This document discusses personality and its influence on organizational behavior. It defines personality as relatively stable characteristics exhibited across situations. The main factors shaping personality are heredity and environment. Conscientiousness predicts job performance and organizational citizenship. Extroversion predicts performance for social jobs. Type A personalities are impatient and success-oriented, while Type B's are patient and relaxed. Attribution theory examines how people explain behaviors - internally (effort, ability) or externally (luck). Self-serving bias attributes success internally and failure externally. The fundamental attribution error overattributes internal factors to others. Personality must fit organizational roles to be effective.

1. Organizational Behavior
Session 13

2. Personality

3. What is personality?
 Personality refers to a person’s whole
psychological system rather than looking at
parts of the person.
 Personality traits are relatively stable
characteristics that are exhibited in a large
number of situations.
 However, there are several human factors
that are not personality traits.

4. Main influential factors
 Heredity
 Environment

5. Big five

6. Big five and organizational behavior
 Conscientiousness has been an important
predictor of job knowledge and job performance
for variety of occupations.
 Among personality dimensions,
conscientiousness has been the only predictor of
organizational citizenship behavior.
 Extroversion has been the predictor of job
performance for occupations which need high
level of social interaction such as sales positions.

7. Type A and Type B personality
 Type A’s: always walking and eating
rapidly; feel impatient, strive to think or
do things at once; cannot cope with
leisure time; obsessed with measuring
their successes, quantity and speed.
 Type B’s: patient; feel no need to discuss
their successes; can relax without guilt.

8. Attribution theory (Weiner)
 The main assumption of this theory is
that when we observe a behavior, we
attempt to identify its causes, which is
called attribution.

9. Dimension of attribution
2. Locus of control: Internal (e.g., effort, ability) or
external (chance, luck, destiny, powerful people);
4. Stability: whether causes change over time or not;
6. Controllability: contrasts causes one can control, such
as skill/efficacy, from causes one cannot control,
such as aptitude, mood, others' actions, and luck.

10. Attribution theory (continued)
 Research has shown that people who tend to use
internal attribution are more likely to put effort
persistently into their activities and to be
responsible for their actions than people with
external attribution.
 When failure is attributed to controllable events,
additional effort can be expected in the future. In
contrast, when failure is attributed to
uncontrollable events, future effort will diminish.

11. "God grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change, the courage
to change the things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference"

12. Attribution errors
 Self-serving bias:
A tendency to attribute our own successes to
internal factors and our failure to external
factors
 Fundamental attribution error:
A tendency to underestimate the external
factors and overestimate internal factors
when making judgment about other people

13. Personality-role fit
Personality Organizational roles
Organizational behavior

14. Example
 Please have a look at the following link
and identify personality traits that have
been identified for some specific jobs.
www.resourceassociates.com

15. Extra activities
 Please assess your personality using the
scales provided in the self-assessment
library CD.
 Think about different jobs that might be
consistent with your personality.

16. Reading
 Please read page 98 to 124 of the text
book.

17. Assignment 4
 Interview with 4 individuals from three
different organizations and identify factors that
impact their work motivation.
 Submit a report in minimum 2000 words
including your interview questions,
demographic variables of interviewees, the
factors, explanations, supporting quotes, and
theories that possibly explain their work
motivation.