A presentation on Personality,attitude and job satisfaction.Organisational behavior.

2. personality
• Definition
• The relativity enduring individual traits and dispositions
that form a pattern distinguishing one person from all
others
• Relatively enduring - This implies consistent behaviour
across situations over time
•
• Personality in the context of OB means
• “How people affect others and how they understand
and view themselves and personal situation
interaction”
•

3.  How people affect others
 This depend on their external appearance (height,
weight, gender, facial features, colour, other physical
aspects) and traits
 In terms of external appearance – tall workers have a
different impact on people than short workers
 Personality is also influence by hereditary facts
(physiological/biological factors

4. • How they understand and view themselves
– People’s attempt to understand themselves is called self
concept. This is the personality view from within.
– Self concept is seen in self esteem – self esteem is individuals
self perceived competence and self image
• Person-situation interaction
• This explain that each situation is different and each
person is different
• Personality will be different in different situations and
different persons
•
•

5. Determinant of personality
• 1. Heredity
• Personality is determined at conception by each
individual’s unique complements of genes.
• This perspective holds that personality traits such as
temperament and sociability are determined in much
the same way as hair colour or facial features.
• This is supported by the study of identical twins that were
separated at birth that showed that they share common traits
even if they were raised in different environments

6. • 2. Environmental argument
• Environmentalists content that the results of
experience can shape and alter an individual’s
personality.
– For example, whether an individual is lethargic or
industrious would be determined by whether she was
rewarded or punished by parents, teachers or friends for
displaying related behaviours in the past.
– If the notion of work ethics was ingrained in an individual
at early age and she repeatedly encountered situation in
which hard work paid off, she would be inclined to
espouse values that support work ethics

7. • 3. Culture
• The culture one is exposed to can influence personality.
Personality traits of westerners are often distinct form traits
of Africans
• 4. The birth order – whether first or last born
• Some studies show firstborns as more dependant, more
predictable, more rational, more orderly, less likely to
define authority, are more ambitious.
• This is said to be because firstborns are generally treated
differently by parents. They tend to receive attention at first
but are then expected to behaviour more responsibly in
looking after your children

8. PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
• Personality development consist of a continuous
process and the sequence is based largely on learning
opportunities available and the socialization process
• Socialization process
• This is the role played by other relevant persons,
groups, and organisations to continuously impact and
influence a person’s personality

9. • Socialization
– starts with initial contact between a mother and her new
infant.
– After that there are members of the immediate family
(father, brothers and sisters), close relatives and family
friends,
– then after that their a peers and school friends and
– later there are members of work ground, friends
– and last the organisation

10. Organisation socialization
techniques
• Organisation itself can contribute to socialization through :
• A process of learning those values, norms and behaviour
patterns that, from the organisation and work group points
of view are necessarily or any new organisation member to
learn
• Acceptable characteristics of organizational socialization of
employees
– Change of attitudes, values and behaviours
– Continuity of socialization over time
– Adjustment to new jobs, work groups, and organizational
practices
– Mutual influence between new recruit and their managers
– Criticality of their early socialization period

11. Specific techniques for socializing
include….
1. Use of mentors and role models
2. Provision of relevant orientation and training
programs
3. Provision of timely and consistent feedback
4. Developing a reward system
5. Developing a career path plan
•

12. • Specific steps that can lead to successful
organizational socialization would include the
following:
1. Provide a challenging first job
2. Provide relevant training
3. Provide timely and consistent feedback
4. Select a good first supervisor to be in charge of
socialization
5. Design a relaxed orientation programme
6. Place new recruits in work groups with high morale

13. THE “BIG FIVE” PERSONALITY
TRAITS
• An analysis of all the many personality traits has
found five core personality traits.
• These are called the Five Factor Model (FFM) or in the
fired of OB and HRM, the “Big Five”.
• These traits have held up as accounting for personality
in much analysis over years and even across cultures
• Accumulated research shows that these five best
predict performance in the work place and are related
to performance motivation

14. Core traits Descriptive characteristics of high scorers
conscientiousness Dependable, hardworking, organized, self
disciplined, persistence, responsible, sets high
standards, have high performance expectation
Emotional stability Calm, score, happy, unworried, can manage
stressful situations
Agreeableness Cooperative, warm, caring, good natured,
courteous, trusting, handle conflict and
customers well
extraversion Sociable, outgoing, talkative, assertive
Openness to
experience
Curious, intelligent, creative, cultured,
artistically sensitive, flexible, imaginative

15. Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Internal External
I control what
happens to me!
Locus of Control
People and
circumstances control
my fate!

16. Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Self-Efficacy - belief and expectations about one’s
ability to accomplish a specific task effectively
Sources of self-efficacy
 Prior experiences
 Behavior models (observing success)
 Persuasion
 Assessment of current physical & emotional
capabilities

17. Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Self - Esteem
Feelings of Self Worth
Success tends
to increase
self-esteem
Failure tends
to decrease
self-esteem

18. Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Self - Monitoring
Behavior based on cues from people & situations
 High self monitors
 flexible: adjust
behavior according to
the situation and the
behavior of others
 can appear
unpredictable &
inconsistent
 Low self monitors
 act from internal states
rather than from
situational cues
 show consistency
 less likely to respond to
work group norms or
supervisory feedback

19. Personality Characteristics
in Organizations
Positive Affect - An individual’s tendency
to accentuate the positive aspects of
oneself, other people, and the world in
general
Negative Affect - An individual’s tendency
to accentuate the negative aspects of
oneself, other people, and the world in
general

20. THE NATURE AND DIMENSION OF
ATTITUDES
Difference between personality and attitudes
• Personality usually is thought of as the whole person, whereas
attitude many be thought of as making up personality
•
• The term attitude is frequently used in describing people and
explaining their behaviour. For example “he has a poor attitude’
“I like her attitude” “our workers turn out poor quality products
because they have poor attitude”
•
• More precisely, an attitude can be defined as a persistent
tendency to feel and behave in a particular way towards some
objects. For example, George does not like working the night
shift. He has a negative attitude towards his work assignments

21. Attitude can be characterized in
three ways….
1. They tend to persist unless something is done to
change them. For example if George is transferred to
the day shift, his attitude man become positive
2. Secondly, attitudes can fall anywhere along the
continuum form very favourable to very unfavorable.
If he is transferred to the day shift, his attitude may
change to highly favourable
3. Thirdly, attitudes are directed towards some object
about which a person has a feelings (sometimes
called “effects”) and beliefs. In Georges case this is
the work shift

22. Dimensions of attitudes
 These include:
 Basic components of attitudes,
 Antecedents
 Functions of attitude
 How attitude can be changed


23. Basic components
• Attitudes can be broken into three basic components:
– Emotional
– Informational
– Behavioral
•
• Emotional component
• This involves the persons feeling or effects – positive,
negative, or neutral – about an object
•

24. • Informational component
• Consist of the beliefs and information that the individual
has about the object.
• It makes no different whether or not this information is
empirically real or correct
• A supervisor many believe that two week of training is
necessary before a worker can effectively conduct a
particular process. In reality, the average worker may be
able to perform usefully after only four days of training. Yet
the information the supervisor is using (that two weeks is
necessary) is the key to his attitude about training

25. Behavioral component
• Consist of persons tendencies to behaviour in a
particular way towards an object. For example, the
supervisor in the preceding paragraph may assign two
weeks training to all her new employees
• NB: It is important to note that of all the three
components, only the behavioral can be directly
observed. Another person’s feelings (emotional
component) and beliefs (informational component)
cannot be seen. These two can only be inferred

26. FUNCTIONS OF ATTITUDES
• Attitudes can help predict work behaviour and also
should be an important consideration in hiring
• For example, if an attitude survey shows that workers
are upset by changes in the work rules and the next
week absenteeism begin to increase sharply;
management may conclude that a negative attitude
towards work rules led to increase in work
absenteeism

27. attitude
 Adjustment function
 Ego-defensive function
 Value – expression function
 Knowledge function

28. The adjustment functions
• Attitude often help people adjust to their work
environment.
• When employees are well treated, they are likely to
develop a positive attitude towards management and
the organisation
• When employees are berated and given minimal salary
increase, they are likely to develop a negative attitude
towards management and the organisation
• These attitudes help employees adjust to their
environment and are the basis for future behaviour

29. Ego-defensive function
• Attitudes help employees defend their self image.
• For example a manager whose decisions are continually
challenged by a younger subordinate manager may feel that the
latter is brash, cocky, amateur, or inexperienced. In truth, the
younger subordinates may be right in challenging the poor
decisions.
• On the other hand the older manager is not going to admit this
but will try to protect the e.g. by putting the blame on the other
party.
• As a result, the older manager will have a negative attitude
towards the younger manager.
• The same is undoubtedly true for the young manager, who will
feel the boss is not a doing good job.
• This attitude helps the young person protect the ego

30. The value-expressive function
• Attitudes provide people with a basis for expressive
their values
• For example, a manager who believes strongly in work
ethics will tend to voice attitudes towards specific
individuals or work practices as a means of reflecting
this value.
• He will say for example ‘you have got to worker harder’
of he expects people to work hard

31. Knowledge function
• Attitudes help supply standards and frames of reference that
allow people to organise and explain the work around them.
• For example, a union Organiser many have a negative attitude
towards management. This attitude many not be based on facts,
but it does help individual relate to management.
• As a result, everything the managers say is regarded by the union
organizer as nothing more than a pack of lies, a deliberate
distortion of the truth, or an attempt to manipulate the workers.
• Regardless of how accurate a person views of reality is, attitude
towards people, events, and objects help the individual make
sense of what is going on
•

32. CHANGING ATTITUDES
• Employee attitudes can be changed, and sometimes it
is the best interest of management to try and do so.
• E.g. if employees believe that management does not
care for them, management would like to change this
attitude.
• Some attitude change is difficult to accomplish
because of certain barriers
•

33. Barriers to changing attitudes
• There are two basic barriers that can prevent people from
changing attitude
• Prior commitment
– Occurs when people feel a commitment to a particular course
of action and are unwilling to change. Sometimes people even
follow a failing course of action because of prior commitment
• Insufficient information
– Some people do not see any reason for changing their
attitude. They do not see anything wrong with the current
attitude – unless the boss can show why negative attitude is
detrimental to something e.g. career progression

34. Some ways of overcoming barriers
to changing attitude…
Provide new information.
• This information can change a persons beliefs and in the process his or
her attitude e.g. provide information about the poor financial positions
of the company to union workers who are agitating for increases
Use of fear
• Some research has shown that fear can cause some people to change
their attitudes.
• However the degree of fear seems to be important to the final outcome.
• For example, if low levels of fear are used, people often ignore them. If
moderate levels of fear arousal are sued, people often become aware of
the situation and will change their attitudes. However, of high levels of
fear arousal are used, people often reject the massage because it is too
threatened and thus not believable

35. Some ways of overcoming barriers
to changing attitude…
• Resolve discrepancies
• This involves resolving discrepancies between attitude
and behaviour.
• Research shows that when job applicants have more
than one offer of employment and are forced to
choose, they often feel that their final choice many
have been a mistake.
• However, this mild conflict or dissonance does not
usually last very long – though consciously developing
negative attitudes towards companies not chosen over
time

36. Some ways of overcoming barriers
to changing attitude…
• Influence of friends or peers
• This is through persuasion by friends or peers. Following
what your colleagues are doing and have succeeded
• The co-opting approach
• This means taking people who are dissatisfied with a
situation and getting them involved in improving things.
E.g. co-opting employees in improving their benefits –
once they see how benefits are determining and that the
personnel are given the best benefits possible, then they
will change their attitude.
•

37. Definition
 Ones thinking, feeling and action tendencies ( that is ones
attitude) towards work is termed as job satisfaction
 job satisfaction focuses on employees attitude towards
their job
 a persons level of job satisfaction, just like all attitude is
influence by experiences
 Locke defines job satisfaction as involving cognitive,
affective and evaluative reactions or attitudes
 States that it is “ a pleasurable or positive emotional state
resulting form the appraisal of one job or experiences “

38.  Job satisfaction is result of employees’ perception of
how well their job provides those things that are
viewed as important

39. Dimensions of job satisfaction
1. Job satisfaction is an emotional response to job
situation - as a result it cannot be seen, it can only be
inferred
2. Job satisfaction is determined by how well outcomes
meet or exceed expectations - if organizational
participants feel that they are working harder than
others in a department but are receiving fewer
rewards, they will probably have a negative attitude
towards their work, their boss and /or coworkers –
they will be dissatisfied.

40.  3. Job satisfaction represent several related attitudes.
Toward:
 Work itself
 Pay
 Promotion opportunities
 Supervision
 Coworkers.
 These form the most important characteristics of a
job about which the employees have affective
responses

41.  The work itself – the extent to which the job provides the
individuals with interesting task, opportunities for learning
and the chance to accept responsibility
 Pay – the amount of financial remuneration that is
received and the degree to which this is view as equitable
is-a-vis that of others in the organisation
 Promotion opportunities – the chance for advancement
in the organisation
 Supervision – the abilities of the supervisor to provide
technical assistance and behaviour support
 Coworkers - the degree to which fellow workers are
technically proficient and socially supportive
 These would therefore be referred to as the factors which influence job satisfaction

42. Factors influencing job satisfaction
 The work itself
 Job characteristics and job complexity affects job
satisfaction ( characteristics here means variety of
skills, identity of task , significance of task, autonomy
of task and feedback

43. job characteristics
 Skill variety: The extent to which the job requires the
employee to draw form a number of different skills and
abilities as well as on a range of knowledge
 Task identity: Whether the job has an identifiable
beginning and end. How complete a module of work
does the employee perform

44.  Task significance: the importance of the task. It involves
the internal significance – how important is the task to
the organisation? And the external significance – how
proud are the employee to tell relatives, friends what
they do where they work
 Autonomy: Refers to job independence. How much
freedom and control do employees have, for their
schedule of work, decisions, determining the means to
accomplish objectives

45.  Feedback: refers to objective information about
progress and performance and can come form the job
itself or form supervisors or an information system

46. The job itself
 If creative requirement of the employee is met by a job
then they are more satisfied
 Interesting and challenging work increases job
satisfaction
 A job which has opportunities for career development
( not necessarily promotion increases job satisfaction

47.  Pay:
 Money helps people attain their basic needs and is also
instrumental in proving upper level basic needs. Employees
often see pay as a reflection of how management view their
contributions to the organisation
 Benefits are also important
 Promotion:
 studies show that employees who are promoted on the basis
of seniority often experience job satisfaction but not as much
as those who are promoted on the basis of performance
 Satisfaction also depend on the percentage increase in salary

48.  Supervision
 There seem to be two dimensions of supervisory styles that affect
job satisfaction :
 Employee –centeredness, which is measured by the degree to
which a supervisor takes a personal interest and care about
employees - it is manifested in ways such as:
 checking to see how well the employee is doing
 providing advice and assistance to individuals,
 communicating with the associate on a personal level as well as on
official levels
 Participation or influence – illustrated by managers who
allow their people to participate in decision that affect their own
jobs . In most cases , this approach leads to job higher
satisfaction

49.  Work groups
 The nature of work groups or teams will have an effect
on job satisfaction.
 Friendly, cooperative coworkers or team members are
modest source of job satisfaction to individual
employees
 The work groups serve as source of support , comfort,
advice and assistance to individual team members
 Studies show that groups requiring considerable
interdependent among members to get the job done
well will have a higher satisfaction

50.  Working conditions
 If working conditions are good (e.g. clean, attractive
surrounding) the person will find it easier to carry out
their jobs
 If work conditions are poor (e.g. hot, noisy
surrounding) personnel will find it difficult to get
things done

51. Job satisfaction and organizational
effectiveness
 If job satisfaction is high, will employees perform
better and the organisation be more effective?
 If job satisfaction is low, will there be a performance
problem and ineffectiveness?
 Do satisfied employees perform better than less
satisfied counterparts

52. Satisfaction and job performance
 There is definitely a relationship between job satisfaction
and performance, but the relationship/correlation in the
studies done shows a weak and moderate relationship
 There seem to be many other possible moderating variable
like reward ( if seen to be equitable ) that go with job
satisfaction and lead to greater performance effort
 Research evidence indicate that satisfaction may not
necessarily lead to individual performance improvement
but does lead to departmental and organizational level
improvement
 There is also a relationship between employee satisfaction
and performance outcomes such as customer satisfaction
and profitability