Personality in organizational context

Kazakhstan perspective

Course: Organizational Behavior

Professor: Monowar Mahmood

Group 2

	Rakhmetova	Zhanar
	Yun	Filadelfiya
	Kenzhetayeva	Saule
	Bigarayev	Zhanibek
	Shonova	Madina

November 2012

CONTENTS

I. Theoretical review

1. Personality in organizational context………………………………………….………..3

2. Overview of Personality and Traits Theories…………………………………..……….4

3. Practical aspect of Personality and Traits Theories………………………………..……8

II. Practical review

1. Kazakhstan: national profile………………………………………………………...…10

2. Application of Personality and Traits theories in Kazakhstani organizations…………11

3. Conclusion and recommendations…………………………………………………..…15

III. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………….…17

IV. Appendix…………………………………………………………………………...………18

I. THEORETICAL REVIEW

Personality in organizational context

Over the long period of existence of organizations only relatively recently personality psychology was given due attention of researchers and scholars. Prior to 20 years ago the inclusion of personality traits in organizational research was scattered and non-systematic; however since 1989 with the emergence of Davis-Blake and Pfeffer article which stated that personality effects in organizational behavior are more illusory than real, the debate over importance of personality in organizational context gave rise to more in-depth research in the area.

If we think of organization as an entity we see that organizations are composed of people: the work is performed by employees, decisions are made by managers, all the processes, procedures are controlled by employees, future development and strategy of the company is developed by top managers – there are always people behind all organizational processes starting from organizational vision to work implementation. Organization is defined as “social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals. All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between the different activities and the members, and subdivides and assigns roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out different tasks. Organizations are open systems - they affect and are affected by their environment.” (Business Dictionary) From the definition it can be emphasized that organization is a social unit of people, there are specific task-members relationships, and these relationships are determined and coordinated by management. So from the broad organizational perspective people are at heart of all processes and thus drive organizations.

The other perspective is person-task relationship in organizations. People do not drive organizations directly but rather through their actions and performance. Two factors influence on employee behavior: external and internal. An external factor refers to outside events and causes that impact on employee behavior. An internal factor is the one that is under personal control of the individual. If internal factors are driven by individual then how one performs differs from person to person and depends on such personal qualities as temperament, traits, interests, needs, values, level of motivation and responsibility, mood, etc. For example, work can be done very well because one employee has a perfectionist attitude to his work and high level of responsibility, but the other employee did well because he likes his job and he is highly motivated because it is interesting for him – personality and personal characteristics define how a person approaches his job and correspondingly predetermine employee performance.

Now that we defined that personality matters in organizations the next question is to what extent it is important. The core aim of organizational theory is to find best way to organize and manage the people in order to achieve desired organizational goals. Effectiveness is a good indicator of organizational capability to achieve its goals. According to Hogan (2000) effectiveness is a function of how well an organization does, relative to its competition, in five areas: selecting, recruiting, and retaining talent – the team with the more talented players should win; motivation – a less talented but more motivated team should defeat a more talented but dispirited team; leadership – if teams are matched for talent and motivation, the team with better leadership will win; strategy – talented, motivated teams with good management will lose to team with a better strategy; and systems to monitor how well the organization is doing in terms of the preceding four categories.

Four of five organizational effectiveness components concern personality. Talent includes initiative, creativity, persistence, and dedication – all aspects of personality. Motivation and leadership is all about personality. Strategy can be viewed as a creative problem solving, tolerance for ambiguity, and tolerance for risk, which is a part of personality. So from the standpoint of organizational effectiveness personality underlies virtually every aspect and thus can be considered as very important.

To summarize, we offered several arguments on importance of personality in organizations. First is that organizations are actually composed of people and that there are people behind all organizational processes. Second, work performance depends very strongly on personality qualities, which influence employee behavior and as a consequence organizational behavior too. Third, personality is important to the degree that it plays crucial role in organizational effectiveness being the driver of four out of five components of effectiveness. The fourth support for the argument was outlined by Max Weber (1948) who characterized the life of every organization in terms of personality-driven trend. He stated that organizations are started by visionary, charismatic entrepreneurs – these people define the culture of the new organization. Over time, the visionary leaders are replaced by bureaucrats in a process that Weber describes as rationalization - the organization becomes progressively more routinized, rational, rule bound, inflexible, and maladaptive. The probable reason for such rationalization lies in attempt to prevent unwanted behavior which is often driven by employees’ selfishness and desire to exploit organization in some way. This is the example of a transpersonal organizational process that is driven by personality. From the statements above it can be concluded that personality is such an integral part of organization that understanding the role of personality and its manifestations and knowing how to correctly approach people is crucial for high organization performance.

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