1. Personality chapter 6 183
Chapter case study: Building Anna’s self-esteem
Company setting
Flockmann’s is an exclusive department store located in the centre of Helsinki, Finland.
The store is family-owned, and highly successful. It has four main floors, with various
departments situated adjacent to each other on each floor. In the early spring, there was
a decline in sales volume experienced by most departments in the store. Most employees
attributed the slowdown in sales to the economic downturn affecting the entire region.
Background
Each department in the store has a sales supervisor who reports to the assistant manager.
The sales supervisors are all full-time, long-term employees of Flockmann’s. As a general
rule, the sales supervisors in each department do not actively sell, but keep the department
well stocked, ensure merchandise is presentable, deal with special orders, and train sales
personnel. The full-time and part-time employees do most sales work. Each assistant
manager reports to the store manager, Esa Lindholm, who was a sales supervisor of a
department for nine years. The store director, Karl Flockmann, has been with the family
business for 30 years and will be retiring in a few years. Recently he has delegated most of
the merchandising and sales responsibilities to Lindholm. All sales associates at Flockmann
are paid strictly on an hourly basis. The starting wage is just above the minimum wage, and
raises are given on the basis of length of employment.
Anna Poiketa is the assistant manager responsible for the basement floor, which has
four departments: tools and garden equipment, furniture and small electrical appliances
(such as kettles and toasters), bedding and linen, and large appliances (such as cookers
and televisions). The supervisors and sales associates in Poiketa’s departments seem to
get along well with each other. If business is brisk in one department and slow in another,
the salespeople in the slower area assist in the busy department. Anna has been with
Flockmann’s for four years, since graduating from a business programme. When people
describe her personality, they typically use such words as meticulous, intelligent, caring,
supportive, sensitive, dependable and creative.‘She likes getting her staff on board as
opposed to telling them what to do,’said one full-time sales associate. Another co-employee
commented,‘Anna is adept at juggling work schedules and talking things through with us.’
Esa Lindholm, Anna’s supervisor, has the reputation of being a skilled merchandiser, and
in the past has initiated many ideas to increase the sales volume of the store. Lindholm
personifies the ambitious manager in terms of his work ethic. What drives Lindholm? In his
management practices he believes in setting targets, measuring progress, and is action
oriented, or what some supervisors at Flockmann’s call‘the ready–fire–aim syndrome.’
Beyond his hearing, people typically used such words as arrogant, egoistic, Teflon-man,
selfish and obnoxious to describe Lindholm’s personality. One sales associate said, off the
record,‘It’s his way or the highway.’What is more, some of the longer-term supervisors said
that Esa Lindholm was very impatient and that he was sometimes rude to his subordinates
while discussing merchandising problems with them.
The problem
Anna Poiketa consulted with her sales supervisors about the reason for the declining
sales volume. The consensus reached was that the level of customer traffic had not been
adequate to allow the departments to achieve a high sales volume. During a one-to-one
meeting with Anna, Lindholm pointed out that some of the other departments in the store
had experienced a 12 percent gain over the previous year, despite the recession. Lindholm
concluded that since customer traffic could not be controlled and since the departments
had been adequately stocked throughout the year, the improvement in sales must have
been a result of increased effort on the part of the sales associates in each department.
1_4039_1114_2.indd 1831_4039_1114_2.indd 183 19/1/07 16:24:1819/1/07 16:24:18

2. 184 part 3 INDIVIDUALS AND WORK
Later, Anna found out that Lindholm had sent a letter around to each department informing
sales associates that they might be given fewer hours to work if sales did not improve.
The following week, Lindholm called Anna into his office and suggested that each sales
associate be issued with a code number to record daily sales. Each sales associate would
enter her or his sales along with ID number, and at the end of the day, a new computerized
register would total every individual’s personal daily sales. Lindholm said that by reviewing
the computer printout of individual sales over a period of time, he would be able to
determine who the‘slackers’were. The sales associates were to be trained to use the new
computerized sales register and about the purpose of the daily tally card. They would also
be told that a monthly commission would be paid on individual monthly sales, and that
those associates who did not meet a minimum sales target would have their hours cut back.
Anna told Lindholm she wanted to consider this change, and also discuss it with the four
department supervisors before implementing it. She told him that she would be away on
vacation the next two weeks, but that when she returned to work, she would discuss this
proposal with the supervisors.
On returning to the store after her vacation, Anna was taken aback to see that new
computerized registers had been installed and each of her sales associates was inputting his
or her ID number when completing a sales transaction. When she asked Lindholm why the
new system had been adopted so hurriedly, he replied that when it came to meeting sales
targets, no delay could be tolerated.
The new system changed the behaviour of the sales associates. They diligently entered
all the information for each sale. Sales people became much more aggressive in their sales
efforts: often customers were approached more than once by different associates in each
department. The friendly conversations that had taken place among sales associates and
between supervisors and customers were shortened, and sales were processed through
the computerized cash registers much more quickly. When sales activity was slow in
one department, associates would migrate to other departments were there were more
customers. Sometimes conflicts between employees arose because associates from the
small appliances and bedding departments migrated to the cookers and televisions
department and competed for the‘big ticket’sales.
A month after the adoption of the new system, unloaded carts lined the aisles of
the stockroom and the shelves on the sales floor were poorly stocked. Often customers
asked for items that were not on display, and were told the item they desired was not in
stock when in fact it was still waiting to be unpacked in the stockroom. Similar behaviour
occurred in the other departments on the three main floors. When Anna reported her
observations of these situations to Lindholm, she was told that it was a result of the
associates’adjusting to the new system and to not worry about it. Anna pointed out,
however, that sales volume had still not improved.
Three months later, at Anna Poiketa’s request, Karl Flockmann, Esa Lindholm and Anna
did a tour of the four departments on the basement floor. After talking with some of the
supervisors and sales associates on all four floors, Flockmann sent a memo announcing that
the new transaction system and sales commissions would be discontinued at the end of
the month. Sales volume in the departments did not improve, and two months later Anna
Poiketa resigned from Flockmann’s to take up a management position at a rival store in
the city.
Task
Provide a report to the director, Karl Flockmann, covering the following points:
1. How do you account for the change in the sales associates’behaviour, and what does it
say about the effect of personality?
2. To what extent would you say that Esa Lindholm’s personality is reflected in his approach
to improving sales at Flockmann’s?
1_4039_1114_2.indd 1841_4039_1114_2.indd 184 19/1/07 16:24:1819/1/07 16:24:18

3. Personality chapter 6 185
3. What might our study of personality tell us about how Anna Poiketa reacted to the
situation?
Sources of additional information
Barrick, M. R., Stewart, G., Neubert, M. and Mount, M. (1998)‘Relating member ability
and personality to work-team processes and team effectiveness’, Journal of Applied
Psychology, June, pp. 377–91.
Lyness, K. and Thompson, D. (2000)‘Climbing the corporate ladder: do males and female
follow the same route?’Journal of Applied Psychology, February, pp. 86–101.
Vinkenburg, C. J., Jansen, P. G. and Koopman, P. L. (2000)‘Feminine leadership – a review
of gender differences in managerial behaviour and effectiveness’, Chapter 9 in M. J.
Davidson and R. J. Burke (eds), Women in Management: Current research issues, Vol. II,
London: Sage.
Visit the Freud Museum in London website at www.freud.org.uk/ for a range of ideas on
psychoanalysis.
Note
This study was written by John Bratton, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada.
Web-based assignment
Form a group of three to five people, and visit the websites of any of the following
organizations: Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/uk/graduates), Sainsbury’s
(www.sainsburys.co.uk), British Airways (www.britishairways.com), and Royal Bank of
Scotland (www.royalbankscot.co.uk). What personality attributes are these organizations
seeking when they recruit new employees?
Go to www.queendom.com/tests.html and www.support4learning.org.uk/ (search for
psychometrics) and examine the psychometric tests. Some of these you may take yourself
without applying for a job. How accurate, in your view, is your personality profile as revealed
by any of the psychometric tests? Do your close friends agree with the assessment? Which
kind of psychometric tests do you suppose would be more effective in revealing the more
important aspects of your personality? Why? How much weight should organizations give
to psychometric test results in employment selection? Explain your reasoning. Write a
report detailing your findings.
OB in films
The film The Odd Couple (1968) centres on the lives of divorced Oscar Madison (played by
Walter Matthau) and his about-to-become-divorced best friend Felix Ungar (played by Jack
Lemmon). Felix moves into Oscar’s New York flat, but the two men have entirely different
personality characteristics. While Oscar is disorganized and untidy, Felix is tidy. This amusing
film traces their many interactions as Felix moves closer to his divorce and Oscar yearns to
live alone again.
Watch the first 25 minutes of the film. What personality characteristics do Oscar and Felix
display? What personality types best describe the two characters? What behaviour in the
film led you to your conclusions?
1_4039_1114_2.indd 1851_4039_1114_2.indd 185 19/1/07 16:24:1819/1/07 16:24:18