OBHR 101

Management of People at Work

Session 3 PERSONALITY & VALUES
Dr. Low Chin Heng
LKCSB Adjunct Faculty
[email protected]

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Check-In Question

How might people’s personality and values

affect their workplace behavior?

Image Source: Free photo from Canva.com

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Agenda
 Quick Recap – MARS Model of Individual Behavior and Results
 Personality – Five-Factor Model, MBTI and Dark Triad Traits
 Values – Schwartz’s Model of Individual Values
 Ethical and Cultural Values and Implications on Individual Behavior
 Administrative Matters

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MARS Model of Individual Behavior
Individual
characteristics Situational
factors
Personality Motivation Individual behavior
Values and results (BAR)

Self-concept
Perceptions Ability

Emotions &
attitudes
Role
Stress perceptions

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MARS Model of Individual Behavior
Individual
characteristic Situational
factors
Motivation Individual behavior
and results (BAR)

Personality Ability

Role
perceptions

• Individuals’ personalities may cause their motivation (direction, intensity, persistence)

• Individuals’ personalities may cause their use of certain abilities
• Individuals’ personalities may cause their role perceptions

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Personality in Organizations
Personality:
• Relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize a person,
along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics.
(‘Relatively enduring’ => certain patterns of thoughts, emotions and behaviors are displayed
more often than not)
• Bundle of characteristics that make people similar to or different from one another.
• Descriptor of people’s observable behavior, based on what they tend to say or do, or a bit of
both, e.g. “hardworking”, “kind”, “reflective”, “loud fashion sense”, “uncouth”.
Personality Traits
• Broad concepts that label those discernable behavioral tendencies.
• In other words, a personality trait is a clustering of internally-consistent behavioral
tendencies within a person, e.g. ‘Conscientiousness’ is a clustering of a person’s tendency to
be organized, dependable, goal-focused, thorough, disciplined, methodical and industrious.
• Take note of the word “tendency”! It says that a person only tends to/may behave a certain
way, it does NOT say that the person must behave a certain way. Correlation does not mean
causation (i.e. a must). A conscientious person tends to “do a lot” (correlation between
conscientiousness and “do a lot”  conscientiousness causes “do a lot”).
• Situations may increase or suppress individuals’ behavioral tendencies, e.g. ‘Extraversion’ is a
clustering of a person’s tendency to be outgoing, talkative, energetic, sociable and assertive.
But an extrovert may not talk and make noise that often in a library. The ‘library’ here is a
situation that suppresses the person’s extraversion. That is, people got common sense!

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What Determines Personality?

Nature
Nurture
Inborn Attitudes,
Culture, Social Norms, etc.
Temperament, etc.

• An individual’s personality (child), personality (teenager), personality (mature adult >30 yrs
old) and personality (later part of life) may be different. As the saying goes: “When I was a
child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became an
adult, I put away my childish ways.”
• But then, is an individual’s personality more attributable to heredity (nature) or
environment (nurture)?
• For our purposes, we’re more interested in the relatively stable periods of people’s
personalities, and the influence of those personalities on their behavior and outcomes
(Stable periods: Stages in life when an individual’s personality does not fluctuate much)

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Measuring Personality
How do we figure out an individual’s personality?
• Use personality trait tests (these tests are also called “instruments”).
• A range of means available – from rudimentary self-report surveys (e.g. online
individual questionnaires) to highly sophisticated automated video interviews
(AVIs).

Why do organizations bother with an individual’s personality traits?

• Inform managers’ hiring decisions (e.g. which candidate to call for 2nd interview).
• Forecast the best candidate for a job.
• Another data point for considering a candidate’s promotion, besides job
performance to date.
Image sources:
https://www.prialto.com/blog/i-took-the-big-five-personality-test.-the-answers-werent-surprising-but-were-helpful
https://www.indivizo.com/automated-video-interview

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 Personality Trait
Tests

Image Source: Free photo from Canva.com

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 Five-Factor Model of Personality (aka “Big Five Personality Model”)
Low High
• Organized
• Dependable
• Light-hearted
• Goal-focused
• Easy-going
• Less thorough (Less Conscientiousness •
•
Thorough
Disciplined
particular about details)
• Methodical
• Industrious

• Trusting
• Helpful
• Tough-minded
• Good-natured
• Objective and matter-of-
•
•
fact
More focused on own
Agreeableness •
Considerate
Tolerant
• Selfless (Mindful of others’ interests)
interests
• Generous
• Flexible

• Anxious
• Calm • Insecure
• Secure (Self-confident) Neuroticism • Self-conscious
• Poised (Less likely to throw • Depressed
temper when stressed) (Emotional Stability: Reversed Scale) • Temperamental (susceptible to
stress)

• Imaginative
• Creative (artistically sensitive)
• Conventional
• Unconventional
• Comfortable with the
• Curious
•
familiar
Preference for the tried and
Openness to Experience • Nonconforming (open to new
concepts)
tested
• Autonomous
• Aesthetically perceptive

• Preference for thoughtful • Outgoing

reflection (Draws energy • Talkative
from personal reflection on • Energetic

•
concepts/ideas)
Cautious (Reserved)
Extraversion • Preference for socializing (Draws
energy from people and things
• Quiet (Less interactive with around them)
others) • Assertive

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Extraversion (E) Introversion (I)
• Talkative Getting energy • Quiet
• Externally-focused • Internally-focused
• Assertive • Abstract

Sensing (S) Intuitive (N)

• Concrete Perceiving information • Imaginative
• Realistic • Future-focused
• Practical • Abstract

Thinking (T) Feeling (F)

• Logical Making decisions • Empathetic
• Objective • Caring
• Impersonal • Emotion-focused

Judging (J) Perceiving (P)

• Organized Orienting to the • Spontaneous
• Schedule-oriented external world • Adaptable
• Closure-focus • Opportunity-focus

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Comparing Five-Factor Model and Myer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• Let’s look at Five-Factor Personality Test and MBTI Test uploaded on eLearn: MPW >
Content > Session 3
• Let’s judge these Survey Test Instruments based on:
i. The extent of socially desirable responses (i.e. tendency for respondent to give
positive description of self regardless of truth) contained within;
ii. Their validity for predicting the respondent’s work performance (i.e. it’s measuring
what it’s supposed to measure); and
iii. Most importantly, the research evidence on their application at the workplace (i.e.
think “evidence-based management” about their organizational implications)
Socially Desirable Responses
Which survey would attract more socially desirable responses?
Sample survey items
Big Five: I insult people (1=disagree, 2=slightly disagree, 3=neutral, 4=slightly agree, 5=agree)
MBTI: I am almost never late for appointments (1=disagree, 2=slightly disagree, 3=neutral, 4=slightly agree, 5=agree)

Validity
Which survey would be a better predictor of the applicant’s job performance if employed?
Sample survey items
Big Five: I have a soft heart (1=disagree, 2=slightly disagree, 3=neutral, 4=slightly agree, 5=agree)
MBTI: I tend to sympathize with other people (1=disagree, 2=slightly disagree, 3=neutral, 4=slightly agree, 5=agree)

Research Evidence
Big Five enjoys much more research support on its reliability and predictive power at the workplace
(Source: McShane, S. L. and Von Glinow, M.A. Organizational Behavior: Emerging knowledge. Global
reality. 10th Edition. © 2024)

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While MBTI is popular, there are serious concerns about it…
• Forces individuals into one personality type or the other (e.g. ‘ISTJ’ and ‘ENFP’); that is,
it creates the risk of stereotyping people into categories.

• Limited reliability – Often yield different results at different times. The weirdest was a
person’s MBTI results are different for the same test taken at breakfast, lunch and
dinner .

• Difficult to interpret – Actually MBTI facets have varying degrees of importance and
separate meanings for certain combinations of facets (e.g. Both Person A and Person B
are ‘INTP’, but their observable behaviors may be remarkably different because of
minor differences in their ‘I’ and ‘T’ results).

• Individuals’ MBTI results tend to be unrelated to their job performance (not much
empirical evidence on MBTI’s predictive power with regard to individuals’ workplace
behavior).
Source: Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. (2017). Organizational behavior Global Edition (17th ed.). Essex: Pearson

Fun Fact
• In Singapore and South Korea, many youth use it as a first-cut assessment for dating compatibility,
and… just for fun!
Source: Michael, M.E. (2023, July 31). More Singaporean youth using online MBTI personality tests to learn about themselves. The
Straits Times https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/more-singaporean-youth-using-online-mbti-personality-tests-to-learn-about-
themselves

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Comparatively, Five-Factor Model seems to better predict individual behavior
at work, especially in these areas…

However, situational factors can moderate the predictions between individuals’ personality traits and
workplace behavior/ results:
• Higher score isn’t always better
• Specific traits may be better predictors than the overall factor for certain tasks, e.g. security industry
• Personality may not be static; it may change during a person’s transitional phases in life, 14 e.g.
singlehood to marriage
• Model doesn’t cover all personality, e.g. dark triad traits

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Practical Advice
Knowing Individuals’ Five-Factor Personality Traits

When it is not feasible to conduct a 50-question survey…

• Try using Five-Factor Personality Test (short form) uploaded on eLearn
• Work-in-progress form (so “try try” basis)
• Apply during conversations with colleagues and others

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Other Types of Personality Traits

The Dark Triad

Machiavellianism
• Strong motivation to get what one wants at the expense of others.
• Believe that deceit is natural and acceptable to achieve goals.
• Take pleasure in misleading, outwitting, controlling others.
• Seldom empathize with or trust coworkers.

Narcissism
• Obsessive belief in one’s own superiority, entitlement.
• Excessive need for attention.
• Intensely envious.

Psychopathy
• Social predators who may ruthlessly dominate and manipulate others.
• Wears a mask of psychopathy (i.e. possesses superficial charm, but are selfish
self-promoters).
• Engage in antisocial, impulsive, and often fraudulent thrill-seeking behavior.

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Dark Triad and Workplace Behavior
Dark triad individuals have been linked to various negative outcomes:
• Practice of organizational politics
• Serious white-collar crime activity
• Workplace aggression, bullying and poor decision making
(predicted by the individuals’ psychopathy)
• Ineffective team behaviors over the longer-term

Dark Triad has also been linked to various positive outcomes:

• Manipulative political skills somehow help deliver on
organization’s objectives
• Enable individuals to move to a more important position
• Achieve material gains (e.g. reach higher ranks and get more pay)

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 Values

Image Source: Free photo from Canva.com

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Values in the Workplace
Values: Stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of
action in different situations.
• Those beliefs tell us what is right and wrong, good and bad.
• They are thus normative and prescriptive; and influence our motivation, decisions and
actions in various situations about what we ought to do, especially when those
situations require tough decisions on our part.
• At the cross-roads of choosing what is conscionable (e.g. justice, righteousness, mercy,
honorable, compassion), values could even serve as a moral compass.
• When making choices, the options that are aligned to our values will appear more
attractive to us, i.e. those options’ valence (or relative attractiveness compared to the
other options) will be greater in our opinion. We thus choose those options with
greater valence. Values may cause our choice and downstream action.
• Values are learnt through socialization, e.g. from parents, friends, significant others,
organizations and societies.
Let’s also get these definitions straight:
Personal Values: Values held by an individual.
Organizational Values: Values shared by members of an organization (integral to the concept
of ‘organizational culture’).
Cultural Values: Values shared across a society (also called “societal values”, “national culture”,
“national cultural values”).

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What do Personal Values look like?
Schwartz’s Values Circumplex
Millions of values (quite exhaustive)
organized into 57 values (not shown in
diagram), then structured into 10
categories, then further divided into four
quadrants meaningfully. Phew! That’s a lot
more manageable :
• Openness to change
- Motivated to pursue innovative ways
• Conservation
- Motivated to preserve the status quo
• Self-enhancement
- Motivated by self-interest
• Self-transcendence
- Motivated to promote the welfare of
others and nature
Don’t have to memorize the components within (e.g. where to
place ‘conformity’, ‘hedonism’), BUT must know the meaning of
four quadrants, and how they work
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Values Held by a Person
Value System:
• Human Beings are not one-dimensional creatures
when it comes to values. Usually, a person can
hold multiple values close to his/her heart. Example:
• An individual arranges values into a value system,
VALUE SYSTEM
i.e. a hierarchy of preferences about what is right

Descending Priority
and wrong, good and bad. Help people
• However, we are not mindful of our values in the Honor authoritative
value system all the time; on any normal day, our figure
values may merely be abstract ideas. BUT when
we encounter specific situations requiring our Enjoy music
choice, we are reminded of our values and we Pursue material
apply them to make the choice. success
• Especially at critical junctures of tough decisions, Go for self-
we consult our value system, and think and act improvement
based on our top-priority value (i.e. top value in
our value system).
• This “value->decision->choice” flow involves
cognition.

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MARS Model of Individual Behavior
Individual
Situational
characteristic
factors
Situational
A
Values Motivation
factors

Individual
Ability behavior and
B results (BAR)

Role
perceptions

• Effect (A): Very strong correlation, as good as a cause (i.e. may -> must)
• Effect (B): Individuals’ values may cause their behavior downstream

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Cultural Values May Interact with Our
Personal Values to Explain Our Behavior
Cultural Values
• Individualism and Collectivism
• Power Distance
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Achievement-Nurturing Orientation

S: Cultural Values

Values M
Behavior and
A
Results
R

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Individualism
The degree to which people value Example:
personal freedom, self-sufficiency,
control over their lives, and being
appreciated for unique qualities.

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Collectivism
The degree to which people value Example:
their group membership and
harmonious relationships within the
group.

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Power Distance

High power distance. Example:

• Value obedience to authority.
• Accept superiors’ commands.
• Prefer formal rules and authority
to resolve conflicts.
Low power distance.
• Expect relatively equal power
sharing.
• View relationship with boss as
interdependence, not
dependence.

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Uncertainty Avoidance
High uncertainty avoidance (U.A.): Example:
• Feel threatened by ambiguity
and uncertainty.
• Value structured situations and
direct communication.

Low U.A.:
• Tolerate ambiguity and
uncertainty.

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Achievement–Nurturing

High achievement orientation: Example:

• Assertiveness.
• Competitiveness.
• Materialism.

High nurturing orientation:

• Value relationships.
• Focus on human interaction.

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Values in Team and Organizational Setting
Values Congruence: Similarity of a person’s values hierarchy to another
source (e.g. similarity between a person and her team’s values hierarchy)
Importance of values congruence
• Team values congruence —> higher team cohesion and performance
• Person–organization values congruence —> higher job satisfaction,
loyalty, and organizational citizenship, lower stress and turnover

Limitations to the benefits brought about by values congruence

• Insufficient diversity — Because everyone values almost the same things,
there is a lack of diversity and organizational/team creativity is limited in
that sense.
• Risk of forming a corporate cult — even worse, there could be rampant
group think in teams/organization.

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Ethical Values and Behavior
Ethics: Study of moral principles and values, whether actions are right or wrong, outcomes
are good or bad.

Considerations about Ethical Conduct

• Moral intensity – The degree to which a situation demands the application of ethical
principles, if a person were to make decisions about that situation.
• The moral intensity of a situation increases with:
a) The severity (good or bad) of the decision’s consequences.
b) The probability that the decision will have good or bad consequences.
c) The number of people who will experience the decision’s good or bad consequences.
d) The level of agreement by others that the decision has good or bad consequences.

• Moral sensitivity – The person’s ability to detect a moral dilemma and estimate its
relative importance (i.e. estimate its moral intensity).
• When we judge a person’s moral sensitivity, we may also see that person’s moral
sensitivity as his/her role perception (i.e. whether the person understands his/her job
duty to exercise moral sensitivity in the situation).
From an objective point of view, knowing the moral intensity of a situation and the amount
of moral sensitivity a person has in that situation helps us to judge the extent of that
person’s culpability when fault, wrong or blame emerges from that situation.

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Four Ethical Principles
1. Utilitarianism:
• Greatest good for the greatest number.
• Choose option producing highest satisfaction to those affected.
• Everything boils down to cost-benefit analysis (oh, so cold )

2. Individual Rights:
• Everyone has same natural rights (e.g. freedom of speech, right to physical security, right
for fair trial).
• Nice principle… but what happens when the individuals rights of one group of people
conflict with the individual rights of another group?

3. Distributive Justice:
• Benefits and burdens should be the same (based on equality, everyone gets the same).
• Or, benefits and burdens should be proportional (based on equity, go by one’s contribution
– do more, earn more; do less, earn less).
• Or, benefits and burdens should be proportional (based on need, more benefits to those
who need them).
• Problem: how to agree on the value of benefits, burdens, contribution or need.

4. Ethic of Care:
• Everyone has moral obligation to help others within one’s relational sphere to grow and
self-actualize.
• But how to ensure fairness of benefits provided to different relational spheres?

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Knowing Ethics Does Not Guarantee Doing Ethics
Situational factors – External forces to act contrary to moral principles and
values (there could be factors beyond people’s control that dissuade them
from acting morally even when they sense the ethical issues involved).
People with high moral sensitivity may still make morally wrong choices
and do morally wrong things!

S: Bad influences of
the world, harsh
realities of life

Motivation

Ability Behavior and

(Moral Sensitivity) Results

Role Perception
(Moral Sensitivity)

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Making Sense of One’s Values
Marvel at this!
• Our values are largely influenced by socialization (i.e. we’ve learnt them from our social
environment).
• In the social environment, there are good values, bad values, values that look good but
are actually bad, values that are hard to practice but are actually good.
• So where is the wisdom for making tough choices at the workplace or in life?
• We must find truly good values; let each be fully convinced in one’s own mind whatever
is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable – hold fast to such excellent and praiseworthy things as most
important personal values.
• Our choices and actions based on such good values will then be right.

S: Constraints/ Cues?
Values
M
Personality Behavior and
A Results
R
Fun Fact
Personality is only a correlate of a person’s behavior (i.e. it’s just a description of tendency).
Value explain the person’s behavior much better (because it’s his/her prescriptive reasoning).
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Check-Out Questions

MARS Model of Individual Behavior

Individual
characteristics Situational
factors
Personality Motivation Individual behavior
Values and results (BAR)

Self-concept
Perceptions Ability

Emotions &
attitudes
Role
Stress perceptions

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MPW Coverage: The Individual & The Team &
Leadership Organization

Personality & Values Team Dynamics

We are here! [Ch 2] [Ch 8]

Perception, Attribution
& Decision Making Organizational Culture
[Ch 3 & 7 ] [Ch 14]
E-Learning Week

Introduction Emotions, Attitudes &

to OB OB as a Science Stress
[Ch 1] [Ch 4] Organizational Change
[Ch 1] [Ch 15]

Leadership in
Organizational Contexts
[Ch 12] HR Policies &
Practices
Employee Motivation & [Contents beyond
Applied Performance recommended textbook
Practices will be provided]
[Ch 5 & 6]

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 Administrative Matters

Image Source: Free photo from Canva.com

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Advisory
Group Project (Presentation in Week 13) – Interview Study
On the selection of workplace phenomenon for the interview
 Need not wait till you have been taught everything, go with the group’s
curiosity about certain observations.
 Look at the experiences of your group members:
- Has any member come across anyone with an interesting workplace
phenomenon to share?
- What is the group’s sensing of the OB topic(s) that might be relevant to the
phenomenon?
- Split the job of reading up on the OB topics first, then share within the
group as the project progresses.
Feel free to arrange for consultation session to discuss your ideas, interview
questions and project progress with prof.
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