Chapter 3 Overview

Personality, Attitudes, and Work Behavior

What’s in It for Me?

Reading this chapter will help you do the following:

  1. Understand the roles of personality and values in determining work behaviors.
  2. Explain the process of perception and how it affects work behaviors.
  3. Identify the major work attitudes that affect work behaviors.
  4. Define the concept of person-organization fit and how it affects work behaviors.
  5. List the key set of behaviors that matter for organizational performance.
  6. Be able to develop your positive attitude skills.

Figure 2.2 The P-O-L-C Framework

Individuals bring a number of differences to work. They have a variety of personalities, values, and attitudes. When they enter into organizations, their stable or transient characteristics affect how they behave and perform. Moreover, companies hire people with the expectation that they have certain knowledge, skills, abilities, personalities, and values.

Recall that you are learning about the principles of management through the planning-organizing-leading-controlling (P-O-L-C) framework. Employees’ personalities, attitudes, and work behaviors affect how managers approach each P-O-L-C dimension. Here are just a few examples:

  • When conducting environmental scanning during the planning process, a manager’s perceptions color the information that is absorbed and processed.
  • Employee preferences for job design and enrichment (aspects of organizing) may be a function of individuals’ personalities and values.
  • Leading effectively requires an understanding of employees’ personalities, values, and attitudes.
  • Absenteeism can challenge a manager’s ability to control costs and performance (both at the group and individual levels).

Therefore, it is important for managers to understand the individual characteristics that matter for employee and manager behaviors.