Personality and Attitudes |  |
Chapter SummaryPersonality and attitudes represent important micro, cognitively oriented variables in the study of organizational behavior. Personality represents the “whole person” concept. It includes perception, learning, motivation, and more. According to this definition, people’s external appearance and traits, their inner awareness of self, and the person–situation interaction make up their personalities. Although the nature versus nurture debate con-tinues, the findings of twin studies of the importance that heredity may play in personality and recent breakthroughs in neuropsychology that points to the importance of the
brain in personality have led most psychologists to recognize nature and nurture. However, the nurture side still dominates. Self-esteem, the person–situation interaction, and the socialization process of personality development are all very relevant to the
understanding and application of organizational behavior.
Besides the recent advances in the genetic and brain input into personality, the study of long-term predispositions has resurfaced in the form of the “Big-Five” personality traits. Conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience have been found to significantly relate to job performance, especially conscientiousness. In addition, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) remains a popular tool for personal and career development. Whereas the “Big-Five” is based on research, the MBTI is based on the historically important Carl Jung theory of personality types and mental processes. Both the “Big Five” and MBTI if carefully interpreted and used can make a contribution to the understanding and application of organizational behavior.
The second half of the chapter is more directly concerned with attitudes. Whereas personality deals with the whole person, an attitude is a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way toward some object. Like personality, attitudes are a complex
cognitive process that have three basic characteristics: they persist unless changed in some way; they range along a continuum; and they are directed toward an object about which a person has feelings, or affect, and beliefs. Attitudes also have three comonents: emotional, informational, and behavioral. Both situational and personality traits or dispositions, such as positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA), are important antecedents to attitudes about one’s job.
Attitudes often help employees adapt to their work environment. There are four functions that attitudes have in this process: (1) they help people adjust to their environment, (2) they help people defend their self-image, (3) they provide people with a basis
for expressing their values, and (4) they help supply standards and frames of reference that allow people to organize and explain the world around them.
It is sometimes difficult to change attitudes. One reason is prior commitments. A second is insufficient information on the part of the person having an attitude to be
changed. Research shows that some of the ways of bringing about attitude changes are providing new information, use of fear, resolving discrepancies between behavior and attitude, persuasion by friends or peers, and co-opting.
Job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the ap-praisal of one’s job or job experience. A number of factors influence job satisfaction. Some of the major ones are the work itself, pay, promotions, supervision, the work
group, and working conditions. There are a number of outcomes of job satisfaction. For example, although the relationship with productivity is not clear, low job satisfaction tends to lead to both turnover and absenteeism, whereas high job satisfaction often re-sults in fewer on-the-job accidents and work grievances, less time needed to learn newjob-related tasks, and less stress. There are also specific guidelines to enhance employee satisfaction such as making jobs fun, insuring fairness, getting the right fit, and
design jobs to make them more exciting and satisfying.
Closely related to job satisfaction is the organizational commitment attitude. It involves the employees’ loyalty to the organization and is determined by a number of personal, organizational, and nonorganizational variables. Now commitment is generally
conceived as having three components: affective (emotional attachment), continuance (costs of leaving), and normative (obligation to stay). Like job satisfaction, the organizational
commitment attitude is very complex and has mixed results, but in general, it is thought to have a somewhat stronger relationship with organizational outcomes such as performance, absenteeism, and turnover. Like satisfaction, organizational commitment
can be enhanced.
The concluding section draws from both personality and attitudes. The extra-role, prosocial/organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) involve predispositional traits to be cooperative and conscientious and reflect through attitudes fair treatment from the organization. OCBs can take a number of forms such as altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, sportsmanship, and courtesy. Although there is still some criticism of the conceptualization and research of OCBs, there is growing evidence that OCBs positively relate to individual, group, and organizational performance. |
|
|
2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education