Application of Personality and Traits theories in Kazakhstani organizations

Unfortunately, no prior research was conducted on the topic of importance of personality in Kazakhstani organizations (at least, not publicly available). In order to understand and assess the attitude towards personality and importance of traits in Kazakhstani organizations and investigate whether Kazakhstani management is aware of Traits theories and applies them we conducted a survey (see Appendix).

The goals of the survey were to:

· Define from the perspective of Kazakhstani management whether personality and traits play important role in organization

· Determine what personality evaluation techniques and in which cases they are used by local managers

· Build understanding of the level of Kazakhstani’s management educational background in management

· Determine whether managers in Kazakhstan are aware of Personality and Traits theories and whether they apply them

· Assess management’s inclination to the use of Personality and Traits theories in organizations

The survey involved 35 respondents from 7 different industries (see Figure 1) with majority of respondents coming from financial sector (including banking, accounting, investment and consulting) – 47%, education – 31%, and industry – 11%. Such distribution of industries could be considered favorable because such industries as financial sector, consulting, education, and administration are characterized by high reliance on human resource – thus for these sectors the role of personality is emphasized more than for other industries. The results of the studies would rather then be interpreted in terms of personality role in human resource reliant organizations in Kazakhstan.

Figure 1 – Industries covered by survey

Based on level of managerial position, number of direct subordinates, and lengths of managerial experience the profile of an average respondent is a higher-level manager with 5-10 years of experience in managerial position with less than 10 or more than 20 direct subordinates (See Figure 2).

Figure 2 – Respondents’ profile

From the perspective of Kazakhstani management the role of personality and personal traits in organization was given high priority (see Figure) with 78% of respondents considering personality as a critical performance factor and only 8% answering that personality is not critical determinant of performance. This implies that in Kazakhstani organization management does not undermine the role of personality and clearly understands that such personal characteristics as motivation, temperament, interests, values, responsibility, openness, credibility etc. directly influence employee performance.

Figure 3 – Personality-performance relationship

Figure 4 – Personality evaluation metrics

As for usage of particular evaluation methods 60% of the respondents claimed to use the personal evaluation criteria (see Figure 4). The use of personal – intuitive evaluation metrics is consistent with the fact that in most cases managers in Kazakhstan are specialists in areas other than management – that is specialists who grow to become managers. On the other hand, the survey indicated a higher than average level of theoretical background in management (see Figure 5). Strikingly 30% of respondents have degrees in management – this figure can be explained by the fact that 31% of respondents arrive from educational sectors and are very likey to have degrees in management. This argument is again proven by 32% of respondents’ using systematic approaches including Personality and Trait theories and models in their assessment of employees - so these could be respondents with a degree in management from educational sector.

27% of respondents attended courses in management – in most cases courses that come as a part of general education program, 18% attended management seminars and workshops and 10% read books on management – this broad category could be described as people who have general idea and understanding of basic managerial concepts, however it is unlikely that they covered the topics of Organizational Behavior and in particular, Personality theories, in detail or were able to retain that knowledge. This category could potentially be respondents who use intuitive personality evaluation approaches.

8% of the surveyed do not use any evaluation metrics which is roughly consistent with 8% of respondents who do not consider personality a critical performance factor.

The next question in the survey was in what particular situations managers used personality assessment techniques (see Figure 6). Personal characteristics are mostly considered when managers assign a task - 53%, and personal characteristics are almost equally important when managers make hiring or dismissal decision and promotion/demotion decision with 20% and 23% of respondents’ answers respectively.

In contrast to the question of whether respondents consider personality a critical performance factor which expresses their opinion, this one reveals managers’ true attitude to the importance of personality, because whenever they make key decisions regarding the employee, 96% consider personal characteristics.

For majority of respondents (65%) who considered personal characteristics is given situations these criteria is one of the top 5 important factors to consider (see Figure 7). For 20% of these respondents personality factor is the most important in evaluation of employee. We conclude from this that personality is one of the most important factors that managers consider when they make key decisions regarding employees.

Figure 6 – Usage of personality evaluation in particular situations

Figure 7 –Personality assessment in overall evaluation of employee

The next important question referred to managers’ familiarity with fundamental Personality and Trait theories (see Figure 8). The results indicated that majority of respondents (59%) are not familiar with proposed theories. However, on average each theory was recognized by 5 people with Myers- Briggs Type Indicator and Five Model being the most recognizable, 15% and 13% respectively.

Figure 8 – Familiarity with Personality and Traits theories

Of those who were familiar with listed theories only 3 respondents indicated usage of these theories which were Big Five Model and Jung’s Model.

The general perception of usage of theories is that overall they have a good impact on organizational behavior (43%), help improve employee performance (36%), help improve employee motivation (7%), and the rest 14% are convinced that application of Personality and Traits theories provide no effect. As for the decision to apply personality theories at their workplace 49% of respondents agreed to apply if these theories prove to increase employee performance, 33% admitted possibility to apply, and 18% answered negatively to application of theories. This draws us to conclusion that despite the fact that managers in Kazakhstan realize the importance of personal characteristic and in fact consider them when making employee-related decisions, the majority of the managers are not making any attempts to widen their knowledge in the area (even though most of them have basic understanding of management) and they also show reluctance towards application of theories in the workplace. Two reasons could explain this trend: first, role of personality in organizations is not actualized at the moment due to relatively small research track record in the area. Second is that in most cases we do not witness the practice of any theories application in Kazakhstan – organizations in Kazakhstan are built and operated in a more traditional way, and usually managers do experiment with different managerial practices, because they are either unaware of them or they do not consider them to be effective.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14