The Big Five of Personality and Work Involvement - Assignment Example

1a. An individual, the team and the organization are the three dimensions of an organization (Castka, Bamber, Sharp & Belohoubek, 2001). Hence an individual is an important part of the organization. People make the place, cite Westerman and Simmons (2007) and today in the face of globalization the applicants proactively choose the organizational environment they would like to work in. They look for the culture and the reward system that would fit their personalities. The relationship between personality characteristics and specific work environment may influence the performance. The cognitive and behavioral patterns that show stability over time and across situations, is what constitutes the personality of an individual (Bozionelos, 2004). Hence personality traits influence the individual attitudes and values which in turn affect performance. The Big Five personality traits - neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness – affect the performance of an individual in particular roles at work and when working in teams. 1b. Those with openness in their attitude would proactively seek to explore unfamiliar areas while a conscientious worker would be hard-working and organized in his approach (Westerman & Simmons, 2007). Those with extraversion personality demonstrate the need for stimulation and those with agreeableness have a cooperative nature. Those with emotional stability are low in anxiety and calm in their approach. Conscientious individuals will be organized and decisive, have the ability to cope with stress and time management. They perform well in their particular role as well as in teams. Agreeable employees are trustworthy and have integrity. They perform well in roles where high level of interaction with customers is required. They are committed and value relationships. Extraverted employees are assertive and rewards at work can make them perform better. They seek high level of interpersonal interaction and perform well in groups. Openness is not directly related to performance but is indicative of leadership behavior in teams. They perform well where there is high level of social interaction. Those with emotional stability are able to form and maintain positive relationships with one’s work environment. It contributes to social cohesion in teams. Thus based on these personality types, Footloose should decide the role that an individual employee would be able to perform best and select accordingly. 2a. The management at Footloose just wanted to try out the opposite of autocratic form of leadership and hence attempted the democratic approach but they met with negative results even then. Managers need not be good leaders. Management functions include planning, staffing, organizing and controlling while leadership is the ability to conduct interpersonal relations, which influence people to take desired actions (Eric, n.d.). You lead people but you manage things. Management always expects the subordinates to follow and obey them but leadership requires trust and commitment of others. Managers do not appear to have the people skills which allow them to support, inspire, encourage, lead and listen to associates. The managers too felt that their role was diluted because the top management support was lacking. Managers need to have a commitment to the organization and work towards its objectives on a long-term basis (Kruger, 2001). Top management support and involvement is essential which was lacking at Footloose. 2b. An organization comprises of people from diverse backgrounds and hence the contingency approach to leadership should be adopted. The strength of the leader in this approach lies in his ability to inspire others to give their best. The contingency approach again can be directive, achievement-oriented, supportive or participative (Working Futures, 2005). A leader plays a crucial role when there is resistance to change. The leader has to inspire the subordinates to understand and accept the vision or the corporate goals. Currently the culture at Footloose appears to be stagnant and a leader with the contingency approach can transform this into a productive culture. He will be able to inspire others to deal with the external and internal environment in the right way. He will be able to bring together people from diverse education, background and culture and work together as a whole. This approach will help to promote understanding and cohesive teamwork, increases satisfaction, resolves conflicts and improves decision quality (Sorenson, 2000). 3a. In many organizations employees feel disengaged and disenchanted after being selected for employment as they feel their capabilities and talents remain unrecognized. They do not feel committed to the organization and do not give in their best as they do not feel involved or a part of the organization. Employee engagement is positively associated with performance in areas like customer satisfaction, profitability and productivity and reduced employee turnover (Konrad, 2006). To engage people it is important to develop people to keep people. People have to be motivated enough to become engaged. This motivation does not come by paying high salaries. Engagement implies that the employee is fully intellectually and emotionally committed to the organization and gives the best to the job and this is known as discretionary effort (Woodruffe, 2005). Irrespective of the potential of the employee, it is important to engage them. Footloose should develop and train their talented people as they would be the leaders who would be able to engage the other employees. Each employee wants to feel a sense of self-worth. Hence Footloose should take four immediate steps to enhance employee engagement. These include empowering the employees through forums where employees can exchange ideas for improving firm performance. Timely and critical data should be transmitted to the employees concerned. Information flow can lead to a high-involvement work system. Employees’ knowledge needs to be improved which can be done through training and development. The training investments may be high in high-involvement firms but serves as a great motivator in engaging people. Rewards should be extended to the employees who make discretionary effort to enhance organizational performance. These steps would promote greater engagement among the employees in the future. 3b. Motivation today is no more about extra money. The content theories of motivation also known as needs theory assist the human resource department to understand what drives, energizes or initiates employee behavior (Borokowski, 2005). According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there are five levels of needs but the physiological needs have to be satisfied for an individual to be motivated to work for the next need. In this hierarchy the self-actualization arises when all other needs have been satisfied. The mangers at Footloose should first ensure that their basic needs have been satisfied before they can expect more from the employees. Herzberg however contends that two factors act upon the motivation of employees – the hygiene factors and the motivators (Tietjen & Myers, 1998). Hygienes are the intrinsic entities while motivators are intrinsic. It implies that human beings want to avoid the unpleasant and they seek personal growth. This theory separates the factors that lead to job satisfaction and the factors that lead to job dissatisfaction. The hygiene factors include the working conditions, the company policies and the salaries. The hygienic factors at Footloose are not paid heed to as the working conditions are deplorable. While the pay structure is satisfactory, the employees do not derive job satisfaction. Hence money does not provide job satisfaction nor can be used as motivators. The motivators or the intrinsic factors include achievement, recognition, responsibility and advancement. This implies that job role and expectations should be clearly laid out. The managers or the leaders should be able to recognize and reward suitably. Feelings of self-worth, accomplishment and pleasure from using and developing one’s own skills can provide one with intrinsic rewards which is superior to any material reward (Gallagher & Einhorn, 1976). 4a. A team is like a jigsaw puzzle of complimentary parts fitting perfectly together (McGreevy, 2006). Each individual contributes their knowledge or expertise to jointly solve a problem which may not be possible to solve individually. Self-managed teams can work fine and the potential of the teams can be realized but such teams have to be subjected to management direction to some degree. The team members need to know their line of authority otherwise they can work against the organizational goals (McGreevy). Such teams can go off-track if the management does not oversee the development of the teams and provide the necessary support and training. The managers should also accept the mistakes can happen as responsibility of the teams increases. Lack of training or wrong team composition can produce critical skill gaps which can lead to overall decrease in team performance. Teams can go wrong when they have a weak sense of direction, lack of commitment to team performance, skill gaps and finally hostility, conflicts or indifference (Castka, Bamber, Sharp & Belohoubek, 2001). Teams do not work cohesively as a team when each team wants to have its own identity (Coghlan, 1994). They resist any external change because the team’s norms and values are so deeply embedded that any change threatens its stability. If the team lacks insight and reflective ability they will resist change. Teams may not function properly when an individual carries her personal stress to the team and the team starts having problems. 4b. Communication is the essence of team success. Communication refers to understanding of the meaning by the receiver. Communication has four functions - control, motivation, emotional expression and information. In an organization communication can be formal or informal – the formal helps the employees to perform their task while the informal allows them to satisfy their need for social interaction (CSUN, 2005). Even though informal communication is a more effective channel certain activities like profiling and branding have to be formally communicated. A manager should be able to recognize the weak signals and take corrective actions. The communication norms have to be decided upon and should be minimal. Communication should be compliance-oriented and automated whenever possible (Kimball, n,d.). Team members should not generate excessive reporting in an attempt to impress the managers. Information overload can lead to neglecting the necessary actions. Communication should be standardized and organized. A few processes should be chosen for exchanging information and technology that is not understood by all should be avoided in information exchange. Other factors include empowerment with limited authority, training to use the authority, both support and control from the management is essential. Because of lack of these factors, the self-managed teams have started acting independently. They are lost as they are empowered because they have developed the attitude that they are equivalent to supervisors and hence demand extra pay. They have developed ownership whereas teams are formed because an individual is unable to achieve the goal alone. There can be no ownership in team work and all these can be attributed to lack of training and knowledge. 5a. Virtual team members seldom meet as they are geographically separated and who work across boundaries of space and time with the use of technology (Arnison & Miller, 2002). It is used as a strategy to overcome communication barriers associated with numerous employees in different locations. People even work as teams from home using emails, laptops and mobile phones as tools of communication. This can lead to problem as due to lack of interaction, social mechanisms like the non-verbal cues are missing (Malhotra & Majchrak, 2004). Merely using technology as a tool for communication can result in unevenly distributed knowledge, private communication or mistaken assumptions and failure to communicate knowledge about the task context. Empowerment in such teams has no value because technology facilitates sharing of knowledge. Sharing knowledge makes the decision process too explicit, accountable and monitored by others. For virtual teams to function effectively, they must achieve a strategic fit between task characteristics, team composition and information technology. Even video-conferencing for international meetings has its own pitfalls. While it speeds up communication, the participants have to work harder to interpret information than they would have to in face-to-face meetings (Informs, 2008). The participants are less likely to make sound judgments about speakers being viewed over a screen. This method is not appropriate for decision making although it can effectively used for information exchange. 5b. To overcome the perceived limitations of ICT, it is strongly advised that the participants or the team members should be surveyed on their experiences where they describe their attitudes about the team group process, and the frequency at which they had used the various communications during the week. Personal interviews would also reveal the drawbacks and help to fill the communication gaps. ICT should be used to create a ‘virtual living room’ rather than merely collecting data (Malhotra & Majchrak, 2004). It should be sued to promote extensive communication. If any document has been submitted by a far-flung member, it should be studied and the revised paper should also be submitted through the same channel so that all are aware of the progress. It should enable other members to view the comments, which in itself is a learning process for the others. It should encourage electronic brainstorming. Members should not be bothered only to create new knowledge. They should know and apply sophisticated search tools and key word mechanisms for retrieval of appropriate information. Knowledge in such groups evolves so rapidly that without the use of these tools they would not be able to keep track of the nature of entries (Malhotra & Majchrak, 2004). The ICT support for far-flung teams has to be flexible so that each member has the opportunity to understand and apply them intelligently. There is also a fear that knowledge shared in far-flung teams can be misused, misinterpreted or misappropriated (Malhotra & Majchrak, 2004). To overcome this, the teams should not engage in one-to-one email communication. All the information should be shared through the knowledge repository or through message threads. Everyone should have access to everyone’s comments. Clear IT and communication protocols should be defined to overcome the limitations of technology in communication in virtual teams. References Arnison, L & Miller, P 2002, Virtual teams: a virtue for the conventional teams, Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 14, no. 2 pp. 166-173. Borkowski, N 2005, Content Theories of Motivation, Ch 5, retrieved online 31st December 2008, from http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/Borkowski/chapter5.pdf Bozionelos, N 2004, The big five of personality and work involvement, Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 69-81. Castka, P Bamber, CJ Sharp, J & Belohoubek, P 2001, Factors affecting successful implementation of high performance teams, Team Performance Management, vol. 7, no. 7/8, pp. 123-134. 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Infrms, 2008, Videoconferencing More Confusing for Decision Makers than Face-to-Face Meetings, retrieved online 31st December 2008, from http://www.informs.org/article.php?id=1511 Kimball, L n,d., Developing the Teams Communications Strategy, retrieved online 31st December 2008, from, http://www.groupjazz.com/pdf/matrix.pdf Konrad, AM 2006, Engaging employees through high-involvement work practices, Ivey Business Journal Online, March/April 2006 Kruger, V 2001, Main schools of TQM: ``the big five, The TQM Magazine, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 146-155. Malhotra, A & Majchrak, A 2004, Enabling knowledge creayion in far flung teams: best practices for IT support and knowledge sharing, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 75-88. McGreevy, M 2006, Team working: part 2 – how are teams chosen and developed? Industrial and Commercial Training, vol. 38, no. 7, pp. 365-370. Sorenson, RL 2000, The Contribution of Leadership Style and Practices to Family and Business Success, FAMILY BUSINESS REVIEW, vol. XIII, no. 3, September 2000 Tietjen, MA & Myers, RM 1998, Motivation and job satisfaction, Management Decision, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 226–231. Westerman, JW & Simmons, BL 2007, The effects of work environment on the Personality-Performance Relationship: An exploratory Study, Journal of Managerial Issues, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 288-305. Woodruffe, C 2005, Employee Engagement - the real secret of winning a crucial edge over your rivals, The British Journal of Administrative Management; Dec 2005/Jan 2006; ABI/INFORM Global, pg. 28 Working Futures, 2005, Introduction to Excellence in management and leadership, retrieved online 31st December 2008, from http://www.marcbowles.com/sample_courses/frontline_v5/fma1/fma1c.htm Read More