Chapter 7

Understanding and Managing Individual Personality

Chapter Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

• realize what the major elements of “self” concept are,

• understand personality and individual patterns of behavior,

• understand various factors of the biological contribution to personality.

• understand sociocultural and ecological contributions to the formation and development of personality,

• describe the nature of individual differences in organizations,

• describe personality types and traits that affect organizations,

• analyze managerial styles on the basis of the sociocultural, psychological, and behavioral characteristics of a manager, and

• discuss how managers should cope with individual differences.

Introduction

Today, organizations are becoming borderless global institutions through the free flow of information. In-person communication is not the only way to associate with others. The association can be through e-image, e-mails, or e-commerce. Accordingly, individuals possess two types of behavior: (1) live and (2) imaginary behaviors.

Organizations can be classified according to two dimensions. First, organizations differ in the extent to which they are domestically oriented and culturally homogeneous. This concept is being used here to refer to the behavioral setting within a company. Theoretically, culturally homogeneous organizations are made up of personalities who are more or less working toward the same organizational identification regardless of each individual’s ethnicity, race, color, religion, and so on. Second, organizations can be classified as to the extent to which they differ in being internationally oriented and multiculturally heterogeneous. These organizations vary according to ecological, sociocultural, psychological, and behavioral value systems. The only dilemma of organizational constituencies is individual character or personality.

Several criteria have been used to compare organizational cultural behaviors. For instance, through an anthropological view, organizational cultures have been classified according to whether they are “simple,” or “complex” (Freeman and Winch, 1957: 461–466); or, through the view of marketing, organizations could be perceived through market size and product positions, global, multinational, bilateral, transnational, and international. Also, the heterogeneous view indicates that organizations can be classified into three categories: “near,” “intermediate,” or “far” from the core culture of the corporate’s headquarter (Furnham and Bochner, 1986: 20). In addition, organizations can be classified through other dimensions such as geographic territory, political ideology, and financial ownership. They can be classified as home/host, domestic/foreign, joint ventures/alliances, and profit-making/ not-for-profit organizations. All these characteristics are related to personal variable characteristics of decision makers and operators. Individuals are a combination of many factors, of which genetic, demographic, psychic, social, cultural, and behavioral dimensions emerge from their personalities. Accordingly, organizational behavior will exhibit different cultural characteristics. People possess a multitude of characteristics which function together to represent personalities. Organizational members do not function independently of their environment or the situation in which they find themselves. Situational factors and physiological characteristics can affect how organizational members respond in a variety of ways.

Today, managers are faced with the synergistic challenge to motivate and lead subordinates to achieve specific objectives. Perhaps we can define personality as the overall synergetic potential of an individual. So the more managers understand individual synergies, the better they can lead subordinates.

In this chapter, the concepts of individual differences, along with personalities, values, skills, beliefs, visions, desires, abilities, and lifestyles of people, are explored. The first section of this chapter defines and clarifies the analytical concept of personality. The next section is devoted to the development of personality along with discussion concerning some well-known theories of individual differences. The third section identifies determinants of individual personality within the framework of familial, sociocultural, and psychoanalytic aspects of ecological, situational, and conditional categories. In the fourth section, personhood will be discussed on the basis of the four major dimensions of personalogy: ideographic/nomothetic, types, and trait theories of personality. The final section of this chapter addresses the relationship between personality and the workplace and cultural political behavior of organizational personalities.

Analytical Views on Personalogy

Personalogy is the study of personality structure, dynamics, and development in the individual (Zimbardo, 1992: 567). It is related to actual and practical biographical and past performance data. Personalogy is an analysis of the real past performance of an individual. It is based upon the data from biographies, case studies, letters, writings, and general behavioral observation. It is related to real characteristics and the end results of an individual’s life events. One of the proponents of this technique is called “personalogy of neurotic managerial behavior.” Finally, personalogy is the study of the type and patterns of behaviors of people.

What is Personality?

Personality is a social manifestation of an individual’s behavioral characteristics in accordance with the integration of intelligence and feelings. It is a holistic behavioral representation of “self-concept.” The self-concept of an individual is similar in some ways to and in other ways different from others. The term personality can be traced to the Latin word persona, which translates as “to speak through.” This Latin term was used to denote the masks worn by actors in ancient Greece and Rome. Common usage of the word emphasizes the role that the person (actor) displays to the public (Luthans, 1985: 97).

Personality represents the total characteristics of an individual. It is a critical component of individual differences. It is defined as the ecological, psychological, sociocultural, and behavioral traits and characteristics that distinguish one individual from another.

Personality is important to managers because it reflects all the behavioral characteristics of an employee’s work. Numerous observers have pointed out the importance of personality in the probable outcomes of organizational performance. Personal characteristics that most often affect personality fall into four clusters: relevant ecological, psychological, sociocultural, and behavioral characteristics.

As shown in Figure 7.1, the first cluster includes variables for expressing “self.” This cluster includes variables that reflect the heredity and/or genetic identity of an individual. It manifests the physiological heredity characteristics such as weight, height, hair color, eye color, body shape, gender, sensation, race, ethnicity, and appearance style.

The second cluster includes psychological variables that reflect past experiences that somehow prepare the individual cognitively and emotionally for perceiving “self.” This cluster concerns psychological factors such as feelings, needs, motives, attitudes, perceptions, traits, ability, potentials, faith, and learning style. Also, this cluster represents feelings of competence, trust, confidence, abilities, and intellectual potential.

The third cluster includes sociocultural variables, which are related to the level of valuable socialization and past dynamic group learning experiences. This cluster demonstrates the type of personality, conceptions, attributions, beliefs, values, family, ideology, wealth, expectations, and lifestyle.

The fourth cluster concerns behavior. This cluster identifies types of behaviors, such as self-image, self-esteem, self-concept, self-monitoring, self-efficacy, self-absorption, self-reliance, self-interest, self-serving, self-actualization, self-achievement, and self-management.

In order to understand personality, we need to analyze two major views: the common or laypeople’s view and the scientific or intellectual view.

Laypeople’s Views on Personality

The laypeople’s or common view tends to relate personality with ecological characteristics and usually perceives it with a single dominant attribution (e.g., polite, rude, strong, weak, shy, persistent). This unique view of personality attributes some general characteristics repeatedly to the behavior of an individual. It represents the total cultural understanding of characteristics of that person. Usually, when laypeople express their opinions about the personalities of others, they perceive a general pattern of behavior across different situations and over time. Then, accordingly, they label the type of an individual’s personality. For example, when a manager in all conditions shows emotion and a passionate exaggeration in praising some special people with the same degree of interest, common people perceive such a manager as having an “emotional and/or warm personality.”

Scientific Views on Personality

The scientific or intellectual view, on the other hand, tends to relate personality to the holistic description of ecological, psychological, sociocultural, and behavioral synergistic factors. Although laypeople emphasize the behavioral role, which an individual displays to the public, scientific people emphasize the individual’s intrinsic and extrinsic traits and conditions. Probably the most viable approach would include all characteristics.

The intellectual view focuses on specific processes that are similar in all people. These processes include neural transmission, conception, perception, conditioning, and attributions. Therefore, the heredity traits, psychological cognitive potentials, sociocultural values, and patterns of behavior are four basic determinants for understanding an individual’s personality. These factors separately and collectively can influence the processes of emotional, sensational, rational, and decisional behavior of an individual.

From another point of view, it is not just that individuals behave and respond differently to the same stimulus in a common condition, there also seems to be inherent aspects that give coherence and order to behaviors. We know this core concept for each of us as our “selves.” For the clarity of this complex issue, it is necessary to study the nature of “personhood.”

The Meaning of Personhood

Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961: 215) made the best statement about personhood: “To some extent, a person’s personality is like other people’s, like some other people’s, and like no other people’s.” Personality manifests a holistic pattern of an individual’s behavior in consistent ways in a variety of situations.

Personality is defined as the complex set of unique and consistent characteristics that influence an individual’s pattern of behavior across different situations and over time. Personality represents “self” identity in relation to the extrinsic appearance and behavior, intrinsic awareness as a permanent dynamic force, and specific pattern of holistic assessment of “self.” Therefore, personhood is a synergistic organization of selves (e.g., id, ego, and superego) that represents a general combination of sensational, emotional, rational, and intellectual characteristics to be measured and judged by “self” and others (Ruch, 1963:353).

Through a cross-cultural perspective, personality is the self-conceptualization of an individual’s inherent and societal learned identity. This means that individuals represent (positively or negatively) their behavior to others and others collectively understand and judge themselves as well as their societal measurable traits in relations to others.

Determinants of Individual Differences

Ecological, psychological, behavioral, and sociocultural characteristics are the four major determinants of an individual’s identity. Differences among people depend primarily upon four major groups of characteristics:

1. Ecological and/or physical appearances: facial features, facial gestures, ethnicity, height, weight, size, and other physical aspects

2. Psychological traits: intellect, extroversion, impulsiveness, flexibility, and so on

3. Behavioral traits: courteous, vulgar, aggressive, friendly, moral, ethical, and so on

4. Sociocultural orientations and influences: family-oriented, religion-oriented, educated, wealthy, poor, and so on

In addition, discovering and judging an individual’s personality determinants could be based upon the essence of five different sources of data: (1) self-report judgments, (2) observer-report judgments, (3) incidental behavioral-event report judgments, (4) biographical life-event report judgments, and (5) physiological modes of appearance-report judgments. All these types of judgmental determinants can be interpreted through using two psychocultural approaches: (1) ideographic approach, and (2) nomothetic approach (Zimbardo, 1992).

The Psychocultural Ideographic Approach of Personhood

The psychocultural-ideographic approach is a holistic and synergistic approach. It is a person-centered analysis that focuses on outstanding and unique psychophysiological traits of an individual’s characteristics from an integrated behavioral whole. The primary research methodologies of ideographic approach are the case study and the aggregate case study.

The Cultural Case Study

A cultural case study, used to analyze and judge the type of an individual’s personality, is specifically selected from targeted incidents, manners, and traits of the biographical data of a single individual in a culture. After the careful consideration of the collected data and the discovery of a general pattern of behavior, the judgment about personality will be made. For example, Weiss (1987) discovered in a study on manufacturing, sales, and service employees that the self-esteem of recruits moderated the degree to which successful and competent supervisors served as role models in the recruits’ learning of their organizations’ cultures. Thus, individuals with low selfesteem tend to reduce the efficacy of their organizational goal achievement.

The Cultural Aggregated Case Study

The cultural aggregated case study is a comparison of ideographic information about an individual in different cultures by different observers. After careful consideration of the collected data from different sources, the end result of outcomes of the judgment will be made on the pattern of correlated findings in different cultures by different observers. This is a very complex and challenging method. For example, one study found that Japanese-American managers’ behavior, while working in Japanese-run plants in Fremont, California, had nearly the same behavioral attitudes as Japanese managers in Japan. In addition, most American managers’ attitudes in Japanese plants in Japan resembled the attitudes of American managers in the United States. These results indicate that managerial behavior is a differentiation of cultural value-oriented systems, not subject to drastic change according to new places. It takes generations to adapt behavior to new places. Other evidence indicates that cultural differences persist among immigrants despite acculturation over time to U.S. culture.

The Cultural Nomothetic Approach of Personhood

The cultural nomothetic approach is variable and relatively centered to contingent and situational cultural and behavioral conditions. People and cultures simply differ in the degree to which they inherit, change, and develop their personalities. The cultural nomothetic approach focuses on an individual’s personality within the general contextual traits of a homogeneous encultured population. This approach, in determining the type of personality, is based upon assimilative methods of socialization, correlative methods of ideologies, beliefs, and religious faiths. However, this approach can be more related to the legal pattern of behavioral approach. This type of personality is centered around the civic culture. For example, when multinational managers wish to study how the civic culture of a community can change the direction of the home-host negotiations, they use the cultural nomothetic approach to understand personalities of negotiators.

Five Categories of Personality

Personality is an adaptive stabilized physiological, psychological, behavioral, and sociocultural characteristic that makes an individual unique. Five major scientific categories of personality include the type theories, trait theories, psychodynamic theories, humanistic theories, and the integrative theories.

The Type Theories of Personality

The type theories presume that there are separate, discontinuous categories into which people fit. The criteria that these theories use are physiological appearance and sociocultural and/or psychological characteristics. The first element which represents a person is the physical body—outside and inside. Within the contextual boundary of the type theories of personality, we review twelve types of theories. These theories are: (1) somatotype, (2) type A, (3) type B, (4) type T, (5) extroverted type, (6) introverted type, (7) the Myers-Briggs sixteen types, (8) the five types of Parsons-Shils sociocultural, (9) the four types of Keene’s pair theories, (10) the maturity type, (11) the immaturity type, and (12) the neurotic types of personalities.

The Somatotype Theories of Personality

Early researchers perceived personality to specify a concordance between a simple, highly visible, or easily determined characteristic and some invisible characteristics that can easily determine the type of personality. William Sheldon (1942), a medical doctor, through his research of interrelated physics to temperament, categorized people into three types of personalities based on their somatotype or physical body builds: (1) endomorphic, (2) mesomorphic, and (3) ectomorphic:

1. Endomorphic personalities represent those types of people who are fat, soft, and round. They are relaxed, fond of eating, and enjoy social interactions. These personalities consume their lives.

2. Mesomorphic personalities represent those types of people who are muscular, rectangular, and strong. They are filled with energy, courage, and expansive tendencies. These people challenge their lives.

3. Ectomorphic personalities represent those types of people who are thin, long, and fragile. They are brainy, artistic, and introverted. These people think through their lives.

It should be noted that Sheldon’s views of body-mind personality are intriguing but do not have substantial and reliable research foundation.

Type A and Type B Theories of Personalities

Friedman and Rosenman (1974: 87) did empirical research on the use of personality type labels and their related behavior patterns in order to predict heart attacks. They introduced type A and opposing type B personalities. They defined type A personality as “an action-emotion complex that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons.” Type A personalities have an underlying “need for control” and strive to gain control over their environments.

In contrast, the type B personality is not concerned about time and tends to have less need for control, plus does not work as hard to gain control over events. For example, since Christian populations around the world number about 1.5 billion and Moslems number about 1.2 billion out of 6 billion, it is appropriate to compare general religious characteristics of these two faiths concerning the personalities of types A and B. Table 7.1 briefly summarizes the religious cultural value profiles of type A and type B personalities.

Rosenman and Friedman (1971) concluded in their research that type A people are more prone to the worst outcome concerning stress. Type A people experience heart attacks twice as often as type B personalities. Researchers found four type A personalities: (1) time urgency, (2) competitiveness, (3) polyphasic behavior, and (4) hostility. The four types of A characteristics are a direct result of a need to control self (Sturbe and Werner, 1985; Smith and Rhodewalt (1986).

Type T Theory of Personality

Psychologist Frank Farely (1990: 29), through his research, has defined another type of personality. He identifies a type T personality as one that lives for thrills. The type T personality is also called the hard personality. These people have a drive for life risk-taking, stimulation, and excitement seeking. Farely describes type T personalities as: “You may have not heard of this personality, but I will wager that you know some people who show the pattern of characteristics I have listed… I believe type T is at the basis of both the most positive and constructive forces in our nation (T plus creativity) and the most negative and destructive forces (T minus delinquency, vandalism, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, drinking and driving, etc.).” Most normal people fall between the high-risk, thrill- and stimulation-seeking types and those people who actively avoid any risk or thrill.

Extroverted and Introverted Personalities

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1971) focused his research on the assumption that people are fundamentally different, but also fundamentally alike. His classic work, Psychological Type, suggested that the population is made up of two basic types: extroverted and introverted personalities. Extroverted personalities have strong tendencies toward socialization and emphasize perceptual judgments. Introverted personalities have weak tendencies toward socialization and prefer to be quiet. These types of personalities are more tuned to be more imaginative and usually they are listeners.

Jung based his theory on two fundamental types of phenomena: perception (sensing and intuiting) and judgment (thinking and feeling). He greatly expanded the conception of unconsciousness. The unconsciousness concept was the essence of an individual’s unique holistic life experience but was also filled with fundamental psychological truth shared by the whole human race. Jung stated that unconsiousness is responsible for our intuitive understanding of primitive myths, art forms, and symbols and to perceive the universal balancing pattern of existence.

Jung saw the healthy, integrated personality as balancing forces between perception and conception (cognitive judgment). Perception (how we gather information) and conception (how we make decisions) represent the best evidence of our holistic self—personality. For example, Jung assumed that the collective conscious personality of a family is the balance between husband and wife, or the balance between masculine aggressiveness and feminine sensitivity. This view of personality as a constellation of compensating internal forces in dynamic balance is called analytic psychology. Therefore, Jung suggested that human similarities and differences could be understood by combining preferences. It is the matter of choice that we are not exclusively one way or another; rather, we have a preference for extroversion or introversion. Also, he argued that extroverted or introverted personalities are neither different nor better than others. Differences in needs need to be analyzed, celebrated, and appreciated.

Myers-Briggs’ Sixteen Types of Personalities

The Myers-Briggs type theory is based on Carl Jung’s typology of personality. Myers and Briggs became fascinated with individual differences among people and developed the Myers-Briggs type indicators (MBTI) to put Jung’s “type theory” into practical use. They assigned people into one of sixteen categories or types. They used MBTI to find “an orderly reason for personality differences” in the ways people perceive their world and make judgments about it (Myers, 1962, 1976, 1985).

Myers-Briggs type theory of personality assumes that basic differences in perception and cognitive judgment are the result of four fundamental differences in behavior. These four differences include direct sensing (S), unconscious intuition (I), judging by thinking (T), and feeling (F) (see Table 7.2).

Both perceptions and cognitive judgments are divided into dual ways of perceiving with two possible choices for each. The third factor added to the Myers-Briggs test was a preference for extroversion (E) or introversion (I) which focuses on either the inner or outer worlds. The combination of these preferences makes up an individual’s psychological style of behavior. Sixteen types of personalities have emerged from the combination of these preferences, such as extrovert personalities who demonstrate thinking with intuition or introverts who show sensing with feeling.

The Parsons-Shils Five Sociocultural Pair Types

Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils (1951) have powerfully influenced the efficacy of sociocultural values on shaping personality by describing five different pairs of personalities. These are:

1. Universalism/Particularism: Am I a universalist or a specialist? Should I deal with others in terms of their particular relationships with me or on the basis of universal criteria of human rights?

2. Performance/Quality: Is any action to be judged by looking at how it is carried out or by whom it is carried out?

3. Affective Neutrality/Affective: Am I an affective neutralist or affective? Do I emphasize objectivity or affective involvement in the appropriated attitudes?

4. Specificity/Diffuseness: Am I a specifist or diffusionist? Are my commitments and obligations specific or are they diffuse?

5. Self-Orientation/Collective Orientation: Am I an individualist or collectivist? Can I appropriately pursue my own objectives and desires without fear of societal retaliation or should the objectives of the collective be governing in my society?

Fallding (1965) states that these types of sociocultural behaviors are not values in themselves, but refer to the consideration involved in electing values by different types of personalities.

Parsons emphasizes that an individual’s personality possesses multiplicity of sociocultural role definitions and institutional norms. For example, there would be little disagreement in a multinational corporation with the idea that a manager-employee relationship should be universalistic, performance oriented, affective neutral, specific, and self-oriented; whereas their relationships with their children as a father/mother and son/daughter should be particular, quality oriented, infused with affective, diffuse, and collective orientations. However, in defining the type of personality through a professional perspective, some blurring of distinctions can be found not only in behavioral fact, but probably also in the sociocultural values and norms themselves. For example, a physician and/or a professor is supposed to be collectively oriented and effectively neutral but at the same time, some degree of self-orientation is expected and permitted. For a physician, a patient’s bedside, or, for a professor, a student’s mentoring manner that expresses some affect is expected.

Keene’s Four Types of Religious and Neurotic Personalities

James Keene (1967) undertook a complicated task to study the relationships between personality and religion. Although his research’s random sampling was not based on a scientific methodology, Keene was able to match fifty people from five major religions, such as Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Baha’i, and nonaffiliated groups on the basis of age, sex, education, and socioeconomic status. Keene concluded that observed relationships are due to the religion-personality interaction and not due to uncontrolled variation in other variables. The results are too complex to report in detail. However, the main finding of Keene’s observation is useful in identifying four types of personalities:

There are significant personality-religion interactions. Group means and variances are significantly different. We know something of Keene’s scores on the four personality factors: (1) neurotic/adaptive, (2) spontaneous/ inhibited, (3) worldminded/ethnocentric, and (4) self-accommodating/group accommodating. More important, various interactions among the dimensions appeared. For example, participation in religion is correlated with worldmindedness in the Baha’i group and with ethnocentrism in the Jewish group (Keene, 1967) (see Table 7.3).

The Maturity and Immaturity Traits

In addition to the above types and theories of personality, there is another approach to identifying personality formation development within an organizational behavior context. Although there are some genetic physiological and psychological blueprints for identifying the type of personality, there are some cultural variations in categorization of personalities. Chris Argyris (1957) has proposed a model of the workplace personality that integrates the stage and trait approaches. His model is summarized in Figure 7.2. This model focuses appropriately on people in organizational structures and settings. Argyris applies the psychological patterns of formation and traits of personality according to the inner promotion and refinement of an individual’s characteristics through experience. He believes that people at any age can have their degree of development plotted according to the seven dimensions. According to him, managers and employees develop their personalities from immaturity to maturity along seven basic dimensions. Argyris suggests that maturation refers to the process of growth in all usual organizational traits.

Figure 7.2. Then Immaturity and Maturity Model

In order to obtain full expression of employees’ personalities, the formal organization should allow for activity rather than passivity, independence, rather than dependence, long-term rather than short-term perspectives, occupation of a position higher than that of peers, and expression of deep, important abilities (Argyris, 1957: 51–53).

Argyris suggests that employees gain knowledge, experience, and self-confidence in their jobs. They try to move from the immature end to the mature end of each dimension.

The Neurotic Managerial Styles of Personality

Not much has been known about neurotic behavioral patterns of managers, dysfunctional organizational climates, disturbing peer interrelations, and rigidity in managerial defense mechanisms. Yet we virtually never notice these issues in modern organizational behavior textbooks. The only news we hear concerns managerial neurotic styles in the time of grievance and/or in litigations.

There are always a number of ways of conceptualizing, categorizing, and analyzing managerial neurotic behavior. Kets de Vries and Miller (1984) applied psychometric, psychodynamic, and psychoanalytic tools to study the style, the type, and the pattern of managerial neurotic behaviors. These researchers, through their findings, identified five neurotic styles that relate to the five most common types of top managers. They called these personality styles paranoid, compulsive, dramatic, depressive, and schizoid. Researchers applied seven dimensions for their deliberation. These dimensions are: (1) neurotic personality types, (2) dysfunctional group processes, (3) transferential pattern of subordinates or superiors, (4) improper modes by binding, abandoning, and proxies, (5) life-cycle-related crises during a manager’s career, (6) psychodynamic defense mechanisms and resistance, and (7) disappointment and resistance caused by loss of status, security, or power (see Table 7.4).

In this chapter, we have dealt with personality types and traits. Attention has been paid to individual behavior in an organization. Furthermore, there is little attempt to explain the top managerial personalities. In this section, we are studying the type of managerial personality through psychoanalytic literature. They are used to understand, predict, and classify common managerial personalities.

Trait Theories of Personalities

Trait theories of personality try to identify a holistic configuration of positive and negative characteristics of people.

An individual possesses instinct, sensation, emotion, imagination, intellect, genetics characteristics, information, knowledge, and problem-solving abilities. Therefore, we easily gain the impression that individuals are so complex in their own structure and activity that they cannot analyze as just one sort of being, distinctive and different from other living beings. Therefore, an individual is a whole and unified entity who has an extraordinary variety of behavior.

The type theories of personality presume that there are separate, discontinuous categories into which people fit. By contrast, the trait theories propose hypothetical continuous dimensions of an individual’s mind-body relations. Thousands of traits have been identified over the years. Traits are generalized by the coherent relations between body-mind tendencies that people possess in various degrees. Accordingly, they combine these traits into several group forms in which an individual’s personality can be recognized. Traits lend coherence to an individual’s behavior in different situations and over time. For example, you may demonstrate honesty one day by a moral obligation to tell the truth to your manager while you are judging your peers, and on another day by not covering up deficiencies of peers who are your friends (see Figure 7.3).

Allport’s Three Traits Theories

Allport (1937, 1961, and 1966) was one of the most influential personality trait theorists. He viewed traits as the building blocks of personality and the main source of individuality. He saw traits as broad, general guides that lend consistency to behavior. According to his views, traits produce coherence in behavior because they are enduring attributes and are general in scope. Allport identifies three kinds of traits: (1) cardinal traits, which organize an individual’s life; (2) central traits, which represent major characteristics of an individual, such as honesty; and (3) secondary traits, which specify personal features that help us predict the individual’s behavior, such as food, grooming, and dress preferences.

Cattell’s Sixteen Bipolar Traits Theories

Cattell (1963 and 1973), another prominent trait theorist, took a different approach from that of Allport. Cattell has identified sixteen bipolar adjective combinations of traits and sources of traits. First, he determined thirty-five bipolar surface traits and then he narrowed them down into sixteen bipolar adjective combinations such as affectothymia (good-natured and trustfulness) versus sizothymia (critical and suspicious attitudes), ego strength (maturity and realism) versus emotionality and neuroticism (immaturity and evasiveness), dominance versus desurgency (depressed and subdued feelings). He finally found clusters of traits that correlated, such as affectionate-cold, socia- ble-seclusive, honest-dishonest, and wise-foolish. He described source traits in bipolar adjective combinations such as self-assured-apprehensive, re-served-outgoing, and submissive-dominant.

The Big Five Personality Trait

More recently, psychologists and human resource management researchers have condensed all traits into a list of five major personality traits, known as the “Big Five” (Norman, 1963; Digman, 1990; Costa and McCrae, 1985). The five traits include extroversion/introversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Description of the “Big Five” are shown in the Table 7.5. These traits are very general and broad. They need to be tested scientifically in all cultures in order to validate this theory.

A cooperative organizational value system is a joint intentional and behavioral combination of people for purposes of successful production toward joint benefits. Cooperative organizational behavior is a joint conscious and consensus effort of employer-employee togetherness to produce a result that has a survival value for all parties. Cooperative behavior is based on trust and reliance on one another to succeed in mutual goals. It facilitates achievements in a coordinative dynamic operation to reach proper harmonious outcomes of production (see Figure 7.5).

Equalitarian/Inequalitarian Behavior

Equality is the idea that all people should have “an equal place at the starting point of their life.” Equality, traditionally, meant the elimination of inequalities among organizational members with respect to opportunities for social, political, and economic access. Managers provide equal employment opportunities on the basis of ability and character of employees. Some organizations provide equal opportunities at the beginning and gradually diminish it through prejudice. In such a situation, the manager behaves at the starting line with equal opportunity processes, and further down the road it ends up with some political interests with unequal results.

Technically, in multicultural organizations, if equality exists, then there will be no dominant-minority relations among organizational members in nature. Equalitarian behavior promotes balance and cooperation among different employees within the framework of the largest set of agreed-upon principles. However, in such organizations, the competitive differences will not be diminished. This type of managerial behavior promotes a reasonable platform for higher productivity within the consensual rules of the organizational members.

In contrast, inequilitarian managerial behavior recognizes processes and outcomes of an organization on the basis of the severity of job scarcity, the employee’s acute employment needs, and the political ideology of the group interest. The end result of such a managerial system is promotion of the ideological majority culture of the interest group and exploitation of minority groups. Coercive behavior, threats, and intimidation of minority employees by managers can cause high turnover and absenteeism.

High Power Distance/Low Power Distance Behavior

Cultural heterogeneity has been viewed as a power index in nations. Hofstede’s (1980a) power distance index represents seven beliefs (wealth, economic growth, geographic latitude, population size, population growth, population density, and Hermes: (Greek god of commerce) in an organizational innovativeness.

Due to organizational political differences, researcher Hofstede has focused his attention to respond to this question: “Do cultures translate into differences in work-related attitudes?” He and his colleagues surveyed 160,000 managers and employees of IBM who were represented in sixty countries (Hofstede, 1980b). He used the result of his research to develop five cultural dimensions described and defined in Table 7.6. Hofstede’s research is very important because it shows that national culture explains more differences in workplace attitudes than do gender, age, profession, and or positions in organizations.

Power distance refers to members of a group or culture who maintain the special group’s interest among one another (Parhizgar, 1984: 110). Power distance is a tool to be used in different organizations in order to manage inequality among employees. Power distance functions in a multitude of dimensions: high, moderate, and low. Rigby (1985) indicates that power distance has been viewed in different ways: directive, paternal, and autocratic. In democratized power distance (DPD) societies, such as the United States, citizens accept the directive power distance. It is a principle that power functions in multitudinous institutional and organizational orientation to the societal power equalization (decentralization). In DPD organizations, power has been distributed unequally to maintain checks and balances. Managers and employees see one another as similar. The power distance is the result of legitimate authority and expertise.

In contrast, in autocratic countries the power distance scores are high, such as Iran, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and others. The elite groups tend to exercise power authoritatively and/or patemalistically (centralized power). In organizations with high power distance, managers are afforded excessive power simply because they are managers. Managers are protected and entitled to their privileges, and employees are considered to have very low or no power. Naturally, the distribution of political power and wealth in all of these countries depends upon the political ideological infrastructure of the cultural power distance. In the low distance power organizations, elite ruling people and experts frequently bypass the managerial hierarchical power to get work done. Denmark and Austria are among countries with a low power distance (Hofstede, 1980a).

Materialistic/Spiritualistic Behavior

Some cultural patterns of beliefs strongly value the principle of survival of the fittest at work in political and economic development. People in these cultures are striving to increase their possessions and use of material goods and services for making their financial position very strong. This “social Darwinism” value system has been a prime influence in the modern organizational cultures for productivity, efficiency, the spirit of competition, innovation, and growth. There are many countries and organizations specifically in the industrialized world that believe in pleasure. These cultures perceive that the essence of life is pleasure. Pleasure comes from the power of material wealth. These cultures believe that materialism perfects an individual’s life. Materialism facilitates goodness when it leads at once to present pleasure and to remote pleasure. Therefore, according to the political belief of materialism, motivation to acquire more material goods and services is good, as it facilitates the desire for leisure, or for a satisfying job even though it may pay a lot more with a stressful performance and for adventures that yield a more comfortable economic life.

In materialistic cultures, the desire for pleasure is closely associated with material wealth and political power. Within the materialistic culture, there are always tendencies toward depravation, dependency, cruelty, and exploitation. For example, Japanese culture has been viewed as a materialistic culture. In October 1999, members of the Diet, the Japanese parliament, called for regulating inhumane demands by debt collection methods of the banking and loan industry. The loan default rate in Japan is extremely low. Nichiei, a Japanese consumer finance company, allegedly asked a loan guarantor to raise money by selling body parts to pay back the loan for Y5.7m. Japanese, culturally, are ashamed to admit bankruptcy. Eisuke Arai, a 25-year-old collection officer of Nichiei Company’s, offered a 62-year-old debtor Y3m ($29,000) for his kidney and Y1m for his eye to help him to finance a loan he had guaranteed to a now-bankrupt company. Arai reportedly said to the debtor: “You have two, don’t you? Many of our borrowers have only one kidney…. I want you to sell your heart as well, but if you do that you’ll die. So I’ll bear with you if you sell everything up to that.” Traditional Japanese banks are shrinking their loan portfolios and leaving many individuals and small businesses with nowhere else to turn. Japanese consumer finance companies enjoy huge margins, benefiting from a cost of funding of about 2.3 percent and an ability to charge interest rates of up to 40 percent for loans without collateral (Abrahams, 1999: 1).

In contrast, spirituality depends upon a deep sense of the cultural value and worth for human freedom and independence. Spiritualism views the good life is to be “happy and live happily.” In these cultures, there is no literal individual satisfaction. These cultures believe that the happiness of individuals and the greatest happiness for all people should be the essence of the existence. Within spiritual cultures altruism must come before egotism. However, it should be noted that egotism and altruism are complementary in modern life. This means, for example, that in order to appreciate the desire to possess property, one must appreciate the property rights of others. In such a culture, individuals will wish to control their pleasure in order to provide happiness for all. For example, in Togoland, West Africa, on the Gulf of Guinea, people do not believe in physical collateral because they believe that the spirit of the borrower is present in the repossessed physical collateral properties and could come and haunt the new owner at any time. Therefore, in Togoland, bankers and lenders do not accept any physical entities such as a house or other properties as collateral for a loan because people strongly believe in spiritual power. Instead, they require that debtors have guarantors. Guarantors are people who vouch that the borrower will pay back the loan. Bankers and lenders require borrowers to provide them with legitimate guarantors to ensure that the borrower will pay them back.

Masculine/Feminine Behavior

Gender identity and role are characterized not only by different physical characteristics, but also they often are identified by cultural patterns of expected behavior in societies. Although the differences between males and females are linked to biology, many are the result of cultural socialization. Cross-gender behavioral patterns vary from culture to culture. Cross-gender behavior is linked to daily activities and the amount of tolerance by the opposite gender. There are two different sociocultural patterns of behavior: masculinity and femininity. Much of what we consider masculine or feminine is formed by our cultural perceptions.

The masculine/feminine dimensions measure the value that a culture bestows on qualities for each gender. By nature, women are communicative, intuitive, nurturing, sensitive, supportive, and pervasive (Schwartz, 1989). Researchers found that most women place a higher sense of importance on long-term relationships (Covey, 1993). Traditionally, when European and/or American women considered an advancement in their careers, they would elevate personal career over family concerns; such a trend is not acceptable in the most Asian and Middle Eastern cultures (Coser, 1975).

In contrast, men are aggressive, very competitive, risk-takers, self-reliant, and their behaviors are predictable by women (Parhizgar, 1994). Men tend to have a management mind-set, are objective oriented, and focus primarily on control and efficiency. Men exert rational power to turn people into work, while women exert their social power to respond to the needs of all organizational constituencies.

Historically, most organizations have been managed by men. In Johnson’s (1976) gender congruency theory of power, he views that the gender-role stereotype influences perception of power within an organization. Masculine societies define male-female roles more rigidly than do feminine societies. Cultures that are characterized by femininity emphasize relationships with others for more socialization. For example, the Scandinavian countries, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, are considered strongly feminine, while Japan, Austria, Saudi Arabia, and most Latin American countries are considered masculine (Hofstede, 1993).

Coping with Individual Differences

As it was mentioned earlier in this chapter, there is general consensus that individual differences affect organizational behavior and vice versa, organizational behavior can affect an individual’s lifestyle. It is important for a manager to manage subordinates first by recognizing that they are different and accordingly to act to motivate them differently too. In sum, managers should make a few assumptions about the types, traits, and characteristics of subordinates’ personalities and understand them as the individuals they are.

While multicultural organizations can draw many implications from the research and theories on personality, especially important messages emerge.

An expatriate manager whose mission is to travel abroad and contact members of other cultures is facing multiple ranges of micro and macro behavioral problems. Cross-cultural relations can begin to be tackled only when a manager explicitly acknowledges that individuals and groups differ in their ecological, psychological, sociocultural, and behavioral orientations. When culturally disparate groups of employees-employers come into contact with each other, they first need to recognize that such differences exist and then act accordingly. This means that they will have an impact on one another’s behavior. In general, expatriate managers, migrant workers, and both home and host authorities should simplify their relations as much as possible.

Managers should never underestimate the differences among subordinates. They should constantly analyze, monitor, and understand their behaviors and revise their assumptions, judgments, perceptions, and attributions about their associates and try to treat each individual as a unique person in a unique place and time.

Summary

Although our starting point in this chapter was about the effect of personality on organizational behavior, our ultimate aim was to review different scientific theories and approaches to develop a general understanding about the nature of people. Individual differences make people unique. We are all alike in some ways, and we are different in other ways. Managers need to apply scientific tools and techniques to draw some conclusions that will apply to all organizational constituencies. However, they always need to keep in mind that individual differences and unique characteristics make managers’ ability to understand people important.

One important difference among organizational members is personality. Personality is defined as the complex set of unique consistent characteristics that influences an individual’s pattern of behavior across different situations and over time. Personality structure and behavioral mechanisms can be viewed from the standpoint of determinants, types, stages, traits, and analysis approaches. Finally, management means to analyze, understand, and turn organizational members into workers.

Chapter Questions for Discussion

1. Define personality in your own words.

2. Comparatively analyze differences among personality types, traits, and approaches.

3. How does political ideology influence personality?

4. How does religion influence the formation of an individual’s personality?

5. What is the scientific definition of personality?

6. Give brief examples of each of the major elements of personality.

7. What are the various factors in the ecological, sociocultural, and behavioral contributions to personality?

8. How do psychoanalytic theories differ from trait theories?

9. What are the major Freudian concepts of the “self?”

10. Why is personality important in organizational behavior?

11. Why are personality types so relevant to managerial styles?

Learning About Yourself Exercise #7

How Do You Judge Your Own Personality?

Before starting this exercise, you need to carefully read Machiavellian, universalist, type A, and type T personalities. The total scores for these four major characteristics are 1,600 (400 for each category). Next, give yourself a score between 25–400 for each and then add them together to find your pre-exercise scores. When you complete the following exercise, compare your judgmental scores with your exercise scores. You will find how you “feel” about your personality and how you “judge” your personality.

The following are sixteen items for rating how important each one is to you on a scale of 0 (not important) to 100 (very important). Write one of the numbers (25–50–75–100) on the line to the left of each item.

It would be more important for me:

Turn to the next page for scoring directions and key.

Scoring Directions and Key for Exercise #7

Transfer the numbers for each of the sixteen items to the appropriate column, then add up the four numbers in each column.

The higher the total in any dimension, the higher the importance you place on your own personality.

Make up a categorical scale of your findings on the basis of more weight for the values of each category.

For example:

After you have tabulated your scores, compare them with others on your team or in your class. You will find different judgmental patterns among people with diverse scores and preferred modes of self-realization.

Case Study: Texaco Sex Bias

In 1902, The Texas Corporation was established through the exchange of all outstanding stocks from the Texas Company. The Texas Corporation was incorporated in Delaware on August 26, 1926. The following year, The Texas Company (California) was formed to acquire all assets of the Texas Company (Delaware). On November 1, 1941, The Texas Corporation merged Texas Company (Delaware) and Texas Company (California), resulting in the latter being dissolved. The Texas Corporation acquired all assets and assumed all liabilities of both companies, and thereafter, became known as the Texas Company until May 1, 1959, when the name was changed to Texaco Inc.

In 1997, Texaco had 542,139,000 stocks outstanding. These stocks were listed on the NYSE and other secondary markets. In the fifty-two weeks of its financial history, Texaco had its stock value fluctuate between $53.00 and $62.00. Texaco had a centralized management style, which was controlling 28,957 employees worldwide. Over half of Texaco employees are employed in the United States. The company has thirty-one subsidiaries throughout the world (Moodys, 1997: 6626). Texaco is a conglomerate entity that is involved in the worldwide exploration for and production, transportation, refining, and marketing of crude oil, natural gas, and petroleum products. Within the United States, Texaco is the third largest oil company. The following is an abridged list of Texaco’s subsidiaries: Oil and Gas Company, Heddington Insurance Limited, MVP Production Inc., Refineria Panama, S.A., S.A. Texaco Belgium N.V., Saudi Arabian Texaco Inc., Texaco Brazil S.A.-Produtos de Petroleo, Texaco Britain Limited, Texaco California Inc., Texaco Canada Petroleum Inc., and Texaco Carribean Inc. In addition, Texaco has been practicing in six joint-venture operations (Moodys, 1997, p. 6627).

The Major Managerial Issue

The issue of guaranteeing employees’ rights is not as ethically assessed as is placing value on human life, but it brings up some problems when subjected to cost-benefit analysis. It is almost always easier to place a value on the costs than to qualify the benefits. Most corporations ignore such an issue. Texaco’s case of “sex bias” is one of the examples of such an issue.

Texaco is one of the big corporations that conducts business with the U.S. government. In May 1995, the Department of Labor implemented a program to audit the employment practices of companies doing business with the federal government. As a result, Texaco’s affirmative action programs were scrutinized for women in petroleum jobs at its White Plains headquarters and seven other offices nationwide: Dallas, Houston, Denver, New Orleans, San Antonio, Belair, Texas, and Beacon, New York. The auditors ended up finding some unfair practices of the labor law. Consequently, Texaco agreed to settle the case and to pay $3.1 million to 186 women who were found to be underpaid and undercompensated. This settlement was viewed as a relief for equalization of pay between male and female personnel.

In this case, there were three major legal, racial, and social issues. The legal and racial issues in the case addressed the effectiveness of the implementation of affirmative action programs. In regard to sociocultural issues, the case addressed gender equity.

The federal government of the United States is responsible for ensuring that companies have equitable employment packages across the industries, specially those companies with which it conducts business. Operating under the auspices of the federal government, the U.S. Department of Labor enacted a program to investigate whether these companies were complying with certain employment rules and regulations. The federal government can be equated with an entity that presupposes the laws which have been passed will protect the rights of its citizens. As a result of the Department of Labor’s findings, Texaco must evaluate the salaries of its entire workforce annually while paying careful attention to the salaries of men and women at midlevel management pay grades. Although Texaco has agreed to pay a settlement for its racial and gender discriminations, the problem of discrimination among its employees is still rampant. However, Texaco has tried to right its wrong by hiring Deval L. Patrick, formerly head of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, as its general counsel and chairperson for the Texaco Equality and Fairness Task Force. This task force’s purpose is to promote equality, diversity, and tolerance within Texaco.