Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB.
Although previous Big Five traits have proven highly relevant to OB, they do not cover the entire range of traits that can describe someone’s personality. Here we will take a look at other, more specific attributes that are powerful predictors of behavior in organizations.
Core Self-Evaluation
People who have positive core self-evaluation like themselves and see themselves as effective, capable and in control of their environment. On the contrary side, those with negative core self-evaluations tend to dislike themselves, question their capabilities and view themselves as powerless over their environment.
So what about job performance? People with positive core self-evaluations perform better than others because they set more ambitious goals, are more committed to their goals and persist longer in attempting to reach these goals.
Machiavellianism
Named after Niccolo Machiavelli who wrote in the sixteenth century on who to use and gain power, the term is often abbreviated Mach.
An individual high in Mach is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance and believes ends can justify means. “If it works, use it” is consistent with a high-Mach perspective. People with high-Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less and persuade others more than low-Machs. Yet high-Machs outcomes are moderated by situational factors.
High-Machs flourish;
When they interact face to face with others rather than indirectly
When the situation has a minimal number of rules and regulations, allowing latitude for improvisation
When emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning, distracts low-Machs
Thus, whether high-Machs make good employees depend on the type of job.
Narcissism
In psychology, narcissism describes a person who has a grandiose sense of self-importance, requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement and is arrogant.
A study found that although narcissists thought they were better leaders than their colleagues, their supervisors actually rated them as worse.
Because narcissists often want to gain the admiration of others and receive affirmation of their superiority, they tend to “take down” those who threaten them and treating others as if they were inferior. Narcissists tend to be selfish and exploitative and believe others exist for their benefit.
Self-Monitoring
Refers to an individuals ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors. Persons high in self-monitoring show considerable adaptability in adjusting their behavior to external situational factors. They are highly sensitive to external cues and can behave differently in different situations. On the opposite side, people with low self-monitoring cannot disguise themselves in that way. They tend to display their true dispositions and attitudes in every situation; hence there is high behavioral consistency between who they are and what they do.
Risk Taking
People differ in their willingness to take chances. For example, this quality that affects how much time and information managers need to make a decision. In a study of 79 managers, high risk-taking managers made more rapid decisions and used less information than the low risk-taking ones. Interestingly, decision accuracy was the same for both groups.
A high risk-taking propensity may lead to more effective performance for a stock trader in a brokerage form because that type of job demands rapid decision making. On the other hand, a willingness to take risks might prove a major obstacle to an accountant who performs auditing services. The latter job might be better suited for someone with a low risk-taking propensity.
Type A Personality
Take a moment to think about your friends, do you have that friend who is extra competitive and often seem to experience a sense of time urgency? This friend is probably a Type A Personality. These persons are “aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and (if required to do so) against the opposing efforts of other things or persons.”
Here we have some characteristics that are common for Type A personalities:
Are always moving, walking and eating rapidly
Feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place
Strive to think or do two or more things at once
Cannot cope with leisure time
Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much of everything they acquire
The Type B is the exact opposite, “rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly increasing number of things or participate in an endless growing series of events in an ever-decreasing amount of time.” Type B never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience, can relax without guilt and so on..
Type A’s are fast workers because they emphasize quantity over quality. In managerial positions, they demonstrate their competitiveness by working long hours and, not infrequently, making poor decisions to new problems.
Proactive Personality
Those with a proactive personality identify opportunities, show initiative, take action and preserve until meaningful change occurs (compared to others who passively react to situations). Proactives create positive change in their environment, regardless of, or even in spite of, constraints or obstacles.
Other actions of proactives can be positive or negative depending on the organization and the situation. Proactives are more likely to challenge the status quo or voice their displeasure when situations are not to their liking. As individuals, proactives are more likely than others to achieve career success. They select, create and influence work situations in their favor.