Individual Personality Types and Organisational Behaviour - Essay Example

?Individual Personality Types and Organisational Behaviour The success of every individual in the workplace translates to an overall success of the organisation or company in general. In general each line of work has more or less people that have similarities in terms of disposition or workplace attitudes as well as adherence to company goals or visions. However it is not expected that personalities of each employee in the workplace are entirely similar or uniform. For one thing, each kind of occupation or line of work has certain objectives or goals, as well as differences in the nature of the work or job (Mullins, 2005). It is expected that not any kind of people, but only a few with certain work personalities can become effective in particular kinds of jobs. This fact about employee types is attributed to five major personality types or characteristics found to be predominant among workers, namely: extroversion/introversion; emotional stability/instability; agreeableness/hostility; conscientiousness/heedlessness; and open-mindedness/closed-mindedness (Barrick and Mount, 1991). Depending on the line of work, there may be observed imbalances between the levels of each personality type, and this accounts for the predominating personality type among individuals in a particular work setting, which in turn dictates their success or failure in particular work settings or careers. Different companies or organisations have different job descriptions which are dictated by their major purpose: economic organisations such as business firms focus more on financing and investments, as well as being regulators of the cycles of spending and saving; protective organisations such as the police force and the army are much concerned with the security of people from various threats; associative organisations such as societies bring together various groups of peoples having similar visions or goals; public service organisations are noted for helping people in need as well as setting up programs to increase self-sufficiency, among others; and religious organisations such as churches bring together people based on their spiritual or religious backgrounds and beliefs (Mullins, 2005). The wide variety of organisations as well as the varying balances of the personality types in each individual could affect the relative success or failure in each kind of job or work, thus it is important that aside from knowing the personal strengths and weaknesses of each individual, it is also relevant that the company’s goals be clear and concise enough to be understood (Bruck and Allen, 2003). With this in mind, the workplace must be able to create an environment that cultivates the individual’s skills in various levels and areas while at the same time relying on each person’s predominating work personality type. Different personality types go well with certain kinds of work. Person-job (PJ) fitting and person-organisation (PO) fitting has been used to assess what kind of work would make particular types of people excel, as well as predicting those that may prove to be difficult for them (Ryan and Kristof-Brown, 2003). People rating high in extroversion levels are reported to be suitable to careers with greater public exposure such as sales, those which rate high in emotional stability are more suited to law-enforcement work lie in security or police work, conscientiousness is linked with meticulous and detailed work such as engineering and architecture, agreeableness goes well with public service work such as foundations or public health work, and openness is one trait that is lauded in the academics or in research work (Mullins, 2005; Touze, 2005). When the PJ or the PO rating is good, this implies that the person is able to reconcile personal beliefs, attitudes and work goals with the organisation’s own objectives, which increases the person’s chances of staying in the organisation and achieving personal satisfaction. However, when the PJ or PO rating is bad or low, chances are that the individual’s personal preferences simply do not match or even contradict the organisation’s own culture, which could negatively affect the individual’s own perception of overall work satisfaction (Ryan and Kristof-Brown, 2003). The knowledge about how the lining up of both the person’s and the organisation’s objectives could create a positive environment prompt many groups or companies to post certain personality characteristics that they think are valuable in their work so as to attract people who have personalities that match. For example, some employers post requirements such as “hard-working with minimal or no supervision, creative, self-motivated, has dedication to adhering rules or instructions, friendly, etc.” in order to hire those which they think could add value to their line of work. Also, these are some traits that could directly affect the cooperation within the group due to the possibility of individuals to display both task performance (ability to perform well in tasks depending on one’s knowledge about the work) as well as contextual performance (the ability to adapt to the environment in maintaining satisfactory task performance) (Touze, 2005). When work-seeking individuals see these work requirements, they could easily gauge whether or not they could fit in the company or not, as these are traits that could be present in any kind of individual, in whatever level of work skill, intelligence or age (Ryan and Kristof-Brown, 2003). Companies have certain preferences on personality traits that they perceive to be in line with their work, thus aside from accepting individuals having self-proclaimed characteristics they also require these people to take personality tests to assess their suitability to the company. Indicators such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator allows hiring bodies to assess individuals’ personality traits using repeating sets of seemingly-variable questions. These kinds of personality tests are mostly used to gauge whether the individuals could easily tune in to the organisational culture or not (Mullins, 2005). Other tests such as measuring Type A or Type B personalities within individuals are also used by assessing the percentage dominance of either personality type to establish a rough sketch of an individual’s traits (Bruck and Allen, 2005). While these kinds of tests are roughly able to create a generalised representation of an individual’s personality type, there are other factors to consider that may create diversions from the expected traits, such as birth order, work experiences, whether or not a person has a family, and religious or spiritual beliefs (Ryan and Kristof-Brown, 2003). It is thus important that aside from overly-relying on administered tests in order to assess a person’s suitability for the job, managers or hiring entities also do background checks such as calling to personal references from previous jobs or asking an individual’s neighbours for any additional information that they might have missed. Personality types could easily affect the overall performance of companies or groups, which is why the selection of employees is not only based on skills or competence but also on work ethics and other personality traits (Ryan and Kristof-Brown, 2003). For example in lines of work that require meticulousness and diligence in making sure that all work output is exact such as accounting or engineering, personality types such as conscientiousness or introversion might weigh in more with some employers, especially since the individuals concerned can be expected to stay for longer office hours just to finish the job, or not use up time loitering in the halls. In any case that a highly-extrovert person applies for such jobs, he or she might become easily bored staying in one place or agitated due to the need for attention, and might even be considered to be a slacker by the managers or supervisors. In another example, for jobs that require agreeableness and emotional stability, those in the service sectors such as wellness industries or medical practitioners must present themselves as approachable and considerate in order to keep their clients or patients satisfied. If for example, say a closed-minded person tries to serve clients or patients according to personal preferences instead of paying attention to what the clients ask for, the latter might become apprehensive and stay away from the company or would pose negative comments about the personnel, not knowing that the person might be solely relying on books or old manuals to create decisions. In another example, say in police work or in the army, a highly-agreeable person in combination with being open-minded might have a hard time adhering to strict laws and objectives since these are designed to be stringent to offenders. Also, these people might take into consideration the feelings of others, regardless of the law, which could impede apprehension of criminals or keeping enemies alive in the battlefield, and may cause problems in the long run. But if a person with balanced emotional stability (both stable and hostile, depending on the need) and conscientiousness (can do work stepwise and on the dot) is given a chance for such work, it can be expected that these kinds of people have enough self-confidence, self-control and level-headedness to methodologically deal with law-breakers or rebels under the law. On reflecting the company I would choose to work in based on my workplace personality, I would choose to work at Google over Morgan Stanley. I personally see myself as an introvert but with an open-mindedness and sufficient agreeableness to work properly in a group that values creativity. As the company profile of Google mentions on its site, they have a culture which is both open and allows for the interactions of all personnel in various areas and levels (Google, n.d.). I would not mind working at Morgan Stanley since they also value diversity and community development (Morgan Stanley, 2013). However since the core of their organisation is on economics and finance, it is expected that there would be less room for creativity, the company is highly-involved in huge transactions that could make or break the company image, and the work would be too hectic and needs high-degrees of accuracy, I might feel pressure in doing well and even taking overtime just to fill in the organisational needs. Thus I choose to work at Google since their objectives and my personal values coincide with each other. Bibliography Barrick, M. R. & Mount, M. K., 1991. The big five personality dimensions and job performance: a meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, Spring, pp. 1-26. Bruck, C. & Allen, T., 2003. The relationship between big five personality traits, negative affectivity, type A behavior, and work-family conflict. Journal of Vocational Behavior, Volume 63, pp. 457-472. Google, n.d.. Our Culture - Company - Google. [Online] Available at: http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/culture/ [Accessed 9 March 2013]. Morgan Stanley, 2013. Global Citizen - Morgan Stanley. [Online] Available at: http://www.morganstanley.com/globalcitizen/priorities.html [Accessed 9 March 2013]. Mullins, L. J., 2005. Management & Organisational Behaviour. 7th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. Ryan, A. & Kristof-Brown, A., 2003. Focusing on personality in person-organization fit research. In: M. Barrick & A. Ryan, eds. Personality and Work Reconsidering the Role of Personality in Organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 262-288. Touze, P., 2005. Personality and prediction of performance in the workplace. Le Travail Humain, Volume 68, pp. 37-53 doi:10.3917/th.681.0037. Read More