BUS272 TB

Corrin can take these risks because he is open to experiences, one of the Big Five personality
traits that we discuss below. When a franchise manager brings Corrin new ideas for menu items,
he lets the manager try them in his or her store. Corrin’s view is to “launch fast, fail fast, iterate
faster.” He does not feel that ideas have to be right, but that it’s important to test the ideas and
learn from them. As he explains, “If it sells great, we’ll scale it, and if it doesn’t, then we’ll take
it away. But we’ve only done it in a very small testing environment.” How do one’s personality
attributes influence OB?
Understanding the impact of individual personalities on OB is important. Why are
some people quiet and passive, while others are loud and aggressive? Are certain personality
types better adapted to certain job types? Before we can answer these questions,
we need to address a more basic one: What is personality?
Chapter 2 Perception, Personality, and Emotions 47
What Is Personality?
When we speak of someone’s personality, we don’t mean the person has charm or
is constantly smiling. As organizational behaviourists, we are describing a dynamic
concept of the growth and development of a person’s personality.
Gordon Allport produced the most frequently used definition of personality more than
70 years ago. He said personality is “the dynamic organization within the individual
of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.”
29 For our purposes, we define personality as the stable patterns of behaviour
and consistent internal states that determine how an individual reacts to and interacts
with others. It’s most often described in terms of measurable traits that a person exhibits.
Measuring Personality
The most important reason managers need to know how to measure personality is
that research has shown that personality tests are useful in hiring decisions. Scores
on personality tests help managers forecast who is the best fit for a job. 30 The most
common means of measuring personality is through self-report surveys, with which
individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors, such as “I worry a lot about the
future.” Although self-report measures work when well constructed, the respondent
might lie to create a good impression. When people know that their personality scores
are going to be used for hiring decisions, they rate themselves as about half a standard
deviation more conscientious and emotionally stable than if they are taking the test
just to learn more about themselves. 31 Another problem is accuracy: A candidate who
is in a bad mood when taking the survey may have inaccurate scores.
Observer ratings provide an independent assessment of personality. Here, a co-worker
or another observer does the rating (sometimes with the subject’s knowledge and sometimes
without). Although the results of self-reports and observer ratings are strongly
correlated, research suggests that observer ratings are a better predictor of success on the
job. 32 However, each can tell us something unique about an individual’s behaviour in
the workplace. An analysis of a large number of observer-reported personality studies
shows that a combination of self-reports and observer-reports predicts performance better
than any one type of information. The implication is clear: Use both observer ratings
and self-report ratings of personality when making important employment decisions.
Personality Determinants
An early argument in personality research centred on whether an individual’s personality
is predetermined at birth or the result of the individual’s environment. Clearly,
there is no simple answer. Personality appears to be a result of both; however, research
tends to support the importance of heredity over the environment. In addition, today
we recognize a third factor—the situation. Thus, an adult’s personality is now generally
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personality The stable patterns
of behaviour and consistent internal
states that determine how an
individual reacts to and interacts with
others.