8 Personality-Conceptual Framework

Dr.Dimple Kholsa

1.     Learning Objectives

2.     Introduction

3.     Nature of Personality

4.     Major Determinants of Personality

5.     Personality Traits

6.     Personality attributes influencing organisational behaviour

7.     Summary

1.     Learning Objectives:

Basic objective of this module are:

• To understand the meaning of Personality To understand the definitions of Personality To understand the nature of personality
• To understand the major determinants of personality To know the Different personality traits
• To understand the Personality attributes influencing organisational behaviour

2.     Introduction

Before the advent of liberalisation of economies the job scenario was entirely different in various countries, job environment was relatively static. So people were not afraid of losing the job rather there was a feeling of job security among employees. But the competition reached to another level after the emergence of privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation, which led to job sharing. Hiring and firing become the routine phenomenon of the companies. However due to industrialisation the number of jobs were increasing but still some companies were adopting the retrenchment strategies. Due to this economic recession the employees were losing their jobs and in the new competitive era they realised that just getting the qualification for the job is not enough, they should make their self employable by adding on more and more traits.

Today every organisation demands for a person with versatile personality. So an individual must possess and develop different personality traits. Now the question arises as to what is personality? To answer this question we must study the concept of personality in detail.

Source: http://www.wasteurtime.com/your_page/personality_politics.html

Meaning

The term personality has been derived from the Latin word ‘persona’ which means ‘to speak through’. According to Fred Luthans, ‘Personality means how people affect others and how they understand and view themselves, as well as their pattern of inner and outer measureable traits and the person-situation intervention”. In other words personality refers to that role which a person displays to the public.

Personality is used in terms of influencing others through external appearance. It is an internalised system which includes all those aspects of a person that are inherited as well as learned.

Definitions of Personality:

According to Gordon Allport, “Personality is the dynamic organisation within the individual and consists of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment”.

According to Kanuk, “Personality can be defined as those inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person respond to his or her environment”.

According to Ruch, “Personality should include: (1) External appearance and behaviour or social stimulus (2) Inner awareness of self as a permanent organising force (3) particular pattern or organisation of measureable traits, both inner and outer.

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Thus personality devotes for the methods of affecting others, reacting to other’s actions and interacting with others.

3.  Nature of Personality:

Personality in general sense used to indicate the external outlook of an individual but actually it also includes the internal qualities of a person, so personality refers to the set of traits and behaviours that characterise an individual. An integrated whole which includes external as well as internal traits of an individual makes a personality. Personality is that which represents to the relatively stable pattern of behaviour. Personality has some basic nature which is as follows:

4.     Major Determinants of Personality:

Various determinants of personality have been categorised in several ways. It can be classified into groups, physiological, psychological, heredity etc. For the purpose of analysis, these can be divided into six broad categories. The major determinants of personality are as follows;

1. Heredity: The features and characteristics taken from the parents are termed as heredity. The study of role of heredity in personality development is very important. The study of contribution of heredity to personality can be divided into three major categories. These are:

(i) Brain: Brain is a factor which supposed to play a very important role in personality. The structure of brain determines personality. Role of brain in personality formation can’t be denied. The level of understanding is determined by the brain. The more quickly a person understands the things and interprets the more dynamic his personality appears to the others.

Source:http://blogs.ibo.org/blog/2015/03/25/does-personality-trump-intelligence/

(ii)  Physical appearance: A person outer look also has to play a vital role in his personality. His dress sense, body gestures, way of sitting, way of standing, level of confidence etc all are the means through which his personality is reflected.

Source:https://www.slideshare.net/aniturra/physical-appearance-power-point-8860714

(iii) Temperament: Temperament and other non-intellectual personality traits are distributed according to the normal distribution. Temperament is the degree to which one responds emotionally.

Source: http://foolishwisdom.com/what-temperament-are-you/

2. Environmental factors: We all are surrounded by some environment which has a great impact on us, so only heredity cannot decide the characteristics of a personality.

Environment is a broader term and it includes such factors as individual’s own culture and his school environment.

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i.  Cultural Environment: Culture is traditionally considered as the major determinant of an individual’s personality. The culture largely determines what a person is and what a person will learn. It generally determines attitudes towards independence, aggression, competition and co-operation. Each culture expects and trains its members to behave in the ways that are acceptable to the group. It is therefore, the cultural background of an individual which must be taken into account for describing one’s personality.

ii. School Environment: School is an indispensable part of a person’s life. It plays a major role in moulding the personality of the children because a significant part of the child’s life is spent in the school between the age of 6 to 20 years. The school poses new problems to be solved, new taboos to be accepted into super ego and new models for initiation and identification, all of which contribute their share in moulding the personality.

3.  Family: Family and social groups have most significant impact on the personality development. In order to understand the effects of a family on an individual’s personality, we have to understand the identification process. Identification starts when a person begins to identify himself with some other members of the family. Normally a child tries to initiate certain action of his parents. The identification process can be examined from three different perspectives:

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a.     How much similarity is there in the behaviour child and his role model.

b.     How desperate a child is to look like his model.

c.     How the child actually takes on the attributes of the model.

All the three perspectives, help in understanding the process of development of personality of a child.

4. Socialisation: A person does not live in isolation so his behaviour is always affected by the people who live around him. These social groups play vital role in personality development. The study of this aspect for organisational behaviour is relevant since a person always work living in some social groups.

Source: http://leeluvfaye.weebly.com/arts—media-culture–communication/research-notes-understanding-socialisation

Socialisation initially starts with the contact with mother and later on with other members of the family (father, sister, brother and close relatives) and the social group. These all play influential role in shaping an individual’s personality.

5. Situational Factors: Apart from the biological, sociological and environmental factors, situational factors also determine personality. An individual’s personality may change in different situations. The demand of different situations may call for different aspects of one’s personality. Therefore, we should not look the personality in isolation.

Source: https://teaching.nmc.edu/considering-situational-factors/

Although certain generalisation can be made about personality, their existence serves significant individual differences which are further influenced by situational factors. A situation exerts an important press on the individual. It exercises constraints and may provide push. E.g. a teacher may be rigid and strict with students but may not be with his/her family. An officer may behave with the subordinates differently as compare to his family and friends.

6.  Psychological Factors: Studying a human psychology is certainly a difficult task as it is purely related to an individual own mind set. So the psychological factors which affect an individual’s personality may be as follows:

Source: http://carcabot.com/psicomarketing-the-psychological-factor-in-purchase-decisions/ `

(i) Interest: An individual normally has many interests in various areas. The executives in an organisation do not have interest in common. The organisation should provide opportunities like job rotation and special training programme to satisfy the interest of the executives.

(ii)  Motivation: It is the inner drive of an individual. Motivation is a cognitive factor which operates in determining one’s behaviour towards a goal.

Individual differ in variables which determines the inner drives.

The overall personality is not the result of only one factor, rather every factor is responsible to some extent to give it a complete formation. A person behaves in a particular manner when he interacts with environment, culture, society, parents, and friends and even to those who comes in contact by chance.

5.     Personality Traits

A personality is an outcome of the combination of several traits. No two individuals are alike. According to Luthans, “The way people affect others is as per their personality traits.

Personality traits include height, weight, facial features, colour etc. Personality traits are enduring characteristics like shyness, submissiveness, laziness, timidity, loyalty, dynamism, aggressiveness, creativity etc., exhibited in a large number of situations.”

Various studies have been done over the years to find out the basic personality traits. More than 15,000 traits were identified and it was impossible to predict the behaviour of an individual based on such large number of traits. R.B. Cattell reduced this number to 171. He further reduced them to 16 personality factors which help in predicting individual behaviour. Here is the list of those 16 factors

6.  Personality Attributes Influencing Organisational Behaviour

Organisational effectiveness gets reflected in the organisational behaviour of people while people’s behaviour is reflected through their personality. Therefore, it can be said that the organisational effectiveness is directly linked with the personality. Now it requires to be seen as to which attributes of personality affect the behaviour of the people. For the convenience of the study these attributes can be divided in the following two parts:

1.     Five big attributes of the personality

2.     Other attributes of the personality

1.   Five big attributes of the personality

(Source: Modified version from Don Hellriegel, John W. Slochum Jr and Richard W. Woodman, “Organisational Behaviour,” Southwestern, Singapore, 2001, p 41)

1. Extroversion: Extroversion reflects the degree of openness towards the outer world. It tells how social a person is. The more is the quality of being social, talkative, assertive, the more open or extrovert that person will be considered. On the other hand a person who is reserved, quiet and timid will be identified as an introvert.

Sociability: People live in a social group and the ability of a person in maintaining inter-relationship within a social group is known as sociability. In many organisations now a day’s executives use to maintain good relationships with their subordinates. So they occasionally join them for social functions. These kinds of informal meetings help in building better understanding among them which ultimately result in positive job behaviour and improved job performance of subordinates.

Talkative: Some people are very good in expressing their selves through words. These people are open-minded people and do not hesitate to share their ideas and opinions with others. Here talkativeness is considered as speaking skills among executives, with the help of which they are able to get more output from their employees by motivating and inspiring them.

Assertive: Assertiveness is the ability to communicate own opinion with confidence An individual with this trait is always appreciated by his subordinates since he is able to influence their job behaviour and performance through his confidence in the desired manner.

2. Agreeableness: As the name suggests agreeable is the person who gives his consent easily. These people are usually very co-operative, warm and trust-worthy, whereas less agreeable people are cold and antagonistic. Highly agreeable person follows the principle of empathy and give due importance to the proposals given by their employees. Such individuals are usually good natured, co-operative and trust worthy.

Good Natured: A person with good nature always respects the opinions and views of others and also considers them while taking decisions. Subordinates perform better and feel comfortable working with the boss who is good natured.

Co-operation: An individual who does not hesitate to share his resources, time and expertise with other co-workers for the better performance of the organisation is known to have this trait.

Trust Worthy: The person whom one can rely upon is known as trust-worthy. If a superior is unable to keep his words, the employees will not trust him for long which ultimately will result in the deteriorating job performance.

3. Conscientiousness: The person who is conscientious will always try to do his work with full perfection and is always reliable. Person with this trait are responsible, dependable, persistent and achievement oriented.

Persistent: Persistent persons don’t stop their work even if they face a lot of hardships. They are just concerned with completing their work without even thinking that they are doing overtime or whatever.

Responsible: Responsible persons need not to tell what actually is expected from them. They know their duty towards their organisation and are always eager to fulfil it at their own. In the presence of responsible employees superiors need not to worry about the completion of the work and they can just concentrate on the key areas.

Dependable: The person who is responsible is generally dependable. Because a dependable person is more responsible even to those tasks which are not actually assigned to him. But he is ready to contribute his maximum potential and the superiors starts depending on him.

Achievement oriented: The individuals with this trait are focused. They know their goal and the way to achieve it in the present circumstances.

4.     Emotional Stability: Emotional stability is really very important to be successful. A stressed person can never perform better. So if a person has the trait of positive emotional stability, he will be able to cope with stress being calm, enthusiastic and secure. On the other hand a person will always feel nervous and depressed if his emotional stability is low.

5.     Openness to Experience: The individuals who are always in a try to find out the new alternate products, new ideas and innovative ways of doing a work are extremely creative, curious, imaginative, artistic, intellectual and open people. They always encourage innovation and give importance to the new ideas given by their employees. On the other hand people who have no interest in new ideas are generally less receptive. Their level of openness is very low and they always try to resist change.

Other Personality Attributes: Other personality attributes influencing organisational behaviour are as follows:

Other Personality Attributes

1. Self Monitoring: Self-monitoring is the extent to which people try to control the way they present themselves to others. High self-monitors want their behaviour to be socially acceptable and are attuned to any social cues that signal appropriate or inappropriate behaviours. They strive to behave in a situational appropriate manner. For example if the people are in a meeting and see others making suggestions, they will start giving suggestions as well They are also good at managing the impression that others have of them. In contrast low self monitors are not particularly sensitive to cues abut behaving in a situationally appropriate manner. These are guided by their own attitudes, beliefs, feelings and principles and are not at all concerned about what other think of their behaviours.

2. Risk propensity: People differ in their capacity of taking risk and speed of taking decisions. Some require a large number of information to take a decision while other are very prompt in making decision and capable of taking huge risks. So according to the job requirement it is necessary to recognise and differentiate the personality with high risk propensity and low risk propensity.

3. Authoritarianism: As the name suggests, the people with this trait are highly rigid in their positions. They are the strict followers of rules and regulations and wants all work should be done in conformity of the strict environment. Their beliefs are strong and follow the mechanism of formal authority. They usually prefer autocratic or directive leadership style.

4.  Locus of Control: In a business organisation, there are a number of events happening altogether. The mindset and belief of an individual regarding these events to be considered as under control or out of control represents the locus of control. Two kinds of personalities emerges out of it i.e. externals and internals. Externals think that events are beyond their control as these are directed by external forces. They are not completely satisfied with their job and also their tendency to remain absent from work is also on higher side. On the other hand internals are more disciplined and controlled as they think that events can be controlled by putting some extra efforts.

5. Self Esteem: There can be two types of personalities on the basis of self esteem, individuals with high self esteem and individuals with low self esteem. People with high self esteem are confident of their selves and fast in taking challenges and making decisions whereas people with low self esteem are always in an attempt to take approval of their seniors for doing any work or before taking any decision. Their level of satisfaction is low as compared to people with high self esteem.

6. Need Patterns: Individuals with a high need for achievement have a special desire to perform challenging tasks well and to meet their own personal standards for excellence. Individual with this trait are generally found at high managerial jobs and high leadership positions.

7. Machiavellianism: An individual is considered to be Machiavellian if he is a good manipulator. It means that the person is smart enough to manipulate others and things for his personal gain. Now this is to be answered that whether to keep these kind of employees or not, then it completely depends on the nature of job. If the nature of job is related to striking some deal or something based on commission then these kind of people may prove fruitful but in fact, this ideology is unethical.

8.Type A and Type B Personality: Type A personality represents a person who is highly competitive, very quick in doing things and cannot cope with leisure. They are usually the persons who are expert in multi-tasking. Type B personality is just opposite to it. They are easy going, less competent and relaxed.

7. Summary:

After studying all the traits of personality, we can say that a personality can not be measured in isolation. It is to be taken as a whole just as a house is competed only when the bricks are combined with cement similarly a personality is built when inherited traits are combined with acquired traits.

Learn More

Few important Sources to learn more about Determinants of personality:

• K.Aswathappa, “Organisational Behaviour-Text, Cases and Games”, Himalaya publishing House. (2010).
• P.Subba  Rao,  “Organisational  Behaviour-Text,  Cases  and  Games”,  Himalaya  publishing House. (2013).
• Stephen P Robbins, “Organisational Behaviour,” Prentice Hall of India (P) Ltd., New Delhi, India.(2000).
• Fred Luthans, “Organisational Behaviour,” McGraw Hill, New York, (1995).
• Cooper, C. (2010). Individual Differences and Personality (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Matthews, G., Deary, I. J., & Whiteman, M. C. (2009). Personality Traits (3rd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• John, O. P., Robins, R. W., & Pervin, L. A. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Publications.
• Management Concepts and Organisational Behaviour by N.K.Sahni, published by Kalyani Publishers.
• Organizational Behaviour-an evidence based approach by Fred Luthans, published by McGraw Hill Education, 12th Edition.
• Korman, A.K. (1971) – Industrial and Organisational Psychology. Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
• Clampitt, Phillip, G. (2001), Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness, sage Publication.