Personality, attitudes and_job_satisfaction

personality• Definition• The relativity enduring individual traits and dispositions

that form a pattern distinguishing one person from all others

• Relatively enduring - This implies consistent behaviour across situations over time

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• Personality in the context of OB means • “How people affect others and how they understand

and view themselves and personal situation interaction”

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How people affect others

This depend on their external appearance (height, weight, gender, facial features, colour, other physical aspects) and traits

In terms of external appearance – tall workers have a different impact on people than short workers

Personality is also influence by hereditary facts (physiological/biological factors

• How they understand and view themselves– People’s attempt to understand themselves is called self

concept. This is the personality view from within.– Self concept is seen in self esteem – self esteem is individuals

self perceived competence and self image

• Person-situation interaction• This explain that each situation is different and each

person is different• Personality will be different in different situations and

different persons •

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Determinant of personality• 1. Heredity

• Personality is determined at conception by each individual’s unique complements of genes.

• This perspective holds that personality traits such as temperament and sociability are determined in much the same way as hair colour or facial features.

• This is supported by the study of identical twins that were separated at birth that showed that they share common traits even if they were raised in different environments

• 2. Environmental argument

• Environmentalists content that the results of experience can shape and alter an individual’s personality. – For example, whether an individual is lethargic or

industrious would be determined by whether she was rewarded or punished by parents, teachers or friends for displaying related behaviours in the past.

– If the notion of work ethics was ingrained in an individual at early age and she repeatedly encountered situation in which hard work paid off, she would be inclined to espouse values that support work ethics

• 3. Culture• The culture one is exposed to can influence personality.

Personality traits of westerners are often distinct form traits of Africans

• 4. The birth order – whether first or last born• Some studies show firstborns as more dependant, more

predictable, more rational, more orderly, less likely to define authority, are more ambitious.

• This is said to be because firstborns are generally treated differently by parents. They tend to receive attention at first but are then expected to behaviour more responsibly in looking after your children

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

• Personality development consist of a continuous process and the sequence is based largely on learning opportunities available and the socialization process

• Socialization process

• This is the role played by other relevant persons, groups, and organisations to continuously impact and influence a person’s personality

• Socialization

– starts with initial contact between a mother and her new infant.

– After that there are members of the immediate family (father, brothers and sisters), close relatives and family friends,

– then after that their a peers and school friends and

– later there are members of work ground, friends

– and last the organisation

Organisation socialization techniques• Organisation itself can contribute to socialization through :

• A process of learning those values, norms and behaviour patterns that, from the organisation and work group points of view are necessarily or any new organisation member to learn

• Acceptable characteristics of organizational socialization of employees– Change of attitudes, values and behaviours

– Continuity of socialization over time

– Adjustment to new jobs, work groups, and organizational practices

– Mutual influence between new recruit and their managers

– Criticality of their early socialization period

Specific techniques for socializing include….1. Use of mentors and role models

2. Provision of relevant orientation and training programs

3. Provision of timely and consistent feedback

4. Developing a reward system

5. Developing a career path plan

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• Specific steps that can lead to successful organizational socialization would include the following:

1. Provide a challenging first job

2. Provide relevant training

3. Provide timely and consistent feedback

4. Select a good first supervisor to be in charge of socialization

5. Design a relaxed orientation programme

6. Place new recruits in work groups with high morale

THE “BIG FIVE” PERSONALITY TRAITS

• An analysis of all the many personality traits has found five core personality traits.

• These are called the Five Factor Model (FFM) or in the fired of OB and HRM, the “Big Five”.

• These traits have held up as accounting for personality in much analysis over years and even across cultures

• Accumulated research shows that these five best predict performance in the work place and are related to performance motivation

Core traits Descriptive characteristics of high scorers

conscientiousness Dependable, hardworking, organized, self

disciplined, persistence, responsible, sets high

standards, have high performance expectation

Emotional stability Calm, score, happy, unworried, can manage

stressful situations

Agreeableness Cooperative, warm, caring, good natured,

courteous, trusting, handle conflict and

customers well

extraversion Sociable, outgoing, talkative, assertive

Openness to

experience

Curious, intelligent, creative, cultured,

artistically sensitive, flexible, imaginative

I control what

happens to me!

People and

circumstances control

my fate!

Personality Characteristics in Organizations

Locus of Control

Internal External

Personality Characteristics in Organizations

Self-Efficacy - belief and expectations about one’s ability to accomplish a specific task effectively

Sources of self-efficacy

Prior experiences

Behavior models (observing success)

Persuasion

Assessment of current physical & emotional capabilities

Personality Characteristics in Organizations

Self - Esteem

Success tends

to increase

self-esteem

Feelings of Self Worth

Failure tends

to decrease

self-esteem

Personality Characteristics in Organizations

Self - Monitoring

Behavior based on cues from people & situations

High self monitors

flexible: adjust behavior according to the situation and the behavior of others

can appear unpredictable & inconsistent

Low self monitors

act from internal states rather than from situational cues

show consistency

less likely to respond to work group norms or supervisory feedback

Personality Characteristics in Organizations

Positive Affect - An individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of oneself, other people, and the world in general

Negative Affect - An individual’s tendency to accentuate the negative aspects of oneself, other people, and the world in general

THE NATURE AND DIMENSION OF ATTITUDES

Difference between personality and attitudes

• Personality usually is thought of as the whole person, whereas attitude many be thought of as making up personality

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• The term attitude is frequently used in describing people and explaining their behaviour. For example “he has a poor attitude’ “I like her attitude” “our workers turn out poor quality products because they have poor attitude”

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• More precisely, an attitude can be defined as a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way towards some objects. For example, George does not like working the night shift. He has a negative attitude towards his work assignments

Attitude can be characterized in three ways….

1. They tend to persist unless something is done to change them. For example if George is transferred to the day shift, his attitude man become positive

2. Secondly, attitudes can fall anywhere along the continuum form very favourable to very unfavorable. If he is transferred to the day shift, his attitude may change to highly favourable

3. Thirdly, attitudes are directed towards some object about which a person has a feelings (sometimes called “effects”) and beliefs. In Georges case this is the work shift

Dimensions of attitudes These include:

Basic components of attitudes,

Antecedents

Functions of attitude

How attitude can be changed

Basic components • Attitudes can be broken into three basic components:

– Emotional

– Informational

– Behavioral

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• Emotional component

• This involves the persons feeling or effects – positive, negative, or neutral – about an object

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• Informational component

• Consist of the beliefs and information that the individual has about the object.

• It makes no different whether or not this information is empirically real or correct

• A supervisor many believe that two week of training is necessary before a worker can effectively conduct a particular process. In reality, the average worker may be able to perform usefully after only four days of training. Yet the information the supervisor is using (that two weeks is necessary) is the key to his attitude about training

Behavioral component

• Consist of persons tendencies to behaviour in a particular way towards an object. For example, the supervisor in the preceding paragraph may assign two weeks training to all her new employees

• NB: It is important to note that of all the three components, only the behavioral can be directly observed. Another person’s feelings (emotional

component) and beliefs (informational component) cannot be seen. These two can only be inferred

FUNCTIONS OF ATTITUDES• Attitudes can help predict work behaviour and also

should be an important consideration in hiring

• For example, if an attitude survey shows that workers are upset by changes in the work rules and the next week absenteeism begin to increase sharply; management may conclude that a negative attitude towards work rules led to increase in work absenteeism

Four important functions of attitude

Adjustment function

Ego-defensive function

Value – expression function

Knowledge function

The adjustment functions

• Attitude often help people adjust to their work environment.

• When employees are well treated, they are likely to develop a positive attitude towards management and the organisation

• When employees are berated and given minimal salary increase, they are likely to develop a negative attitude towards management and the organisation

• These attitudes help employees adjust to their environment and are the basis for future behaviour

Ego-defensive function• Attitudes help employees defend their self image.• For example a manager whose decisions are continually

challenged by a younger subordinate manager may feel that the latter is brash, cocky, amateur, or inexperienced. In truth, the younger subordinates may be right in challenging the poor decisions.

• On the other hand the older manager is not going to admit this but will try to protect the e.g. by putting the blame on the other party.

• As a result, the older manager will have a negative attitude towards the younger manager.

• The same is undoubtedly true for the young manager, who will feel the boss is not a doing good job.

• This attitude helps the young person protect the ego

The value-expressive function

• Attitudes provide people with a basis for expressive their values

• For example, a manager who believes strongly in work ethics will tend to voice attitudes towards specific individuals or work practices as a means of reflecting this value.

• He will say for example ‘you have got to worker harder’ of he expects people to work hard

Knowledge function

• Attitudes help supply standards and frames of reference that allow people to organise and explain the work around them.

• For example, a union Organiser many have a negative attitude towards management. This attitude many not be based on facts, but it does help individual relate to management.

• As a result, everything the managers say is regarded by the union organizer as nothing more than a pack of lies, a deliberate distortion of the truth, or an attempt to manipulate the workers.

• Regardless of how accurate a person views of reality is, attitude towards people, events, and objects help the individual make sense of what is going on

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CHANGING ATTITUDES

• Employee attitudes can be changed, and sometimes it is the best interest of management to try and do so.

• E.g. if employees believe that management does not care for them, management would like to change this attitude.

• Some attitude change is difficult to accomplish because of certain barriers

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Barriers to changing attitudes

• There are two basic barriers that can prevent people from changing attitude

• Prior commitment

– Occurs when people feel a commitment to a particular course of action and are unwilling to change. Sometimes people even follow a failing course of action because of prior commitment

• Insufficient information

– Some people do not see any reason for changing their attitude. They do not see anything wrong with the current attitude – unless the boss can show why negative attitude is detrimental to something e.g. career progression

Some ways of overcoming barriers to changing attitude…

Provide new information.• This information can change a persons beliefs and in the process his or

her attitude e.g. provide information about the poor financial positions of the company to union workers who are agitating for increases

Use of fear• Some research has shown that fear can cause some people to change

their attitudes. • However the degree of fear seems to be important to the final outcome. • For example, if low levels of fear are used, people often ignore them. If

moderate levels of fear arousal are sued, people often become aware of the situation and will change their attitudes. However, of high levels of fear arousal are used, people often reject the massage because it is too threatened and thus not believable

Some ways of overcoming barriers to changing attitude…

• Resolve discrepancies

• This involves resolving discrepancies between attitude and behaviour.

• Research shows that when job applicants have more than one offer of employment and are forced to choose, they often feel that their final choice many have been a mistake.

• However, this mild conflict or dissonance does not usually last very long – though consciously developing negative attitudes towards companies not chosen over time

Some ways of overcoming barriers to changing attitude…• Influence of friends or peers

• This is through persuasion by friends or peers. Following what your colleagues are doing and have succeeded

• The co-opting approach

• This means taking people who are dissatisfied with a situation and getting them involved in improving things. E.g. co-opting employees in improving their benefits –once they see how benefits are determining and that the personnel are given the best benefits possible, then they will change their attitude.

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Definition Ones thinking, feeling and action tendencies ( that is ones

attitude) towards work is termed as job satisfaction

job satisfaction focuses on employees attitude towards their job

a persons level of job satisfaction, just like all attitude is influence by experiences

Locke defines job satisfaction as involving cognitive, affective and evaluative reactions or attitudes

States that it is “ a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting form the appraisal of one job or experiences “

Job satisfaction is result of employees’ perception of how well their job provides those things that are viewed as important

Dimensions of job satisfaction 1. Job satisfaction is an emotional response to job

situation - as a result it cannot be seen, it can only be inferred

2. Job satisfaction is determined by how well outcomes meet or exceed expectations - if organizational participants feel that they are working harder than others in a department but are receiving fewer rewards, they will probably have a negative attitude towards their work, their boss and /or coworkers –they will be dissatisfied.

3. Job satisfaction represent several related attitudes. Toward:

Work itself

Pay

Promotion opportunities

Supervision

Coworkers.

These form the most important characteristics of a job about which the employees have affective responses

The work itself – the extent to which the job provides the individuals with interesting task, opportunities for learning and the chance to accept responsibility

Pay – the amount of financial remuneration that is received and the degree to which this is view as equitable is-a-vis that of others in the organisation

Promotion opportunities – the chance for advancement in the organisation

Supervision – the abilities of the supervisor to provide technical assistance and behaviour support

Coworkers - the degree to which fellow workers are technically proficient and socially supportive

These would therefore be referred to as the factors which influence job satisfaction

Factors influencing job satisfaction The work itself

Job characteristics and job complexity affects job satisfaction ( characteristics here means variety of skills, identity of task , significance of task, autonomy of task and feedback

job characteristics

Skill variety: The extent to which the job requires the employee to draw form a number of different skills and abilities as well as on a range of knowledge

Task identity: Whether the job has an identifiable beginning and end. How complete a module of work does the employee perform

Task significance: the importance of the task. It involves the internal significance – how important is the task to the organisation? And the external significance – how proud are the employee to tell relatives, friends what they do where they work

Autonomy: Refers to job independence. How much freedom and control do employees have, for their schedule of work, decisions, determining the means to accomplish objectives

Feedback: refers to objective information about progress and performance and can come form the job itself or form supervisors or an information system

The job itself If creative requirement of the employee is met by a job

then they are more satisfied

Interesting and challenging work increases job satisfaction

A job which has opportunities for career development ( not necessarily promotion increases job satisfaction

Pay:

Money helps people attain their basic needs and is also instrumental in proving upper level basic needs. Employees often see pay as a reflection of how management view their contributions to the organisation

Benefits are also important

Promotion:

studies show that employees who are promoted on the basis of seniority often experience job satisfaction but not as much as those who are promoted on the basis of performance

Satisfaction also depend on the percentage increase in salary

Supervision There seem to be two dimensions of supervisory styles that affect

job satisfaction : Employee –centeredness, which is measured by the degree to

which a supervisor takes a personal interest and care about employees - it is manifested in ways such as: checking to see how well the employee is doing providing advice and assistance to individuals, communicating with the associate on a personal level as well as on

official levels

Participation or influence – illustrated by managers who allow their people to participate in decision that affect their own jobs . In most cases , this approach leads to job higher satisfaction

Work groups

The nature of work groups or teams will have an effect on job satisfaction.

Friendly, cooperative coworkers or team members are modest source of job satisfaction to individual employees

The work groups serve as source of support , comfort, advice and assistance to individual team members

Studies show that groups requiring considerable interdependent among members to get the job done well will have a higher satisfaction

Working conditions

If working conditions are good (e.g. clean, attractive surrounding) the person will find it easier to carry out their jobs

If work conditions are poor (e.g. hot, noisy surrounding) personnel will find it difficult to get things done

Job satisfaction and organizational effectiveness If job satisfaction is high, will employees perform

better and the organisation be more effective?

If job satisfaction is low, will there be a performance problem and ineffectiveness?

Do satisfied employees perform better than less satisfied counterparts

Satisfaction and job performance There is definitely a relationship between job satisfaction

and performance, but the relationship/correlation in the studies done shows a weak and moderate relationship

There seem to be many other possible moderating variable like reward ( if seen to be equitable ) that go with job satisfaction and lead to greater performance effort

Research evidence indicate that satisfaction may not necessarily lead to individual performance improvement but does lead to departmental and organizational level improvement

There is also a relationship between employee satisfaction and performance outcomes such as customer satisfaction and profitability