INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND WORK BEHAVIOR

Importance of Individual Differences

 Have different effect on behavior:
 People who perceive things differently behave differently
 People with different attitudes respond differently to directives
 People with different personalities interact differently with bosses, coworkers, subordinates, and customers
 Help explain:
 Why some people embrace change and others are fearful of it
 Why some employees will be productive only if they are closely supervised, while others will be productive if they are not
 Why some workers learn new tasks more effectively than others

ATTRACTION-SELECTION-ATTRITION CYCLE ( ASA CYCLE )

 Different people are attracted to different careers and organization as a function of their own:
 Abilities
 Interests
 Personalities
 Organization select employees on the basis of the needs the organization has:
 Skills and abilities
 Individual attributes such as values and personality
 Attrition occurs when:
 Individuals discover they do not like being part of the organization and elect or to resign
 The organization determines an individual is not succeeding and elects to terminate

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES INFLUENCING WORK BEHAVIOR

1. Hereditary and Diversity Factors
2. Personality
3. Perception
4. Ability and Skills
5. Attitudes

DIVERSITY FACTORS
Primary Dimensions Secondary Dimensions
(Stable) (Changeable)
 Age  Educational background
 Ethnicity  Marital status
 Gender  Religious beliefs
 Physical attributes  Health
 Race  Work experience
 Sexual/affection orientation

Ability – a person’s talent to perform a mental or physical task

 Key Abilities:
 Mental Ability
 Emotional Intelligence
 Tacit Knowledge
Skill – a learned talent that a person has acquired to perform a task

ATTITUDES
⇝ are determinants of behavior because they are linked with perception, personality, feelings, and motivation
⇝ a mental state of readiness
⇝ learned and organized through experience
⇝ exerting a specific response to people, objects, and situations with which it is related

ATTITUDES: Implications for the Manager

1. Attitudes are learned
2. Attitudes define one’s predispositions toward given aspects of the world
3. Attitudes provide the emotional basis of one’s interpersonal relations and identification with others
4. Attitudes are organized and are close to the core of personality
THREE COMPONENTS OF ATTITUDES:
1) COGNITION
 What individuals know about themselves and their environment
 Implies a conscious process of acquiring knowledge
 EVALUATIVE BELIEFS (favorable or unfavorable impressions that a person holds toward an object or person.
2) AFFECT
 The emotional component of an attitude often learn:
 Parents
 Teachers
 Peer group members
 The part of an attitude that is associated with “feeling” a certain way about a person, group, or situation.
3) COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
 A discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors
 A mental state of anxiety
 Occurs when there is a conflict among an individual’s various cognitions after a decision has been made

CHANGIING ATTITUDES:
a) The Communicator
b) The Message
c) The Situation

How to Increase Your Effectiveness in Changing Attitudes:

1. Concentrate on gradually changing the attitude over a period of time
2. Identify the beliefs or values that are part of the attitude and provide the attitude holder with information that will alter those beliefs and
values
3. Make the setting (in which the attempted change occurs) as pleasant and enjoyable as possible
4. Identify reasons that changing the attitude is to the advantage of the attitude holder

JOB SATISFACTION – an attitude people have about their jobs

 Results from people’s perception of their jobs
 Results from the degree of fit between the individual and the organization
Key factors associated with Job Satisfaction:
 Pay
 Promotion opportunities
 Supervision
 Coworkers
 Working conditions
 Job security

PERSONALITY
 a relatively stable set of feelings and behaviors that have been significantly formed by genetic and environmental factors
 the relationship between behavior and personality is one of the most complex matters that managers have to understand

SOME MAJOR FORCES INFLUENCING PERSONALITY

 Cultural Forces
 Hereditary Forces
 Family Relationship Forces
 Social Class/Group Membership Forces

PERSONALITY AND BEHAVIOR IN ORGANIZATIONS

 The Big Five Personality Dimensions
1. Extroversion – refers to the tendency to be sociable, gregarious, assertive, talkative and active
2. Agreeableness – tendency to be courteous, forgiving, tolerant, trusting and soft-hearted. Someone who gets along with others.
Individuals how on agreeableness are often described as rude, cold, uncaring, unsympathetic, and antagonistic.
3. Conscientiousness – tendency to be dependable, organized, thorough and responsible. They tend to persevere, work hard and
enjoy achieving and accomplishing things. Employees who are low in conscientiousness tend to be sloppy, inefficient,
careless and even lazy.
4. Emotional stability – tendency to experience positive emotional states, such as feeling psychologically secure, calm and
relaxed.
Anxiety, depression, anger and embarrassment are characteristics of low emotional stability.
5. Openness to Experience – reflects the extent to which an individual is broad-minded, creative, curious and intelligent.
Individuals low in openness to experience tend to be unimaginative, conventional and habit-bound.
 Locus of Control – determines the degree to which they believe influence what happens to them
 Internals (believe they are masters of their own fate)
 Externals (believe they are helpless pawns of fate, success is due to luck or ease of task)
 Self-Efficacy
 Relates to personal beliefs regarding competencies and abilities.
 It refers to one’s belief in one’s ability to successfully complete a task and firmly believes in performance capabilities.
 Feelings of self-efficacy have managerial and organizational implications:
 Selection decisions
 Training programs
 Goal setting and performance
 Three Dimensions:
a) Magnitude – refers to the level of task difficulty that individuals believe they can attain
b) Strength – refers to whether the belief regarding magnitude is strong or weak
c) Generality – indicates how generalized across different situations the belief in capability
 Creativity
 A personality trait that involves the ability to break away from habit-bound thinking and produce novel and useful ideas
 Produces innovation and innovation is the lifeblood of a growing number of corporations
How to Develop Employee Creativity:
1) Encourage everyone to view old problems from new perspectives
2) Make certain people know that it is OK to make mistakes
3) Provide as many people with as many new work experiences as you can
4) Set an example in your own approach to dealing with problems and opportunities.