they are, but almost everyone already self-identifies as an
“extravert” or “introvert.”
Like agreeableness, extraversion is not necessarily related to performance across all jobs or
occupations. However, extraverted people prioritize status striving, which reflects a strong desire
to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means of expressing personality.29
Extraverts care a lot about being successful and influential and direct their work efforts toward
“moving up” and developing a strong reputation. Indeed, research suggests that extraverts are
more likely to emerge as leaders in social and task-related groups.30 They also tend to be rated as
more effective in a leadership role by the people who are following them.31 One potential reason
for these findings is that people tend to view extraverts, who are more energetic and outgoing, as
more “leaderlike” than introverts.
In addition to being related to leadership emergence and effectiveness, research suggests that
extraverts tend to be happier with their jobs. You may recall from Chapter 4 on job satisfaction
that people’s day-to-day moods can be categorized along two dimensions: pleasantness and activation. As illustrated in Figure 9-3, extraverted employees tend to be high in what’s called positive
affectivity—a dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm,
excitement, and elation.32 That tendency to experience positive moods across situations explains
why extraverts tend to be more satisfied with their jobs.33 Research now acknowledges that
employees’ genes have a significant impact on their job satisfaction and that much of that genetic
influence is due to extraversion (and neuroticism, as discussed next). For example, one study of
FIGURE 9-3
Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Typical Moods
Activated
Neuroticism as
“Negative
Affectivity”
Enthusiastic
Excited
Elated
Hostile
Nervous
Annoyed
Unpleasant
Extraversion as
“Positive
Affectivity”
Surprised
Astonished
Aroused
Grouchy
Sad
Blue
Happy
Cheerful
Pleased
Pleasant
Serene
Calm
Content
Bored
Sluggish
Drowsy
Quiet
Still
Inactive
Deactivated
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271
identical twins reared apart showed that twins’ job satisfaction levels were significantly correlated,
even when the twins held jobs that were quite different in terms of their duties, their complexity,
and their working conditions.34 In fact, this study suggested that around 30 percent of the variation in job satisfaction is due to genetic factors such as personality.
Other research suggests that extraverts have more to be happy about than just their jobs.
Specifically, research suggests that extraversion is positively related to more general life satisfaction.35 To shed light on that finding, one study asked students to complete a “life event checklist”
by indicating whether various events had happened to them in the preceding four years.36 The
results showed that extraversion was associated with more positive events, such as joining a club
or athletic team, going on vacation with friends, getting a raise at work, receiving an award for
nonacademic reasons, and getting married or engaged. Other studies have linked extraversion to
the number of same-sex peers, number of dating partners, frequency of alcohol consumption, and
frequency of attending parties.37 However, extraverts spend so much time doing those things that
they wind up having less frequent interactions with their family.38 Even parents of extraverts enjoy
a phone call home now and again!
NEUROTICISM Neurotic people are nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, and jealous.
Occasionally you may see this Big Five dimension called by its flip side: “Emotional Stability” or
“Emotional Adjustment.” If conscientiousness is the most important of the Big Five from the perspective of job performance, neuroticism is the second most important.39 There are few jobs for
which the traits associated with neuroticism are beneficial to on-the-job behaviors. Instead, most
jobs benefit from employees who are calm, steady, and secure.
Whereas extraversion is synonymous with positive affectivity, neuroticism is synonymous with
negative affectivity—a dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility,
nervousness, and annoyance (see Figure 9-3).40 That tendency to experience negative moods
explains why neurotic employees often experience lower levels of job satisfaction than their less
neurotic counterparts.41 Along with extraversion, neuroticism explains much of the impact of
genetic factors on job satisfaction. Research suggests that the negative affectivity associated with
neuroticism also influences life satisfaction, with neurotic people tending to be less happy with
their lives in general.42 In fact, one method of assessing neuroticism (or negative affectivity) is to
determine how unhappy people are with everyday objects and things. This “gripe index” is shown
in Table 9-1. If you find yourself dissatisfied with several of the objects in that table, then you probably experience negative moods quite frequently.
Neuroticism also influences the way that people deal with stressful situations. Specifically,
neuroticism is associated with a differential exposure to stressors, meaning that neurotic people are more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful (and therefore feel like they
are exposed to stressors more frequently).43 Neuroticism is also associated with a differential
­reactivity to stressors, meaning that neurotic people are less likely to believe they can cope with
the stressors that they experience.44 Neuroticism is largely responsible for the Type A Behavior
Pattern that has been shown to affect employees’ health and ability to manage stressful environments.45 That is, neurotic people are much more likely to be “Type As,” whereas less neurotic
individuals are much more likely to be “Type Bs” (see Chapter 5 on stress for more discussion
of such issues).
Neuroticism is also strongly related to locus of control, which reflects whether people attribute
the causes of events to themselves or to the external environment.46 Neurotic people tend to hold
an external locus of control, meaning that they often believe that the events that occur around
them are driven by luck, chance, or fate. Less neurotic people tend to hold an internal locus of
control, meaning that they believe that their own behavior dictates events. Table 9-2 provides more
detail about the external versus internal distinction. The table includes a number of beliefs that
are representative of an external or internal viewpoint, including beliefs about life in general, work,
school, politics, and relationships. If you tend to agree more strongly with the beliefs in the left
column, then you have a more external locus of control. If you tend to agree more with the right
column, your locus is more internal.
How important is locus of control? One meta-analysis of 135 different research studies showed that
an internal locus of control was associated with higher levels of job satisfaction and job performance.47
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TABLE 9-1
The Neutral Objects Questionnaire (aka The “Gripe Index”)
Instructions: The following questions ask about your degree of satisfaction with
several items. Consider each item carefully. Circle the numbered response that best
represents your feelings about the corresponding item. Then sum up your score.
DISSATISFIED
NEUTRAL
SATISFIED
Your telephone number
1
2
3
8 1/2 × 11 paper
1
2
3
Popular music
1
2
3
Modern art
1
2
3
Your first name
1
2
3
Restaurant food
1
2
3
Public transportation
1
2
3
Telephone service
1
2
3
The way you were raised
1
2
3
Advertising
1
2
3
The way people drive
1
2
3
Local speed limits
1
2
3
Television programs
1
2
3
The people you know
1
2
3
Yourself
1
2
3
Your relaxation time
1
2
3
Local newspapers
1
2
3
Today’s cars
1
2
3
The quality of food you buy
1
2
3
The movies being produced today
1
2
3
The climate where you live
1
2
3
The high school you attended
1
2
3
The neighbors you have
1
2
3
The residence where you live
1
2
3
The city in which you live
1
2
3
Interpretation: If you scored below a 50, you tend to be less satisfied with everyday
objects than the typical respondent. Such a score may indicate negative affectivity, a
tendency to feel negative emotional states frequently. (Or perhaps you should change
your phone number!)
Source: Adapted from Judge, T. A. (1993). “Does Affective Disposition Moderate the Relationship Between Job
Satisfaction and Voluntary Turnover?” Journal of Applied Psychology 78, pp. 395–401; and Weitz, J. (1952). “A Neglected
Concept in the Study of Job Satisfaction.” Personnel Psychology 5, pp. 201–05.
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273
External and Internal Locus of Control
PEOPLE WITH AN EXTERNAL LOCUS OF
CONTROL TEND TO BELIEVE:
PEOPLE WITH AN INTERNAL LOCUS OF
CONTROL TEND TO BELIEVE:
Many of the unhappy things in people’s
lives are partly due to bad luck.
People’s misfortunes result from the
­mistakes they make.
Getting a good job depends mainly on
being in the right place at the right time.
Becoming a success is a matter of hard
work; luck has little or nothing to do with it.
Many times exam questions tend to be so
unrelated to course work that studying is
really useless.
In the case of the well-prepared student,
there is rarely if ever such a thing as an
unfair test.
This world is run by the few people in
power, and there is not much the little guy
can do about it.
The average citizen can have an influence
in government decisions.
There’s not much use in trying too hard to
please people; if they like you, they like you.
People are lonely because they don’t try
to be friendly.
Source: Adapted from Rotter, J. B. (1966). “Generalized Expectancies for Internal versus External Control of
Reinforcement.” Psychological Monographs 80, pp. 1–28.
A second meta-analysis of 222 different research studies showed that people with an internal locus
of control enjoyed better health, including higher self-reported mental well-being, fewer self-reported
physical symptoms, lower blood pressure, and lower stress hormone secretion.48 Internals also enjoyed
more social support at work than externals and sensed that they had a stronger relationship with their
supervisors. They viewed their jobs as having more beneficial characteristics, such as autonomy and
significance, and fewer negative characteristics, such as conflict and ambiguity. In addition, those with
an internal locus of control earned a higher salary than those with an external locus.
OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE The final dimension of the Big Five is openness to experience. Open
people are curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated. Of all the Big Five, openness
to experience has the most alternative labels. Sometimes it’s called “Inquisitiveness” or “Intellectualness”
or even “Culture” (not in the national culture sense—rather, in the “high culture” sense of knowing fine
wine, art, and classical music). Much like agreeableness and
extraversion, the traits associated with openness are beneficial in some jobs but not others. As a result, openness is not
related to job performance across all occupations.
What jobs benefit from high levels of openness?
Generally speaking, jobs that are very fluid and dynamic,
with rapid changes in job demands. Research shows that
open employees excel in learning and training environments, because their curiosity gives them a built-in desire
to learn new things.49 They also tend to be more adaptable and quick to identify when the “old way of doing
things” is no longer effective, excelling at the search for a
new and better approach.50 In fact, conscientious employees are sometimes less effective than open employees
in such environments because their persevering nature
sometimes prevents them from abandoning “tried-andtrue” task strategies.
Openness to experience is also more likely to be valuable in jobs that require high levels of creative performance, where job holders need to be able to generate Royalty-Free/Corbis
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People who are open to
new experiences tend to
do well in situations that
offer frequent opportunities to learn new things,
such as teaching.
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novel and useful ideas and solutions.51 The relationship between openness and creative performance can be seen in Figure 9-4. Together with cognitive ability, openness to experience is a key
driver of creative thought, as smart and open people excel at the style of thinking demanded by creativity (see Chapter 10 on ability for more discussion of such issues). How good are you at creative
thinking? See Figure 9-5 to find out. Creative thought results in creative performance when people
FIGURE 9-4
Openness to Experience and Creativity
Cognitive
Ability
Creative
Thought
Creative
Performance
Openness to
Experience
FIGURE 9-5
Tests of Creative Thinking
Instructions: Do you consider yourself to be a creative thinker? See if you can solve
the problems below. If you need help, the answers can be found in the Takeaways
section of this chapter.
1. What gets wetter as it dries?
2. A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the
same year. But they were not twins. How could this be so?
3. What occurs once in June, once in July, and twice in August?
4. Make this mathematical expression true by drawing only a single noncurving line:
5+5+5 = 550
5. Join all nine of the dots below using only four (or fewer) noncurving lines, without
lifting your pen from the paper and without retracing the lines.
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BMW’s Leipzig facility,
where the assembly line
moves above work spaces
to give employees a feel
for the rhythm of the plant.
Dennis Gilbert-VIEW/Alamy Stock Photo
come up with new ideas, create fresh approaches to problems, or suggest new innovations that can
help improve the workplace.52 The creativity benefits of openness likely explain why highly open
individuals are more likely to migrate into artistic and scientific fields, in which novel and original
products are so critical.53 Dragonfly, a New York–based web video–networking company, goes to
unusual lengths to foster creative thought.54 The company pays $10,000 to $20,000 to put employees through six hours of hypnotism. The idea is that the relaxation, meditation, and visualization
used in hypnosis can unlock the imagination of employees, even if they’re lower in openness.
BMW, the German automaker, seems to understand the importance of the Big Five dimensions of
personality. BMW has worked hard to create a culture of innovation in which there is never a penalty
for proposing new and outlandish ways of improving its cars.55 Those proposed improvements include
a “smart card” that can be taken out of your own BMW and plugged into a rented one, passing along
your music, podcast, and comfort settings to the new vehicle. Openness is needed to foster such creative
thought, but agreeableness is also key to BMW’s culture. Stefan Krause, BMW’s former chief financial
officer, summarizes how to push a creative idea successfully: “You can go into fighting mode or you can
ask permission and get everyone to support you. If you do it without building ties, you will be blocked.”56
BMW employees also draw on their conscientiousness in those critical times when a new technology is introduced or production volume is expanded. During those time periods, employees
from other factories may move into temporary housing far from home to put in extra hours on
another plant’s line. Why are employees so devoted? For one thing, no one at BMW can remember a layoff—something that is incredibly unique in the auto industry. That’s part of the reason
BMW’s human resources group receives more than 200,000 applications annually. Those fortunate enough to make it to the interview stage participate in elaborate, day-long drills in teams to
make sure that their personalities provide a good match for the company.
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OTHER TAXONOMIES OF PERSONALITY
9.4
What taxonomies can be
used to describe personality,
other than the Big Five?
Although the Big Five is the dominant lens for examining personality, it’s not the only framework
with which you might be familiar. One of the most widely administered personality measures in
organizations is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).57 This instrument was originally created
to test a theory of psychological types advanced by the noted psychologist Carl Jung.58 The MBTI
evaluates individuals on the basis of four types of preferences:59
• Extraversion (being energized by people and social interactions) versus Introversion (being energized by private time and reflection).
• Sensing (preferring clear and concrete facts and data) versus Intuition (preferring hunches and
speculations based on theory and imagination).
• Thinking (approaching decisions with logic and critical analysis) versus Feeling (approaching
decisions with an emphasis on others’ needs and feelings).
• Judging (approaching tasks by planning and setting goals) versus Perceiving (preferring to have
flexibility and spontaneity when performing tasks).
The MBTI categorizes people into one of 16 different types on the basis of their preferences.
For example, an “ISTJ” has a preference for Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging.
Research on the MBTI suggests that managers are more likely to be “TJs” than the general population.60 Moreover, the different personality types seem to approach decision-making tasks with
differing emphases on facts, logic, and plans. That said, there is little evidence that the MBTI
is a useful tool for predicting the job satisfaction, motivation, performance, or commitment of
employees across jobs.61 Indeed, one of the reasons the MBTI is so widely used is that there
really isn’t a “bad type”—no one who gets their profile is receiving negative news. As a result,
the most appropriate use of the MBTI is in a team-building context, to help different members
understand their varying approaches to accomplishing tasks. Using the MBTI as any kind of
hiring or selection tool does not appear to be warranted, based on existing research. To see
another recently-introduced framework with four different types of personality, see our OB at the
Bookstore feature.
A second alternative to the Big Five is offered by research on vocational interests.62 Interests
are expressions of personality that influence behavior through preferences for certain environments and activities.63 Interests reflect stable and enduring likes and dislikes that can explain why
people are drawn toward some careers and away from others.64 Holland’s RIASEC model suggests
that interests can be summarized by six different personality types:65
• Realistic: Enjoys practical, hands-on, real-world tasks. Tends to be frank, practical, determined,
and rugged.
• Investigative: Enjoys abstract, analytical, theory-oriented tasks. Tends to be analytical, intellectual, reserved, and scholarly.
• Artistic: Enjoys entertaining and fascinating others using imagination. Tends to be original, independent, impulsive, and creative.
• Social: Enjoys helping, serving, or assisting others. Tends to be helpful, inspiring, informative,
•
•
and empathic.
Enterprising: Enjoys persuading, leading, or outperforming others. Tends to be energetic, sociable, ambitious, and risk-taking.
Conventional: Enjoys organizing, counting, or regulating people or things. Tends to be careful,
conservative, self-controlled, and structured.
As shown in Figure 9-6, the RIASEC model further suggests that the personality types can be
classified along two dimensions: the degree to which employees prefer to work with data versus
ideas and the degree to which they prefer to work with people versus things. For example, those
with a Realistic personality prefer to work with things and data more than people and ideas. The
model arranges the personality types in a hexagonal fashion, with types adjacent to one another
being more similar than types that are more distant. The central premise of the RIASEC model
is that employees will have more career satisfaction, job knowledge, and longevity in occupations
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OB At the Bookstore
THE FOUR TENDENCIES
by Gretchen Rubin (New York: Harmony Books, 2017).
Then finally, after months of reflection, I had my eureka moment. As
I sat at my desk in my home office, I happened to glance at my messy
handwritten to-do list—and suddenly it hit me. The simple, decisive
question was: “How do you respond to expectations?” I’d found it!*
With those words, Gretchen Rubin captures a distinction that
provides an additional taxonomy of personality. Like the MeyersBriggs Type Indicator, her taxonomy has four types included within
it, based on how people respond to outer expectations—like a boss
imposing a deadline—and inner expectations—like resolving to go to
the gym more often.
• Upholders: People who embrace both outer expectations and
inner expectations
• Questioners: People who push back on outer expectations but
©Roberts Publishing, Inc.
embrace inner expectations
• Obligers: People who embrace outer expectations but struggle
with inner expectations
• Rebels: People who push back on outer expectations and struggle with inner expectations
Rubin’s own data collection, using a quiz that accompanies the book, suggests that 41 percent
of people are Obligers, 24 percent are Questioners, 19 percent are Upholders, and 17 percent
are Rebels. Although she might disagree with this contention, her taxonomy seems to be driven
largely by the conscientiousness and agreeableness dimensions of the Big Five. Conscientious
people are dependable and reliable by nature, so should embrace expectations of any stripe.
Agreeable people are cooperative and helpful by nature, so should be especially embracing of the
expectations of others.
As with the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, Rubin argues that there is not one “best” type—that the
important thing is to know your type and build a work life that complements it. Although there is
certainly some truth in that, it seems easier to identify jobs where Upholders or Questioners would
thrive more than the other two types. In contrast, it seems harder to identify jobs where Obligers or
Rebels would thrive more than the other two types. So, even if there is not a “best” type from the
perspective of employee performance and commitment, there does seem to be “better” types.
*Source: The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. New York: Harmony Books, 2017.
that match their personality type.66 For example, Realistic people should be happier and more
effective as craftspeople than as counselors because a craftspersons’ duties provide a good match
to their personality. One of the most common applications of the RIASEC model is interest inventories, which provide people their scores on relevant personality dimensions, along with a list of
occupations that could provide a good match for that profile.67
CULTURAL VALUES
As noted previously, our personalities are influenced by both our genes and our environment.
One significant aspect of that environment is the society in which we were raised. Societies can be
described in a number of ways, including their climate and habitat, their sovereignty and political
system, their language and religion, their education and technology levels, and their economic
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CHAPTER 9
FIGURE 9-6
Personality and Cultural Values
Holland’s RIASEC Model
WORKING WITH
DATA
Conventional
Realistic
Enterprising
WORKING WITH
THINGS
WORKING WITH
PEOPLE
Investigative
Social
Artistic
WORKING WITH
IDEAS
Source: Adapted from Holland, J. L. Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973.
9.5
What taxonomies can be
used to describe cultural
values?
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development.68 However, one of the most important aspects of societies is culture. Culture is
defined as the shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations.69 Culture has
been described as patterns resulting from societal traditions and as the collective programming of
the mind that separates one society from another.70 The shared values, societal traditions, and collective programming that underlies culture influence the development of our personalities while
also shaping the way our traits are expressed.71 In this way, explaining “what we’re like” requires
an awareness of “where we’re from.”
To some extent, cultures provide societies with their own distinct personalities.72 One study
on the Big Five profiles of 51 different cultures showed that some societies tend to value certain
personality traits more than other societies.73 For example, people from India tend to be more
conscientious than people from Belgium. People from the Czech Republic tend to be more agreeable than people from Hong Kong. People from Brazil tend to be more neurotic than people from
China. People from Australia tend to be more extraverted than people from Russia. People from
Denmark tend to be more open than people from Argentina. For their part, people in the United
States trend toward the high end of the 51-culture sample on extraversion and openness, staying
near the middle for the other Big Five dimensions. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all of the
members of these societies have exactly the same personality. Instead, those results merely convey
that certain cultures tend to place a higher value on certain traits.
Although it’s possible to contrast nations using the Big Five, as we just did, cross-cultural
research focuses more attention on the shared values aspect of culture. The values that are salient
in a given culture influence how people select and justify courses of action and how they evaluate themselves and other people.74 To some extent, cultural values come to reflect the way things
should be done in a given society.75 Acting in a manner that’s consistent with those values helps
people to fit in, and going against those values causes people to stand out. Just as there are
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Personality and Cultural Values
a number of traits that can be
used to describe personality,
there are a number of values
that can be used to describe
cultures. Given the sheer complexity of culture, it’s not surprising that different studies
have arrived at different taxonomies that can be used to summarize cultural values.
The most well-known taxonomy of cultural values was
derived from a landmark study
in the late 1960s and early
1970s by Geert Hofstede, who Plush Studios/Bill Reitzel/Blend Images LLC
analyzed data from 88,000
IBM employees from 72 countries in 20 languages.76 His research showed that employees working in different countries tended
to prioritize different values, and those values clustered into several distinct dimensions. Those
dimensions are summarized in Table 9-3 and include individualism–collectivism, power distance,
uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity–femininity. A subsequent study added a fifth dimension
to the taxonomy: short-term vs. long-term orientation.77 Hofstede’s research introduced scores on
each of the dimensions for various cultures, providing researchers with a quantitative tool to summarize and compare and contrast the cultures of different societies. Table 9-3 includes some of the
countries that have high or low scores on Hofstede’s dimensions.
Although Hofstede’s dimensions have formed the foundation for much of the research on crosscultural management, more recent studies have painted a more nuanced picture of cultural values.
Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) is a collection of
170 researchers from 62 cultures who have studied 17,300 managers in 951 organizations since
1991.78 The main purpose of Project GLOBE is to examine the impact of culture on the effectiveness of various leader attributes, behaviors, and practices (see Chapter 14 on leadership styles
and behaviors for more discussion of such issues). In pursuing that goal, project researchers asked
managers to rate the values held within their organizations and within their societies. That research
identified nine different dimensions that are used to summarize cultures within Project GLOBE.
Some of those dimensions can be viewed as replications of Hofstede’s work. For example, Project
GLOBE identified both power distance and uncertainty avoidance as key dimensions of cultural values. The project also identified collectivism, though it was differentiated into institutional collectivism (where formalized practices encourage collective action and collective distribution of resources)
and ingroup collectivism (where individuals express pride and loyalty to specific ingroups). For
examples of some of these values in a fictional country, see our OB on Screen feature.
Other dimensions bear some similarity to Hofstede’s work but are conceptually distinct. Those
dimensions are listed below, along with some information on the cultures that score at the higher
and lower ends on a given value. Note that Project GLOBE groups cultures into “country clusters.” Those clusters include Anglo (United States, Canada, Australia, England), Latin America
(Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela), Latin Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Israel), Germanic
Europe (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland), Nordic Europe (Denmark, Finland,
Sweden), Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Russia, Greece), Middle East (Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait,
Morocco), Southern Asia (India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia), Confucian Asia (China, South
Korea, Japan, Singapore), and sub-Saharan Africa (Zimbabwe, Namibia, Nigeria). The following
descriptions note some of the country clusters that earn high and low scores on a given cultural
value. Note that the Anglo group, which includes the United States, scores in the middle on most
of the cultural values.
279
Research on cultural values categorizes China as
a highly collective culture,
meaning that its citizens
tend to prioritize taking
care of ingroup members,
and staying loyal to them.
• Gender egalitarianism. The culture promotes gender equality and minimizes role differences
between men and women. High: Nordic Europe, Eastern Europe. Low: Middle East.
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TABLE 9-3
Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values
INDIVIDUALISM–COLLECTIVISM
S
INDIVIDUALISTIC
COLLECTIVISTIC
The culture is a loosely knit social framework in which people take care of themselves and their immediate family.
The culture is a tight social framework in
which people take care of the members of
a broader ingroup and act loyal to it.
United States, the Netherlands, France
Indonesia, China, West Africa
POWER DISTANCE
LOW
HIGH
The culture prefers that power be distributed uniformly where possible, in a more
egalitarian fashion.
The culture accepts the fact that power
is usually distributed unequally within
organizations.
United States, Germany, the Netherlands
Russia, China, Indonesia
UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE
LOW
HIGH
The culture tolerates uncertain and ambiguous situations and values unusual ideas
and behaviors.
The culture feels threatened by uncertain
and ambiguous situations and relies on
formal rules to create stability.
United States, Indonesia, the Netherlands
Japan, Russia, France
MASCULINITY–FEMININITY
MASCULINE
FEMININE
The culture values stereotypically male
traits such as assertiveness and the acquisition of money and things.
The culture values stereotypically female
traits such as caring for others and caring
about quality of life.
United States, Japan, Germany
The Netherlands, Russia, France
SHORT–TERM VS. LONG–TERM ORIENTATION
SHORT–TERM ORIENTED
LONG–TERM ORIENTED
The culture stresses values that are
more past- and present-oriented, such
as respect for tradition and fulfilling
obligations.
The culture stresses values that are more
future-oriented, such as persistence, prudence, and thrift.
United States, Russia, West Africa
China, Japan, the Netherlands
Sources: Hofstede, G. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001; Hofstede, G. (1993). “Cultural Constraints in Management Theories.” Academy of
Management Executive 7, pp. 81–94; and Hofstede, G., and M. H. Bond. (1988). “The Confucius Connection: From
Cultural Roots to Economic Growth.” Organizational Dynamics 16, pp. 5–21.
• Assertiveness. The culture values assertiveness, confrontation, and aggressiveness in social relationships. High: Germanic Europe, Eastern Europe. Low: Nordic Europe.
• Future orientation. The culture engages in planning and investment in the future while delaying
individual or collective gratification. High: Germanic Europe, Nordic Europe. Low: Middle
East, Latin America, Eastern Europe.
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OB On Screen
BLACK PANTHER
If the world found out what we truly are. . .what we possess. . .we could lose our way of life.*
With those words, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) summarizes a key cultural value of Wakanda
in Black Panther (Dir.: Ryan Coogler, Marvel Studios, 2018). T’Challa recently ascended to the
throne of Wakanda in the wake of his father’s death and is currently locked in a debate with his exgirlfriend, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o). What Wakanda possesses is vibranium—something the country gained when a meteorite struck Africa millions of years ago. Vibranium supplies Wakanda
with amazing technological advantages. To maintain those advantages, Wakanda decided to hide
from the rest of the world using a cloaking field.
Allstar Picture Library/Alamy
In Hofstede’s terms, T’Challa’s viewpoint represents high uncertainty avoidance. T’Challa views
the outside world as a source uncertainty and ambiguity. As a result, Wakanda has developed strict
and formalized rules that limit engagement. For example, Wakanda sends out “spies” that monitor
other countries to keep tabs on current events that might affect Wakanda. Nakia is one of those spies,
and her experiences have made her more empathic about the struggles of people in other countries.
As she tells T’Challa, “I found my calling out there. I’ve seen too many in need just to turn a blind
eye.”* She implores him to share what Wakanda has with the world by providing aid and technology.
That sort of fundamental shift would be difficult for Wakanda because of its standing on other
Hofstede dimensions. For example, Wakanda is collectivistic, with a deep loyalty to its cultural
ingroup. As another example, Wakanda is high in power distance, with tribal rules and the king
himself having authority over the country’s direction. It is also long-term oriented, with a prudence that encourages the protection and preservation of its resources. Those sorts of cultural values only serve to reaffirm the careful stance that T’Challa espouses. Little does he know, however,
that a series of events will soon test his viewpoint, and Wakanda’s uncertainty avoidance. It may
just be that Nakia’s views are the wiser ones.
*Source: Black Panther
• Performance orientation. The culture encourages and rewards members for excellence and per•
formance improvements. High: Anglo, Confucian Asia, Germanic Europe. Low: Latin America,
Eastern Europe.
Humane orientation. The culture encourages and rewards members for being generous, caring, kind, fair, and altruistic. High: Southern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa. Low: Latin Europe,
Germanic Europe.
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Taken together, Hofstede’s work and the Project GLOBE studies have identified between five
and nine cultural value dimensions. However, the lion’s share of cross-cultural research focuses
on individualism–collectivism, perhaps the most fundamental means of differentiating cultures.79
The individualism–collectivism distinction is relevant to various topics within organizational
behavior.80 For example, collectivists exhibit higher levels of task performance and citizenship
behaviors in work team settings, and also exhibit lower levels of counterproductive and withdrawal behaviors.81 They are also more likely to feel affectively and normatively committed to their
employers than are individualists.82 Research also suggests that collectivists tend to prefer rewards
that are allocated equally on a group-wide basis as opposed to rewards tied solely to individual
achievement.83
Regardless of the particular value of focus, research on cultural values illustrates the potential
differences between the attitudes and beliefs of U.S. employees and the attitudes and beliefs of
employees in other societies. Awareness of such cultural variations is critical, given that those differences can influence reactions to change, conflict management styles, negotiation approaches,
and reward preferences, just to name a few.84 Failing to understand those differences can compromise the effectiveness of multinational groups and organizations. Such problems are particularly
likely if employees are high in ethnocentrism, defined as a propensity to view one’s own cultural
values as “right” and those of other cultures as “wrong.”85 For more discussion of this issue, see
our OB Internationally feature.
SUMMARY: HOW CAN WE DESCRIBE
WHAT EMPLOYEES ARE LIKE?
So how can we explain what employees are like? As shown in Figure 9-7, many of the thousands
of adjectives we use to describe people can be boiled down into the Big Five dimensions of personality. Conscientiousness reflects the reliability, perseverance, and ambition of employees.
Agreeableness captures their tendency to cooperate with others in a warm and sympathetic fashion. Neuroticism reflects the tendency to experience negative moods and emotions frequently on
a day-to-day basis. Individuals who are high on openness to experience are creative, imaginative,
and curious. Finally, extraverts are talkative, sociable, and assertive and typically experience positive moods and emotions. Other personality taxonomies, like the MBTI or the RIASEC model,
can also capture many employee traits. Beyond personality, however, what employees are like also
depends on the culture in which they were raised. Cultural values like individualism–collectivism,
power distance, and so forth also influence employees’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
HOW IMPORTANT ARE PERSONALITY AND
CULTURAL VALUES?
9.6
How does personality affect
job performance and organi­
zational commitment?
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We’ve already described a number of reasons why the Big Five should be important considerations, particularly in the case of conscientiousness. What if we focus specifically on the two
outcomes in our integrative model of OB, performance and commitment? Figure 9-8 summarizes
the research evidence linking conscientiousness to those two outcomes. The figure reveals that
conscientiousness affects job performance. Of the Big Five, conscientiousness has the strongest
effect on task performance,86 partly because conscientious employees have higher levels of motivation than other employees.87 They are more self-confident, perceive a clearer linkage between their
effort and their performance, and are more likely to set goals and commit to them. For these reasons, conscientiousness is a key driver of what’s referred to as typical performance, which reflects
performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks.88 An employee’s ability, in
contrast, is a key driver of maximum performance, which reflects performance in brief, special
circumstances that demand a person’s best effort.
Conscientious employees are also more likely to engage in citizenship behaviors.89 Why? One
reason is that conscientious employees are so punctual and have such good work attendance
that they are simply more available to offer “extra mile” sorts of contributions. Another reason
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OB Internationally
Research suggests that ethnocentrism hinders the effectiveness of expatriates, who are employees
working full-time in other countries. Ethnocentrism makes expatriates less likely to adjust to a
new culture, less likely to fulfill the duties required of their international assignment, and more
likely to withdraw from that assignment. How can organizations identify employees with the right
personalities to serve as expatriates? One useful tool is the multicultural personality questionnaire,
which assesses five personality dimensions that can maximize the performance and commitment
of expatriates. Those dimensions are listed below, along with some sample items.
Cultural Empathy. A tendency to empathize with the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals with different cultural values.
• I understand other people’s feelings.
• I take other people’s habits into consideration.
Open-mindedness. A tendency to have an open and unprejudiced attitude toward other cultural
values and norms.
• I get involved in other cultures.
• I find other religions interesting.
Emotional Stability. A tendency to remain calm in the kinds of stressful situations that can be
encountered in foreign environments.
• I can put setbacks in perspective.
• I take it for granted that things will turn out right.
Social Initiative. A tendency to be proactive when approaching social situations, which aids in
building connections.
• I easily approach other people.
• I am often the driving force behind things.
Flexibility. A tendency to regard new situations as a challenge and to adjust behaviors to meet
that challenge.
• I could start a new life easily.
• I feel comfortable in different cultures.
Research has linked these five personality traits to a number of expatriate success factors. For
example, individuals with a “multicultural personality” are more likely to aspire to international
positions, more likely to gain international experience, more likely to adjust to new assignments,
and more likely to be happy with their lives during those assignments.
Sources: K.I. Van der Zee and U. Brinkmann, “Construct Validity Evidence for the Intercultural Readiness Check against
the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire,” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 12 (2004), pp. 285–90;
K.I. Van der Zee and J.P. Van Oudenhoven, “The Multicultural Personality Questionnaire: Reliability and Validity of
Self and Other Ratings of Multicultural Effectiveness,” Journal of Research in Personality 35 (2001), pp. 278–88; J.P. Van
Oudenhoven and K.I. Van der Zee, “Predicting Multicultural Effectiveness of International Students: The Multicultural
Personality Questionnaire,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 26 (2002), pp. 679–94; J.P. Van Oudenhoven
S. Mol; and K.I. Van der Zee, “Study of the Adjustment of Western Expatriates in Taiwan ROC with the Multicultural
Personality Questionnaire,” Asian Journal of Social Psychology 6 (2003), pp. 159–70.
is that they engage in so much more work-related effort that they have more energy to devote
to citizenship behaviors.90 A third reason is that they tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction,91 and positive feelings tend to foster spontaneous instances of citizenship. Finally, conscientious employees are less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviors,92 for two major reasons.
First, their higher job satisfaction levels make it less likely that they’ll feel a need to retaliate
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FIGURE 9-7
Personality and Cultural Values
How Can We Describe What Employees Are Like?
The Big Five
• Conscientiousness
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism
• Openness to Experience
• Extraversion
Personality
Other Taxonomies
• Myers-Briggs
• RIASEC Model
What
employees
are like
Culture Taxonomies
• Hofstede Dimensions
• Project GLOBE Dimensions
Cultural
Values
against their organization. Second, even if they do perceive some slight or injustice, their dependable and reliable nature should prevent them from violating organizational norms by engaging in
negative actions.93
Figure 9-8 also reveals that conscientious employees tend to be more committed to their organization.94 They’re less likely to engage in day-to-day psychological and physical withdrawal behaviors because such actions go against their work habits. They’re also significantly less likely to
voluntarily leave the organization.95 Why? One reason is that the persevering nature of conscientious employees prompts them to persist in a given course of action for long periods of time.
That persistence can be seen in their daily work effort, but it extends to a sense of commitment
to the organization as well.96 Another reason is that conscientious employees are better at managing stress, perceiving lower levels of key stressors, and being less affected by them at work.97
In some respects, Figure 9-8 understates the importance of conscientiousness (and personality,
more generally). Why? Because personality becomes more important in some contexts than in
others. The principle of situational strength suggests that “strong situations” have clear behavioral
expectations, incentives, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important,
whereas “weak situations” lack those cues.98 Personality variables tend to be more significant
drivers of behavior in weak situations than in strong situations.99 Similarly, the principle of trait
activation suggests that some situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given trait.100
For example, a cry for help provides a cue that can trigger the expression of empathy. Personality
variables tend to be more significant drivers of behaviors in situations that provide relevant cues
than in situations in which those cues are lacking.
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FIGURE 9-8
Personality and Cultural Values
285
Effects of Personality on Performance and Commitment
Conscientiousness
Job
Performance
Conscientiousness has a moderate positive effect on Performance. Conscientious
employees have higher levels of Task Performance. They are also more likely to
engage in Citizenship Behavior and less likely to engage in Counterproductive
Behavior.
Conscientiousness
Organizational
Commitment
Conscientiousness has a moderate positive effect on Commitment. Conscientious
employees have higher levels of Affective Commitment and higher levels of Normative
Commitment. Conscientiousness has no effect on Continuance Commitment.
Represents a strong correlation (around .50 in magnitude).
Represents a moderate correlation (around .30 in magnitude).
Represents a weak correlation (around .10 in magnitude).
Sources: Barrick, M. R., M. K. Mount, and T. A. Judge. (2001). “Personality and Performance at the Beginning of the New
Millennium: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go Next?” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 9, pp.
9–30; Berry, C. M., D. S. Ones, and P. R. Sackett. (2007). “Interpersonal Deviance, Organizational Deviance, and Their
Common Correlates: A Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Applied Psychology 92, pp. 410–24; Cooper-Hakim, A., and C.
Viswesvaran. (2005). “The Construct of Work Commitment: Testing an Integrative Framework.” Psychological Bulletin 131,
pp. 241–59; Hough, L. M., and A. Furnham. “Use of Personality Variables in Work Settings.” In Handbook of Psychology,
Vol. 12, edited by W. C. Borman, D. R. Ilgen, and R. J. Klimoski, pp. 131–69. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003; Mathieu, J. E., and
D. M. Zajac. (1990). “A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences of Organizational
Commitment.” Psychological Bulletin 108, pp. 171–94; and Salgado, J. F. (2002). “The Big Five Personality Dimensions and
Counterproductive Behaviors.” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 10, pp. 117–25.
APPLICATION: PERSONALITY TESTS
Given how important personality traits can be to job performance and organizational commitment, it’s not surprising that many organizations try to gauge the personality of job applicants.
What’s the best way to do that? Well, many organizations try to gauge personality through interviews by looking for cues that an applicant is conscientious or agreeable or has high levels of some
other relevant personality dimension. Can you see a potential problem with this approach? Here’s
a hint: When was the last time you went into an interview and acted careless, sloppy, moody, or
insecure? It’s probably been awhile. People engage in a number of impression management and
self-presentation tactics when interviewing, sometimes to appear to possess traits that they don’t
really have.101 In fact, most interview preparation courses and books train applicants to exhibit the
very personality traits that most employers are looking for!
To examine whether interviewers can gauge the Big Five, one study asked 26 interviewers, all
of whom were human resources practitioners with more than 12 years of hiring experience, to
assess the personalities of undergraduate business students who were on the job market.102 The
interviewers met with an average of three students for 30 minutes and were instructed to follow
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9.7
Are personality tests useful tools for organizational
hiring?
Personality and Cultural Values
the interview protocols used in their own organizations. Once the interviews had concluded, the
study gathered multiple ratings of the Big Five, including ratings from the interviewer, the student,
and a close friend of the student. The results of the study showed that the interviewers’ ratings of
extraversion, agreeableness, and openness were fairly consistent with the students’ own ratings, as
well as their friends’ ratings. In contrast, interviewers’ ratings of conscientiousness and neuroticism were only weakly related to the students’ and friends’ ratings. This study therefore shows that
interviewers are unable to gauge the two Big Five dimensions that are most highly related to job
performance.
Rather than using interviews to assess personality, more and more companies are relying on
paper-and-pencil “personality tests” like the kind shown in our OB Assessments. A recent survey
of Fortune 1000 firms suggests that around a third of those organizations rely on, or plan to implement, some form of personality testing.103 If you’ve ever applied for an hourly position at Best Buy,
Target, Marriott, Universal Studios, CVS Pharmacy, Albertsons, or Fresh Market, you may have
been asked to take a personality test at a computer kiosk as part of your application.104 That test
was designed by Kronos, a workforce management software and services provider headquartered
in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.105 Kronos’s test includes 50 questions, many of which are clearly
tapping the Big Five:
•
•
•
•
You do things carefully so you don’t make mistakes.106 (high conscientiousness)
You can easily cheer up and forget a problem.107 (low neuroticism)
You don’t act polite when you don’t want to.108 (low agreeableness)
You’d rather blend into the crowd than stand out.109 (low extraversion)
Ten minutes after an applicant completes the personality test at the kiosk, the hiring manager receives a report that identifies the applicant with a “green light,” “yellow light,” or “red
light.”110 Green lights earn an automatic follow-up interview, yellow lights require some managerial discretion, and red lights are excused from the hiring process. The report also includes some
recommended interview questions to follow-up on any concerns that might have arisen based
on personality responses. Kronos has built a database of 370,000 employee personality profiles,
together with the actual job results for those employees, allowing them to look for profiles of
effective and committed employees. Kronos also encourages employers to save the data from the
personality tests for several years, to verify that responses correlate with performance evaluations
and turnover over time.
Of course, personality testing is not without controversy. Privacy advocates worry about the
security of the personality profiles that are stored in large databases.111 There’s also no guarantee that the personality tests used by a company are actually valid assessments because few of
them have been subject to scientific investigation.112 For example, we’re not aware of any scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals that have comprehensively validated Kronos’s personality
test. Because the personality testing industry is not regulated, the best bet for companies that are
thinking about using personality tests is to start with tests that have been validated in scientific
journals. Table 9-4 provides a list of some of the most well-validated measures of the Big Five
TABLE 9-4
A Sampling of Well-Validated Measures of the Big Five
NAME OF INSTRUMENT
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VENDOR
TIME REQUIRED
NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI)
Sigma Assessment Systems
15 minutes
Personal Characteristics Inventory (PCI)
Wonderlic
20 minutes

Personality Research Form (PRF)
Sigma Assessment Systems
45 minutes
Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)
Hogan Assessment Systems
15 minutes
Big Five Inventory (BFI)
TestMaster
10 minutes
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personality dimensions. The vendors that own these measures typically offer software and services for scoring the instruments, interpreting the data against relevant population norms, and
creating feedback sheets.
One particular subset of personality tests is particularly controversial. Integrity tests, sometimes also called “honesty tests,” are personality tests that focus specifically on a predisposition
to engage in theft and other counterproductive behaviors.113 Integrity tests were created, in part,
as a reaction to Congress’s decision to make polygraph (or “lie detector”) tests illegal as a tool for
organizational hiring. Integrity tests typically come in two general varieties. Clear purpose tests
ask applicants about their attitudes toward dishonesty, beliefs about the frequency of dishonesty,
endorsements of common rationalizations for dishonesty, desire to punish dishonesty, and confessions of past dishonesty.114 Veiled purpose tests do not reference dishonesty explicitly but instead
assess more general personality traits that are associated with dishonest acts. Table 9-5 provides
sample items for both types of integrity tests. You might notice that the veiled purpose items
resemble some of the items in our OB Assessments for the Big Five. Most integrity tests actually
assess, in large part, a combination of high conscientiousness, high agreeableness, and low neuroticism,115 along with an honesty or humility factor that may lie beyond the Big Five.116
Do integrity tests actually work? One study examined the effectiveness of integrity tests in a
sample of convenience store clerks.117 The chain had been struggling with inventory “shrinkage”
due to theft and began using a clear purpose integrity test to combat that trend. The study compared the integrity test scores for employees who were fired for theft-related reasons (e.g., taking
merchandise, mishandling cash, having frequent cash register shortages) with a sample of demographically similar employees who remained in good standing. The results of the study revealed
that employees who were terminated for theft had scored significantly lower on the integrity test
when they were hired than employees who were not terminated. These sorts of results are not
unusual; a meta-analysis of 443 studies including more than 500,000 employees has shown that
integrity test scores have a moderately strong, negative correlation with counterproductive behaviors such as theft.118 In fact, integrity test scores are actually more strongly related to job performance than conscientiousness scores, largely because integrity tests sample a blend of multiple
Big Five dimensions.119
You might find it surprising that integrity tests (or personality tests in general) can be effective.
After all, don’t applicants just lie on the test? Before we answer that question, consider what you
would do if you applied for a job and had to answer a set of questions on a 1 (“Strongly Disagree”)
to 5 (“Strongly Agree”) scale that were obviously measuring integrity. If a response of 5 indicated
high integrity, how would you answer? You probably wouldn’t answer all 5s because it would be
TABLE 9-5
Sample Integrity Test Items
TYPE OF TEST
SAMPLE ITEMS
Clear Purpose
• Would you say that most people lie on their résumé?
• Have you ever taken something home from work without
saying anything about it?
• If a cashier gave you too much change, do you think you’d
point out the error?
• At what dollar value would theft from work become a fireable offense?
Veiled Purpose
•
•
•
•
I rarely do things impulsively.
I try to avoid hurting people’s feelings.
There are people out there I’d like to get back at.
I’m someone who follows the rules.
Source: Adapted from Wanek, J. E., P. R. Sackett, and D. S. Ones. (2003). “Towards an Understanding of Integrity Test
Similarities and Differences: An Item-Level Analysis of Seven Tests.” Personnel Psychology 56, pp. 873–94.
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clear that you were faking—exaggerating your responses to a personality test in a socially desirable
fashion. You might worry that the computers that score the test have some ability to “flag” faked
responses (indeed, the scoring procedures for many personality tests do flag applicants with an
unusual pattern of responses).120
So how would you answer? Chances are, you’d allow your answers to have “a grain of truth”—
you’d just exaggerate that true response a bit to make yourself look better. Figure 9-9 summarizes
what this sort of faking might look like, with red circles representing below-average scores on an
FIGURE 9-9
The Effects of Faking on Correlations with Integrity Tests
FREQUENT
Score without
Faking
Score with
Faking
INFREQUENT
Supervisor Ratings of Counterproductive Behavior
Amount of Faking
DISHONEST
HONEST
Applicant Scores on Integrity Test
Below Average Score
Correlation without faking = −.35
(picture only the faded circles)
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Above Average Score
Correlation with faking = −.30
(picture only the unfaded circles)
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integrity test and green circles representing above-average scores. Research on personality testing
suggests that virtually everyone fakes their responses to some degree, as evidenced in the difference between the faded circles (which represent the “true” responses) and the unfaded circles
(which represent the exaggerated responses).121 Do dishonest people fake more? To some degree.
Figure 9-9 reveals that applicants who scored below average on the test faked a bit more than
applicants who scored above average on the test. But the disparity in the amount of faking is not
large, likely because dishonest people tend to view their behavior as perfectly normal—they believe
everyone feels and acts just like they do.
The figure reveals that it could be dangerous to set some artificial cutoff score for making hiring decisions, because it’s possible for people to “fake their way” across that cutoff (note that two
of the individuals in the figure went from a below-average score to an above-average score by faking). With that caution in mind, here’s the critical point illustrated by Figure 9-9: Because everyone
fakes to some degree, correlations with outcomes like theft or other counterproductive behaviors are
relatively unaffected.122 Picture the scatterplot in the figure with just the faded circles—what does
the correlation between integrity test scores and supervisor ratings of counterproductive behavior
look like? Now picture the scatterplot with just the unfaded circles—what does that correlation
look like? About the same, right? The tendency to fake doesn’t really alter the rank order in scores
from most dishonest to most honest, so the test is still useful as a tool for predicting counterproductive behavior. In fact, experts on personnel selection agree that personality and integrity tests
are among the most useful tools for hiring123—more useful even than the typical version of the
employment interview.124 One of the only tools that’s more useful than a personality test is an
­ability test—as noted in our next chapter.125
Takeaways
9.1 Personality refers to the structures and propensities inside people that explain their
c­ haracteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. It also refers to people’s social
reputations—the way they are perceived by others. In this way, personality captures what
people are like (unlike ability, which reflects what people can do). Cultural values are shared
beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the
development and expression of traits.
9.2 The “Big Five” include conscientiousness (e.g., dependable, organized, reliable),
a­ greeableness (e.g., warm, kind, cooperative), neuroticism (e.g., nervous, moody,
­emotional), openness to experience (e.g., curious, imaginative, creative), and extraversion
(e.g., talkative, sociable, passionate).
9.3 Although both nature and nurture are important, personality is affected significantly by
genetic factors. Studies of identical twins reared apart and studies of personality stability
over time suggest that between 35 and 45 percent of the variation in personality is genetic.
Personality can be changed, but such changes are apparent only over the course of several
years.
9.4 The Big Five is the dominant taxonomy of personality; other taxonomies include the Myers-
Briggs Type Inventory and Holland’s RIASEC model.
9.5 Hofstede’s taxonomy of cultural values includes individualism–collectivism, power distance,
uncertainty avoidance, masculinity–femininity, and short-term vs. long-term orientation.
More recent research by Project GLOBE has replicated many of those dimensions and
added five other means to distinguish among cultures: gender egalitarianism, assertiveness,
future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation.
9.6 Conscientiousness has a moderate positive relationship with job performance and a
­ oderate positive relationship with organizational commitment. It has stronger effects on
m
these outcomes than the rest of the Big Five.
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9.7 Personality tests are useful tools for organizational hiring. Research suggests that applicants
do “fake” to some degree on the tests, but faking does not significantly lower the correlation
between test scores and the relevant outcomes.
Here are the answers to the tests of creative thinking in Figure 9-5: (1) A towel. (2) They were
triplets. (3) The letter U. (4) Draw a line to turn the + into a 4. (5) Solving this puzzle literally requires you to “think outside the box” (yes, that’s where it comes from!). Nowhere in the
instructions did it state that you needed to keep the lines inside the square formed by the dots.
Connect the dots using the four lines shown below:
Key Terms
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Personality
Traits
Cultural values
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness to experience
Extraversion
Big Five
Accomplishment striving
Communion striving
Zero acquaintance
Status striving
Positive affectivity
Negative affectivity
Differential exposure
Differential reactivity
Locus of control
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI)
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 264
p. 268
p. 269
p. 269
p. 270
p. 270
p. 271
p. 271
p. 271
p. 271
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Interests
RIASEC model
Culture
Individualism–collectivism
Power distance
Uncertainty avoidance
Masculinity–femininity
Short-term vs. long-term
orientation
Project GLOBE
Ethnocentrism
Typical performance
Maximum performance
Situational strength
Trait activation
Integrity tests
Clear purpose tests
Veiled purpose tests
Faking
p. 276
p. 276
p. 278
p. 279
p. 279
p. 279
p. 279
p. 279
p. 279
p. 282
p. 282
p. 282
p. 284
p. 284
p. 287
p. 287
p. 287
p. 288
p. 276
Discussion Questions
9.1 Assume that you applied for a job and were asked to take a personality test, like the one
offered by Kronos. How would you react? Would you view the organization with which you
were applying in a more or less favorable light? Why?
9.2 Research on genetic influences on personality suggests that more than half of the variation
in personality is due to nurture—to life experiences. What life experiences could make someone more conscientious? More agreeable? More neurotic? More extraverted? More open to
new experiences?
9.3 Consider the personality dimensions included in the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and the
RIASEC model. If you had to “slot” those dimensions into the Big Five, would you be able
to do so? Which dimensions don’t seem to fit?
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9.4 Consider the profile of the United States on Hofstede’s cultural values, as shown in Table
9-3. Do you personally feel like you fit the U.S. profile, or do your values differ in some
respects? If you served as an expatriate, meaning you were working in another country,
which cultural value differences would be most difficult for you to deal with?
9.5 If you owned your own business and had a problem with employee theft, would you use an
integrity test? Why or why not?
Case: Marriott
At one point, Marriott’s personality assessment was supplied by Kronos—a human resource
software company. Kronos became a larger presence in the personality assessment arena after
acquiring Unicru—a firm that specialized in such tests. Kronos/Unicru has supplied personality
assessments for a number of companies other than Marriott, including Best Buy, CVS, Walmart,
and Kroger. Its assessment appears to measure four of the Big Five dimensions, including the
agreeableness and conscientiousness facets that Marriott emphasizes most. Below are some
sample items from the assessment, based on reports of those who have experienced it. All items
use a Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree response scale.
•
•
•
•
You do things carefully so that you don’t make mistakes. (conscientiousness)
You are a friendly person. (agreeableness)
You show it when you are in a bad mood. (neuroticism)
You chat with people you don’t know. (extraversion)
An assessment developer at a competing firm, Development Dimensions International,
s­ ummarizes such tools this way: “You might find yourself in a job incompatible to your
­personality type and values . . . The more honest you are with these types of tests, the better off
you are in the long run.”* Of course, that viewpoint is less salient to the people who are trying
to land jobs, especially in competitive sectors or difficult economic times. Admits a CEO of
another assessment administrator, “If a candidate fails the test, the companies often won’t take
the time to interview them.”*
Is Marriott right to focus on agreeableness and conscientiousness, regardless of who it
­partners with in creating the assessment? Research that occurs in the hotel industry suggests
that it is. One study, published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, assessed
the Big Five for almost 200 employees in multiple hotel chains in the state of Washington.
The ­f indings of the study showed that agreeable and conscientious employees were more
­self-confident about their job performance, with those dimensions having stronger effects than
the other three members of the Big Five. It seems likely that such self-confidence would be
­critical to Marriott employees, especially as they rose up the ranks of the company.
9.1 Can you think of other jobs in Marriott where Big Five dimensions other than agreeableness
and conscientiousness would be vital?
9.2 If you applied for a job that involved a personality assessment, would you be honest in your
responses or would you exaggerate your answers to appear more desirable? Why?
9.3 What other approaches might companies use to assess personality during hiring, other than
an interview or assessment? What strengths and weaknesses might those other approaches
have?
*Source: Forbes Media LLC.
Sources: L. Gallagher, “Why Employees Love Staying at Marriott,” Fortune, March 5, 2015; R. Cohen, “Pass This Test,
then We’ll Talk,” Forbes, June 25, 2008; M. Pallen, “Unicru Answer Key—Read This, Get Hired,” http://toughnickel.com/
finding-job/unicru, accessed May 13, 2019; H. J. Kim, K. H. Shin, and W. T. Umbreit, “Hotel Job Burnout: The Role of
Personality Characteristics,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 26 (2007), pp. 421–434.
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Case: Marriott
At one point, Marriott’s personality assessment was supplied by Kronos-a human resource
software company. Kronos became a larger presence in the personality assessment arena after
acquiring Unicru-a firm that specialized in such tests. Kronos/Unicru has supplied personality
assessments for a number of companies other than Marriott, including Best Buy…
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