MANAGEMENT: PERSONALITY
According to Burger, (2000) personality refers to the individual differences in thinking, feeling and behavioral characteristics and patterns. It can be defined as the particular combination of emotional, behavioral, attitudinal response patterns of a person. In the study of personality, theorists are more concerned about the differences that exist in different personality features and how such variations can be combined together as a whole.
Personality can be defined as comprising of characteristics that make up traits and patterns of thought and emotion. There is a general recognizable order and regularity to behaviors. Psychological and physiological factors affect personality. Research has also indicated that personality can be influenced by biological processes. Thus it does not only affect the way we move and response to the environment, it also causes different ways of action.
Murray (2006) in his literature described personality as multi-expressive in nature in that it can be displayed in more than one behavior. It is displayed in thoughts, beliefs, feelings, close relationships and other social interactions.
Personality is broken into components referred to as the Big five model. They include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. These components are generally considered stable over time and appear to be attributed to a person’s genetic makeup rather than the environment.
According to Tobin (2006) the five factor model is a hierarchical organization of personality that is grouped in terms of five basic elements. These five relatively independent groupings altogether provide a meaningful classification for the study of individual differences in work attitudes.
Openness refers to the scientific and artistic creativity, divergent thinking and political liberalism. The behavioral tendencies linked with openness to experience include broad-minded, intelligent, originality, imaginative, foresight, aesthetic sensitivity, unconventional values and a need for variety. High scores indicate that a person is highly fascinated, interesting, innovative and novelty. Low scores indicate more conventional behavior with a tendency for the familiar.
Consciousness is the ability to display tendency of self-discipline and dutiful behavior. The typical behavior traits associated with it include organized, perseverance, hard work, goal-oriented careful and responsible. High scores indicate a tendency to pursue fewer goals in a more purposeful and realistic way; while low scores show a sense of distraction with a tendency to pursue many goals and display hedonistic behavior.
Extraversion refers to the predisposition to experience positive emotions by having more friends and having more social situations. Introverts are their opposite and tend to keep to themselves. The behavioral tendencies associated with this factor include sociable, assertive, talkative, gregarious and outgoing. High scores indicate that a person is an extravert while low scores indicate introverts.
Berens (2000) define agreeableness as a personality trait of persons with good nature, cooperative and trusting. In his words, it refers to the measure of the propensity to disagree with others. People displaying this feature tend to be compassionate, cooperative, and value getting along with others. They are generally considerate, friendly, trusting, generous and forgiving and willing to compromise their interests with others.
Neuroticism is the variations in the individual tendency to experience chronic negative emotion such as anger, depression, and anxiety. Individuals exhibiting a high on this trait are generally anxious, depressed, angry, embarrassed, emotional and worried. This is according to .
Studies have shown that conscientiousness predicts job performance for all occupational groups. The studies show that individuals who are dependable, reliable, organized, thorough, organized and able to plan exhibit high performance in most of the occupations. This may be attributed to the fact that highly conscientious people develop high levels of job knowledge. Organizational commitment is the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement with the organization the person is working for. It has been shown that the ability of an individual to continually belong to an organization is rooted in the personality. Similar research conducted has shown a positive relationship between extroversion and happiness. Self-esteem and self-efficacy are linked with extroversion and subjective well being.
ANALYSIS
Big 5 Personality (long)
Extraversion: 3.13 out of 5
Agreeableness: 3.56 out of 5
Conscientiousness: 3.33 out of 5
Neuroticism: 2.88 out of 5
Openness: 2.8 out of 5
An extraversion score of 3.13 implies I am suitability for a managerial or sales position. This is because the position requires social interaction with people of all types. Openness score is 2.8. This implies that the score is moderate and as such the ability to gain significant benefits from training efforts is moderate.
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)
Positive emotion: 31
Negative emotion: 29
PANAS
Emotions and moods can be classified as positive and negative. Positive affects and negative effects are the factors that play out and determine people’s perception of things and environment. Positive moods tend to be prevalent in many people. Research in the US has come up with a criterion for determining moods and emotions basing on a scale of 50. Positive emotions have a range of 25 up to 50 where 25 represent the low positive effect while 50 is the highest positive affect. In the scale, the range from 0 to 25 represents negative emotions.
The score demonstrated self-reported stress and poor levels of coping exacerbated by increased unpleasant events.
Jungian 16-Type Personality
Introverted: 4 vs. Extroverted: 4
Sensing: 3 vs. Intuitive: 5
Thinking: 4 vs. Feeling: 4
Judging: 5 vs. Perceiving: 3
Jungian 16-Type personality is a efficient mechanism of knowing ones weaknesses and strengths. It helps individuals seek career choices that are compatible with their strengths. Analyzing this data reveals my personality code as INFJ or ENTJ. INFJ reveals reflective, introspective, creative and contemplative person in me with career choices such as librarian, psychologist, human resource managers and novelist. ENTJ represents an outgoing, visionary, argumentative and social person with no room for incompetence. I naturally qualify as natural leaders and possible career choices include manager, management trainer, stockbroker, lawyer, police officer and chemical engineer.
Type A or B Personality
Score: 105
Type A or B personality instrument measures the degree to which a person is competitive and rushed for time. Type A personality refer to an aggressive, incessant and high achieving individual in less time. My score of 105 indicate a moderate personality type which is characterized by rapid movement, working and lack of patience. Though the trait is not and hard core type, it is still an aggressive high achiever whose performance is measured by the amount of work done in a specific time period. I therefore exhibit inflated sense of excitement, anxiety and stress and thus should seek stress management techniques. Since speed takes precedence over quality, I do not qualify as efficient team players and get frustrated easily for long term projects.
Emotion Regulation Questionnaire
Cognitive Reappraisal Score: 3.33 out of 7
Expressive Suppression Score: 4.5 out of 7
Authentic Expression Score: 2.75 out of 7
Emotional regulation studies tries to explore the effects of positive and negative emotions on physiological, behavioral, cognitive and social functioning of individuals. When faced with emotions, I utilize various mechanisms to alter them. The general strategies include cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression and authentic expression. From the results, it reveals that I scores low in cognitive reappraisal to signify a zero tendency of changing thinking perspectives when faced with an emotional mood. A score of 4.5 for expressive suppression implies that I have an increased tendency to hide from others the emotion he is experiencing. This is backed by the low authentic expression signifying lack of ability to naturally and freely show my emotions without modification.
STEM
Final score: 0.137
Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to use emotion and cognition to solve social problems and emotional situations. It enables me, for, instance, to strategically manage emotional situations such as anger for the betterment of working environment. A score of 0.137 implies that the strategy is less widely in job satisfaction, coping behaviors and interpersonal communication.
STEU
Final score: 0.28
A STEU value of 0.28 is below the average (0.69) achieved by Australian university students.
Vocabulary Test
Score: 3 out of 18
Percentage Correct: 16.67%
Average Confidence: 44.44%
Bias in perceptual estimate: 27.78%
Letter Series Test
Score: 0 out of 15
Percentage Correct: 0%
Average Confidence: 40%
Bias in perceptual estimate: 40%
Vocabulary tests derive important answers in relation to English verbal comprehension, and crystallized cognitive intelligence. Comparing to a percentage correct mean and accuracy percentage of 62% and 72% respectively, my scores are low.
Alice is a Human resource manager at Medicare Reimbursement Department of a large organization. His dilemma lies in the fact that the potential candidate is extremely extrovert and the co-worker is extremely introverted. In this case if she hires the potential employee it is highly likely that she would not be satisfied with the job and finally leave the organization. Mark is an existing employee and his efforts are valuable. If allowed to work with Jana, their compatibility is questionable and their relationship might impact their performance.
It is advisable that Alice look for someone else who will be compatible with Mark in order to increase performance. An introverted worker is the best option for Alice. The provision that the worker needs to be highly knowledgeable with the industry regulations will not supersede compatibility and attitude toward work. A less knowledgeable worker can be trained of the industry regulations while work incompatibility cannot be solved hence performance will be compromised.
Personality tests are important in developing organization commitment. Apart from recruitment, the results can be used by administrators and policy makers in probing the role of individual differences in development of organizational commitment. Understanding personality of employees leads to significant information of attitudinal and behavioral reactions which can be used to improve work outcomes.
References
A.N, R. (2012). Pictures of Personality: Guide to the Four Human Natures. Personality Potter TYPOLOGY.
Bakhshi, A. K. (2009). Organizational Justice perception as Predator of Job satisfaction and Organizational Commitment. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management .
Berens, L. V. (2000). Dynamics of Personality Type: Understanding and Applying Jung's Cognitive Processes. Telos Publications.
Burger, J. M. (2000). Personality. Cengage Learning.
Linda V. Berens, D. N. (2000). The Sixteen Personality Types: Descriptions for Self-discovery. Telos.
Peter Murray, . P. (2006). Contemporary Issues in Management and Organisational Behaviour. International Journal of Organisational .
Russell D. Lansbury, . R. (2003). Organisational behaviour: the Australian context. Snippet.
Tobin, R. W. (2006). Peronality Emotional experience and efforts to control emotion. Journal of personality and Social Psychology , 656-699.
