UNIVERSITY OF MAKATI

J. P. Rizal Ext., West Rembo, Makati City

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL SCIENCE
Department of Office Management
Course Title Title

Module No. 3 Personality, Ability, Attitudes and

Values

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN
ORGANIZATION

Uploaded by:
Dr. Analyn C. Dionaldo

Timeframe: How long the student should take this module? Students are required
to complete all the activities, assignments and assessment of this
module in one or two weeks.
How to Complete this Students are required to do the following to complete this module:
module? 1. Complete the reading assignment on given lecture.
2. Watch the video presentation.
3. Participate in this week’s discussion about the topic and video
they have seen.
4. Submit assignments after the discussions on the topic.
5. Take chapter long quiz.

Teaching Strategies PowerPoint presentation, video presentation, assignments, chapter

long quiz, video conferencing,
INTRODUCTION

Every workplace behavior cannot be understood without considering the concepts or

personality, abilities, attitudes and values are important individual characteristics that can
influence work performance. They are also important concepts for predicting and changing
behavior in the organizational settings. Managers who overlook these variables do
themselves, their employees and their organizations a disservice.
LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:

1. Identify and describe personality traits in the workplace

2. Identify the abilities that are used to categorize performers in the organization
3. Discuss attitudes, its formation and how to change it
4. Identify different values found across culture
 PERSONALITY, ABILITY, ATTITUDES AND VALUES

Personality at Work

• Personality encompasses the relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioral patterns
that have been formed significantly by genetic and environmental factors which have
given him identity.
• Understanding someone’s personality offers clues about how that person is expected to
act and feel in a variety of situations.
• Having this knowledge is a practical for placing people in the right jobs in the organization.
• Most experts agree that personality is both a product of nature and nurture.
• Nature means the genetic or hereditary origin of the person inherited from the mother
and father of the individual.
• Nurture consists of the person’s socialization, life experiences, and other forms of
interaction in the environment. Family relationship with parents, siblings and other family
members is a significant force in nurture.

Five Personality Traits

Traits are recurring regularities or trends in peoples with acronym of CANOE.

CONTENT

1. Conscientiousness - refers to the number of goals on which the person focuses. People
who focus on few goals are organized, systematic, punctual, achievement oriented and
dependable. This reflects that they are accomplishment striving or a strong desire to
complete a task-related goals as a means of expressing personality.

 Conscientiousness is one personality trait consistently predicts how high a

person’s job performance will be, across a variety occupations and jobs. It is a
trait most valued by organizations.
 They are people with higher level of motivation to perform, higher retention, higher
attendance, and higher level of safety performance at work.
 Associated to career success and being satisfied with one’s career over time.
Good trait to posses for entrepreneurs.

2. Agreeableness is the person’s ability to get along with others. This cause the person to
be nice, tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind and warm. Agreeable people help others at
work consistently.
 Less likely to get revenge when other people treat them wrongly
 Create a fair environment when they are in leadership position.

3. Neuroticism refers to the degree to which a person is anxious, irritable, aggressive,

temperamental and moody. These people are likely to have emotional adjustment
problems, and experience stress and depression on habitual basis.
 Experience a number of problems at work
  Tend to experience relationship difficulties
 They have lower level of career success.
 If they achieve managerial jobs, they tend to create an unfair climate at work.

4. Openness mirrors a person’s rigidity of beliefs and range of interests. People with high
level of openness are original, intellectual, creative, and open to new ideas
 They are flexible and willing to learn new things.
 Highly motivated to study new skills, and they do well in training settings.
 Open-mindedness and quick to make adjustment to their new job.
 Highly adaptable to change
 More likely to start their own business.

5. Extraversion reflects an individual’s comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to

be outgoing, talkative and sociable. They are tend to be effective in jobs involving sales
and marketing.
 They are likely to be valuable as managers and they show inspirational leadership
behaviors.
 Introverts are less sociable, talkative and assertive. They are reluctant to begin
new relationship.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• In 1943, MBTI ( a personality test was developed by mother-daughter team by Isabel

Myers and Katherine Cook Briggs designed for learning not for employment selection
process.

1. Extraversion (E) - Introversion (I)

2. Sensing (S) - Intuition (I)
3. Thinking (T) - Feeling (F)
4. Judging (J) - Perceiving (P)

1. Extraversion (E) - Introversion (I) - is a way to describe how people respond and
interact with the world around them. Extroverts tend to be action-oriented , enjoy more
social interaction and feel keyed up after spending time with people.
Introverts are thought-oriented , enjoy deep and momentous social interactions and feel
revitalized after spending time alone.

2. Sensing (S) - Intuition (I)

This scale engages in looking how people collect information from the world around them. All
people expend some time sensing and intuiting depending on the situation.
 People who choose sensing are apt to pay more attention to reality, on facts & details
and in getting practical experience.
  People who favor intuition pay extra attention to things like patterns & impressions,
thinking about possibilities, visualizing the future & abstracts theories.

3. Thinking (T) - Feeling (F)

This scale focuses on how people formulate decisions depending on the information they
collected from their sensing or intuition functions.
 People who desire thinking tend to be consistent, rational and impersonal when
weighing a decision.
 People who prefer feeling are more expected to consider people and emotions when
concluding.

4. Judging (J) - Perceiving (P)

The final scale involves how people deal with the outside world.
 Judging favor structure and firm decisions.
 Perceiving people are more open, flexible and adaptable.
This scale aids illustrate whether a person is an extravert when taking in new information
(sensing & intuiting) or when he is making decisions (thinking & feeling)

Other Personality Traits in the Workplace

1. Proactive personality means a person’s preference to fix what is supposed as

erroneous, change the status que, and apply initiative to solve problems. Proactive
people take action to start significant change and get rid of the obstacles they
encounter along the way. They adjust to their latest jobs speedily for they comprehend
the political environment better and make more friends more quickly.
Proactive people are eager to learn and engage in many developmental activities to improve
their skills.

2. Machiavellianism describes behavior directed towards attaining power and controlling

the behavior of other people.
 Each person has its own degree of Machiavellianism. They are rational, non-emotional,
willing to accomplish their personal goals in life, place less concern on loyalty and
friendship and enjoy manipulating the behavior of other individuals.

3. Risk propensity is the degree of willingness of a person to take chances and create
risky decisions. A manager with high risk propensity is willig to experiment with new
ideas and many venture with new products. He could be a catalyst for innovation or fail
the organization if the risky decision proves to be a bad one.
 The organization’s environment is an important determinant of the probable results of
risk propensity.
 4. Creativity involves the ability to break away from the habit-bound way of thinking and
generate novel and useful ideas. Its produces innovation which is the lifeblood of a
growing number of successful organizations.
 It is a personality trait that must be promoted and expanded inside the organization by
offering employees opportunity and freedom to think unconditionally.

Ability

Ability is a person’s talent to perform a mental or physical task. It includes both the natural
aptitudes and the learned capabilities needed to productively finish a task.
Aptitudes are the natural talents that aid employees in learning specific task more speedily
ans execute better.
Learned capabilities are the skills and knowledge that a person currently has. They tend to
diminish over time when not in use.

The following abilities help to differentiate between higher and lower performers in the
workplace:
1. Mental ability
2. Emotional intelligence
3. Tacit knowledge
4. Physical ability

Types of Mental Ability

Mental ability is the acquisition and application of knowledge in solving problems.

1. Verbal ability refers to the ability to understand and express oral & written
communication quickly and accurately.
There are two abilities:
a. Oral comprehension is the ability to understand spoken words and sentences.
b. Written comprehension is the ability to understand written words and sentences,

2. Quantitative ability refers to the two types of mathematical abilities.

a) Numerical aptitude is the ability to perform basic mathematical operations quickly and
accurately
b) Numerical reasoning is the ability to analyze logical relationship and to recognize the
underlying principles underlying them.

3. Reasoning ability is the ability to analyze information so as to make valid judgements

on the basis of insights, rules and logic.
Four reasoning abilities:
a) Problem sentivity is the ability to sense that there is a problem at present or likely to be
one in the future.
b) Deductive reasoning is the ability to draw conclusion or make a choice that logically
follows from existing assumptions and data.

4. Spatial ability is the ability linked to visual and mental representation and manipulation
of objects and space.

Two types:
a) Spatial orientation is having good understanding of where one is relative to others
things in the environment.
b) Visualization is the ability to imagine three-dimensional forms in space and to be able to
manipulate them mentally.

5. Perceptual ability is the ability to perceive, understand, and recall pattern s of

information.
a) Speed and flexibility disclosure is the ability to pick out a pattern of information quickly
in the presence of distracting information even without all information present.
b) Perceptual speed is the ability to examine and compare numbers, letters and objects
quickly.

Emotional intelligence is the handling of relationship and interaction with each others.
Four basic components:
1. the ability to recognize and regulate our own emotions (e.g. hold our temper)
2. the ability to recognize and influence others’ emotions (e.g. to make them enthusiastic
about our ideas)
3. Self-motivation (e.g. to motivate oneself to work long hours and resist the temptation to
give up.
4. the ability to form effective long-term relationship with others.

Tacit knowledge also called informal knowledge is the unwritten, unspoken, and hidden vast
storehouse of work-related practical know-how that employees acquire based on his or her
emotions, experiences, insights, intuition, observation and internalized information.
Examples:
1. How to speak a language 6. Body language
2. Innovation 7. Intuition
3. Leadership 8. Humor
4. Aesthetic sense 9. Snowboarding
5. Emotional intelligence 10. Sales
Physical ability is performing job-related tasks requiring manual labor or physical skill.
Types of physical abilities:
1. Strength – refers to the degree to which the body exert effort force. (lift, push, pull
heavy objects)
2. Stamina – refers to the ability of the person’s lungs and circulatory system to work
efficiently while he is engaging in prolonged activity
3. Psychomotor – ability to manipulate and control objects.
4. Sensor ability – capability related to vision & hearing.

Attitudes in the Workplace

Attitude is a persistent mental state of readiness to feel and behave in a favorable or

unfavorable manner about a particular person, object or idea.

Three components of an attitude:

1. Affective – the emotional component of an attitude which includes the feelings of a
person about an object that could be positive, negative or neutral. For example: “I am
afraid of rats”.
2. Cognitive - components consists of person’s perception, beliefs and opinions about
something.
It refers to the thought processes highlighting rationality and logic.
For example: “I believe rats are dangerous”
3. Behavioral - is the tendency of a person to take action in a definite way toward
someone or something.
4. For Example: “I will avoid rats and scream if ever I see one.”

Two Important Attitudes in the Workplace

1. Job satisfaction is the degree of gratification or fulfillment of an employee in his work.

Personal factors like needs and aspirations determine are drivers of job satisfaction.
Organizational factors like relationship with co-workers & supervisors, working
conditions, work policies and compensation also affect job satisfaction.

2. Organizational commitment mirrors the identification and attachment of individual to the

organization. A highly committed employee would see himself as a true member of the
organization, would ignore negligible sources or dissatisfaction.

Change of Attitude

Managers are active in changing employee attitude using these techniques:

1. Persuasive communication is the use of television, radio and internet advertisements
to persuade people to change attitudes.
Four elements of persuasive communication:
a) communicator
 b) message
c) situation
d) target

Four elements of persuasive communication:

a) Communicator is the individual who embraces a particular attitude & desires to convince
others to share that attitude.
b) Message is the content intended to stimulate the change in other’s attitudes.
c) Situation is the surrounding in which the message is offered.
d) Target – he is a person whose attitude the communicator desires to change.

2. Cognitive dissonance is the uneasy feeling when an individual behaves in a way

inconsistent with existing attitude. This means that the behavior of a person should not
be contradictory with the attitudes that they hold.
For example: an individual smoking cigarette and knowing that smoking causes lung cancer
and heart disease but still do not stop it.

Values

Values refer to stable and evaluative life goals that people have, reflecting what is most
important to them. Values are founded during one’s life as a result of the collect of life
experiences and they are likely to be relatively constant.

Value attainment is one reason why people stay in the company, and when an organization
does not help them attain their values, they are more likely to decide to leave if they are
dissatisfied with the job itself.

Types of Values

1. Instrumental values define as specific methods of behavior. Instrumental values are

not an end goal, but rather provide the means by which an end goal is accomplished.
Instrumental values include:
a) Cheerfulness f) Capability
b) Ambition g) Courage
c) Love h) Politeness
d) Cleanliness i) Honesty
e) Self-control j) Obedience

2. Terminal values are the overall goals that people hope to achieve in their lifetime. This
include inner harmony, social recognition and a world of beauty.
 Examples of terminal values:
a) A world at peace – free of war and conflict
b) Family security – taking care of loved ones
c) Freedom – independence; free choice
d) Equality - brotherhood; equal opportunity for all
e) Self-respect – self esteem

Self-Concept, Perceptions and Attributions

Self-Concept

Self-concept refers to how a person thinks about, evaluates or perceive himself.

It is an important and useful way to understand and improve performance and welfare.

Three conceptual dimensions:

• Complexity – a person’s self-concept has higher complexity when it consists of many
categories.
• Consistency – a person has high consistency when similar personality traits and values
are required across all aspects of self-concept.
• Clarity – this means the level of a person’s self-conceptions are clearly and confidently
described, internally consistent and stable across time so, people perform better when
their self-concept have many elements that are well-matched with each other and
relatively clear.

Self-Enhancement

• Self enhancement is a desire to magnify positive aspects or self-conceptions while

isolating oneself from negative feedback and information.
• Most often people desire to rate themselves as above average, selectively recall positive
feedback while forgetting negative ones, attribute their success to personal inspiration or
ability while pointing to others for mistake and believe that they have a great possibility
of being successful.
• Positively when people see their self-concept in a positive light, they have better mental
and physical health. On the negative side, self-enhancement can result in bad decisions
such as overestimation of the success in investment decisions by managers.

Self-Verification

People are also inspired to verify and maintain their self-concepts. Self-Verification assumes
that people work to preserve their self-views by seeking to confirm them. It stabilizes a person’s
self-concept which helps guide his thought and actions.

Self-verification has numerous implications in organizational behavior, which are:

1. Likely to remember information that is consistent with their self-concept.
 2. The more confident employees are the less they accept feedbacks whether positive or
negative
3. Employees are motivated to interact with others who affirm their self-concept

Self-Evaluation

Self-evaluation is an individual’s honest and objective of himself. It usually defined by three

concepts which are self-esteem, self-efficacy and locus of control:

1. Self-esteem is the extent to which a person has generally positive feelings about himself.
People with high esteem are confident and respect themselves. People with low esteem
experience high level of self-doubt and have less self-worth. Effectively managing
employees with quite low self-esteem needs diplomacy and presenting many positive
feedback when conversing performance incidents.

2. Self-efficacy is a personal belief on competencies and abilities. It is a person’s belief of

his ability to do a definite task fruitfully. A person may have high self-efficacy in being
successful academically, but low self-efficacy to his ability in fixing his own car. Giving
people opportunities to test their skills so that they can see what they are capable of
doing (or empowering them) is also a good way of increasing self-efficacy.

3. Locus of control deals with the degree to which people feel answerable for their own
behavior. People with high internal locus of control deals with the degree to which
people feel answerable for their own behavior. People with high internal locus of control
or interval believe they can influence their own destiny and what happens to them is
caused by their own doing. While, those individuals with high external locus control or
externals suppose that things happen to them because of other people, luck or powerful
Being. Internals feel greater control of their live sand so they act in ways that will add to
their chances of success. Externals believe that what happens to them is a result of luck
or fate. They are more conforming less argumentative and easier to supervise.

Self-Monitoring

Self-monitoring refers to the level to which a person is able of checking his actions and
appearance in social institutions. People who are social monitors understand what the situation.
Demands and accordingly. They tend to be more successful in their careers, rated as performers
and emerge as leaders.

Perceptions

Perception is an intellectual process by which an individual select, organizes and provides

meaning to the world around him.
Personal process is the sequence of psychological steps that a person uses to organize and
interpret information from the outside world. It consists of six steps:
1. Objects are present in the world
2. A person observes
3. The person uses perception to select objects
4. The person organizes the perception of the objects
5. The person interprets the perception
6. The person responds
is an intellectual process by which an individual selects, organizes and provides meaning to the
world around him.

Personal process is the sequence of psychological steps that a person uses to organize and
interpret information from the outside world. It consists of six steps:
1. Objects are present in the world
2. A person observes
3. The person uses perception to select objects
4. The person organizes the perception of the objects
5. The person interprets the perception
6. The person responds

Perceptual Errors

In the workplace the process of making evaluations, judgment or ratings of the performance of
employees is subject to a number of systematic perception errors such as:

1. Central tendency - Appraising everyone at the middle of the rating scale.

2. Contrast error - Basing an appraisal on comparison with other employees rather than on
established performance criteria.

3. Different from me - Giving a poor appraisal because the person has qualities not
possessed by the appraiser.

4. Halo effect - Appraising an employee undeservedly on one quality because he is

perceived highly by the appraiser.

5. Horn effect – giving someone a poor appraisal on one quality or (attractiveness) influence
poor rating on other qualities (performance).

6. Initial impression - basing an appraisal on first impressions rather than on how the person
behaved throughout the period to which appraisal relates.
 7. Latest behavior – basing an appraisal on the person’s recent behavior.

8. Lenient or generous rating - perhaps the most common error, being consistently
generous in appraisal mostly to avoid conflict.

9. Performance dimension error - giving someone similar appraisal on to distinct but similar
qualities, because they happen to follow each other on the appraisal form.

10. Same as me - giving a good appraisal because the person has dualities or characteristic
possessed by the appraiser.

11. Status effect - giving those in higher positions consistently better appraisals then those
in lower jobs level.

12. Strict rating - being consistently harsh in appraising performance.

1. What is personality? How will you differentiate between nurture and nature?
ASSIGNMENT

2. How will you describe the attitude of a person in terms of job satisfaction and
organizational commitment?
3. What are the different values found in different culture?

Take Myers-Briggs Personality Test: (Post to LMS)

https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
ASSESSMENT

1. Chapter long quiz

2. Online essay
3. Video Conferencing using google meet or zoom – graded citation
4. Take Myers-Briggs Personality Test:
RUBRICS

Required Textbook:
Management of Human Behavior in an Organization by: Prof. Angelita Serrano and
REFERENCES

Dr. Marivic Flores, Unlimited Books (2016)

Individual Attitudes and Behavior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QqUuVvwWnc&t=27s

Myers Briggs Personality Types Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgxsDlgvZ9w&t=29s