Analysis
Human beings possess different personalities that guide their conducts and motivations in life. An individual personality is a set of unique characters that allows one to align with certain behaviors. People acquire different characters from various sources such as one’s family and the society that the individual is exposed to as he grows. A person personality combines a set of thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors that significantly affect their way of life and the reactions to different situations. These distinct characteristic differentiate people from one another and project how different people will behave and responds to a variety of situations in their daily lives. Personality is the wholeness of a person’s behavior. Thus, an individual personality can be used to gauge his behavior in work and the possible performance in the assigned tasks. People’s attitudes and behaviors play a vital role in the workplace and determine the success or failure in the responsibilities entrusted to them. There exist a direct relationship between employees’ dispositions and organization behavior. Various scholars highlight the Big Five personality structure as the dimensions that capture all personalities. The study seeks to analyze how personality affects important organization behavior criteria such as employee job performance, job involvement and motivation, work attitudes, stress, coping and adaptability and counterproductive behaviors. The study will outline why it is important to match people personalities to jobs.
The success of business objectives depends on the productiveness of the human power which is guided by the people’s personalities. According to Judge, Klinger, Simon and Yang (2008), extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience and agreeableness personalities have a positive association to work performance while neuroticism negatively relates to job performance. Extroverts’ display optimism in the activities and duties they engage in at work. Extroverts are determined, confident and emotionally committed to work (Hogan and Holland 2003). The emotional stability of extroverts allows them to engage in tasks to deliver high-quality performance as compared to people with emotional variations. The determination, commitment and the optimism displayed by extraversion personalities drive them to an extra mile to achieve what makes them happy. For example, a sales person with extrovert personality will enjoy relating with people and, hence, high performance. Conscientiousness people deliver high-quality work and indulge in the assigned tasks enthusiastically guided by the need to attain the targets. Conscientiousness personalities are resulted oriented, hard workers, great planners and engage in self-control in pursuit of the best performance (Awadh and Ismail 2012). Being responsible and committed to achieving the set targets elicits persistent and creative ways of defeating the challenges and deliver. For example, an employee in the research industry will persist and commit in data collection irrespective of field challenges to deliver the data. Therefore, conscientiousness traits reflect the ability to provide high job performance. However, conscientiousness personalities are susceptible to workaholic and may reduce the productivity over time. Guay et al.(2013) note that people with conscientiousness disposition may suffer fatigue, hence, low-quality performance.
Job Performance
Employees’ dispositions play a great role in actively engaging in the job and develop morale to remain in the organization. According to Awadh and Ismail (2012), conscientiousness personality correlates positively to work motivation while neuroticism records a high negative correlation with job motivation. People with Conscientious personality are focused on achieving the best results in their work. The urge to perform motivates them to remain in the job and pursue success. Conscientious people keep looking for opportunities to excel at work (Judge, Klinger, Simon and Yang 2008). Thus, the need to get results gives them the motivation to hold on and, this gives the right results that translate to job satisfaction. For example, a conscientious person in the marketing department will derive motivation to work from the need to create efficient and working marketing strategies for his organization. Additionally, extroverts will be motivated by the nature of their job. Extroverts are talkative, sociable and, enjoy a work environment that encourages constant interactions. Hence, matching an extrovert to a job that requires interactions will give him happy and motivated to be in the workplace. For example, having an extrovert employee in customer relations desk will allow him to regularly interact with clients and be involved in the job compared to introverts. A neurotic person will lack job motivation as he is susceptible to work stress, moody, temperamental and difficult in adjusting emotions. Work motivation results from a fulfilling workplace (Furnham 2005). Thus, placing a neurotic person in stressing environment will demotivate him.
Behaviors such as organizational commitment, absenteeism, job involvement and organizational citizenship are guided by the personalities of the workers. Employees’ personalities relate to organizational commitment such as affective, continuance and normative commitment (Judge, Klinger, Simon and Yang 2008). Organizational commitment results in job satisfaction for employees. Extraversion personalities will have the strongest commitment to the organization when they have a perfect job match. Extroverts are emotionally committed and feel the obligation to remain in the organization (Abdullah, Omar and Rashid 2013). Matching the extroverts to a job will lead to happy engagement and satisfaction that will elicit commitment to the organization. On the other hand, placing an extrovert in an environment that isolates him from people will demotivate him, cause work absenteeism and brings the need to withdraw from the organization. For example, placing an extrovert in a library section in an organization will isolate him from what he loves and eventual turnover. Additionally, neurotic personality affects the work attitudes and may lead to one quitting the job or frequently missing at work. According to Awadh and Ismail (2012), neuroticism personalities subscribe to continuance commitment where they evaluate the benefit and the cost of being in the organization. Placing a neurotic person in a stressing environment full of conflict will diminish chances of organization commitment and job satisfaction. Conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability personalities have positive relations to organizational citizenship behavior (Leephaijaroen 2016). Thus, matching the characters will the right job will elicit admirable attitudes and behaviors.
Job Involvement and Work Motivation
Different disposition determines how employees’ contract and deal with work stress. Personality influences stress proneness and coping strategies (Ahmad, Ather and Hussain 2014). Neurotic personalities are highly irritable and temperamental with a high tendency of getting into conflicts with co-workers. Hence, they are more susceptible to work stress. Bakker, Demerouti and Lieke (2012) note that neurotic personalities are highly affected by work stress and are unable to deal with the depression and, this detach them from work. Employees’ with neurotic personality are prone to stress from things such as workload, long working hours and tasks that demand skills such as technical expertise and teamwork. Thus, placing a neurotic person in a demanding environment will expose him to stress and lacks the ability to adapt to the stressing situations. For example, putting a neurotic person in a media industry that requires a lot of working hours and regular orders from editors will put him under stress and may opt to quit the industry. On the contrary, people low on neuroticism will be able to take complex and stressful task with ease and cope with every situation. Extrovert adapts quickly and with ease to new work conditions and environments. The traits allow them to deal with handle work stress better and fast. According to Ciroka (2014), flexibility and adaptability characters help boost the love for the new job and create room for success and satisfaction. Being able to transit with ease help extroverts avoid work stress or cope with the stressors very fast.
Personalities are the key drivers of human conduct and guide the practices of employees and, could lead to counterproductive behaviors such as defiance, absence or theft at work. Emotional stability, agreeableness and conscientiousness personalities have a low likelihood of engaging in counterproductive work behavior (Kozako, Safin and Rahim 2013). Thus, personalities that are confident, cooperative, compassionate, discipline and seek to achieve do not engage in behaviors that threaten the welfare of colleagues and the entire organization. For example, a person with agreeable personality will not steal organization properties as he is compassionate withy the organization performances. However, neuroticism and open to experience personality are likely to engage in deviance. According to Mount, Ilies and Johnson (2006), neurotic and open to experience personality experience emotion exhaustion that leads to counterproductive behavior. Thus, peoples’ personalities would lead them to engage in behaviors that may work for the organization or threatens the existence of the company.
Job Attitudes
Conclusion
Consequently, there is need to match peoples’ personality to jobs to ensure support to organizational behavior. The study has found out that different dispositions have positive and negative impacts on the various organization behaviors. The study has examined the impact of the Big Five Personality dimension on organizational behavior criteria of job performance, work motivation and job involvement, work attitudes, stress, coping and adaptability and counterproductive work behavior. The study has found out that people high on extraversion, conscientiousness, open to experience and agreeableness would deliver high performance in their jobs while neuroticism affects job performance negatively. Conscientious and extroverts score highly on work motivation and job involvement, work attitude and stress, coping and adaptability while neurotic people scores negatively. Agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness scores have a low likelihood of engaging in counterproductive behavior compared to open to experience and neuroticism personalities. Thus, managers should strive to match personalities to job to instill good organization behavior to employees. The manager should use the personality test during recruitment selection process to ensure the best personality fit for the job. The conduct will allow the managers to tap and retain employees with the ability to handle challenging and changing work environments. The best personality fit will provide the organization with high performance and lead to the success of the organization goals.
References
Abdullah, I., Omar, R. and Rashid, Y., 2013. Effect of Personality on Organizational Commitment and Employees’ Performance: Empirical Evidence from Banking Sector of Pakistan. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 17(6), pp.761-768.
Ahmad, J., Ather, M.R. and Hussain, M., 2014. Impact of Big Five Personality Traits on Job Performance (Organizational Commitment as a Mediator). In Management Knowledge and Learning, International Conference.
Awadh, A.M. and Ismail, W.K.W., 2012. The impact of personality traits and employee work-related attitudes on employee performance with the moderating effect of organizational culture: the case of Saudi Arabia. Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 1(10), pp.108-127.
Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E. and Lieke, L., 2012. Work engagement, performance, and active learning: The role of conscientiousness. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(2), pp.555-564.
Ciroka, N., 2014. CEO’S Personality and their Impact on an Organizational Performance. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 10(34).
Furnham, A., 2005. The psychology of behaviour at work: The individual in the organization. Psychology Press.
Guay et al. 2013. The interactive effect of conscientiousness and agreeableness on job performance dimensions in South Korea. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 21(2), pp.233-238.
Hogan, J. and Holland, B., 2003. Using theory to evaluate personality and job-performance relations: a socioanalytic perspective. Journal of applied psychology 88(1), pp. 100-112
Judge, T.A., Klinger, R., Simon, L.S. and Yang, I.W.F., 2008. The contributions of personality to organizational behavior and psychology: Findings, criticisms, and future research directions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(5), pp.1982-2000.
Kozako, I.N.A.M.F., Safin, S.Z. and Rahim, A.R.A., 2013. The relationship of big five personality traits on counterproductive work behaviour among hotel employees: An exploratory study. Procedia Economics and Finance, 7, pp.181-187.
Leephaijaroen, S., 2016. Effects of the big-five personality traits and organizational commitments on organizational citizenship behavior of support staff at Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, Thailand. Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences, 37(2), pp.104-111.
Mount, M., Ilies, R. and Johnson, E., 2006. Relationship of personality traits and counterproductive work behaviors: The mediating effects of job satisfaction. Personnel psychology, 59(3), pp.591-622.
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