Download Individual, Personality and Attitudes

Individual, Personality and
Attitudes
Dr. G.D.R.U.U. Abeyrathne,
Department of Economics,
University of Ruhuna,
Matara
Objectives
• To situate individual and personality in
relation to organization
• To understand the relevance of attitudes in
management
• To understand the process of attitude
formation
What is organization
• What do you mean by organization?
Definition of Organization
• Organizations are a)social entities b) are goal
directed c) are designed as deliberately
structured and coordinated activity system,
and, d) are linked to external environment.
Relation with Society
• We live an organizational life.
• They tie us to society
• It tell us our present status in society and our
future
• When you ask “ Who are You? Sir, he will reply
referring to his occupation
• Occupation is a handy social categorization
e.g. Employed, Unemployable etc.
Relation to society
• Organizations are needed to satisfy our needs
• Our jobs tie us with past and present
• Organizations are means of realizing our
dreams and aspiration
Two Key elements of Organization
1. Individual
2. Group
Individualism
• Individualism is the extent to which we value
independence, personal freedom and
personal uniqueness.
• Highly individualist people value personal
freedom, self-sufficiency, control over their
lives, appreciation of unique qualities that
distinguish them from others
Collectivism
• Collectivism is the extent to which we value
our duty to groups to which we belong as well
as group harmony.
• Highly collectivist people define themselves by
their group membership and value
harmonious relationship within those groups
Personality
• Ethical, cultural and personal values are
relatively stable characteristics
• They are important influences on personal
behaviour
• The personality refers to the relatively stable
pattern of behavours and consistent internal
states that explain a person’s behavioural
tendencies.
Internal and External dimensions
• External traits are observable behaviours and
one can predict on one based on these
behaviour
• Internal dimension represents the thoughts,
values and genetic characteristics that we
infer from the observable behaviours.
Determinant of Personality
• Personality is a product of heredity and
environment
• Heredity provides the framework for
potential-it determines physical and mental
characteristics. Gene located in chromosomes,
play an important role in this regard.
• Environment provide the nurturance whether
a person would be able o actualise one’s
potentials.
Big Five Personality Dimensions
• 1. Conscientiousness: The extent to which
individuals are hardworking, organized,
dependable and persevering(high
Conscientiousness) versus lazy,disorganized
and unrealiable (Low Conscientiousness).
• 2. Extraversion: the degree to which individual
are gregarious, assertive and sociable (High)
versus reserved, timid and quiet (Low)
Big Five Personality Dimensions
• 3. Agreeableness: the extent to which individuals
are cooperative and warm (Highly agreeable)
versus cold and belligerent (highly disagreeable)
• 4. Emotional Stability : The extent to which
individuals are insecure, anxious, depressed and
emotional (Emotionally unstable) versus calm,
self confident and secure (Emotionally stable)
• 5. Openness to experience: The extent to which
individuals are creative, curious and culture
(open to experience ) versus practical and with
narrow interest (closed to experience).
Attitudes
• There are many definitions of attitudes among
psychologists
• They share a fundamental thing. i.e. treating it
as readiness of a person to respond towards a
certain object or class of objects in favourable
or unfavourable manner.
• Attitudes involves certain prediction of a
person’s behviour
Attitudes
• Our prediction is not always correct.
• Our prediction of the likely behaviour of
persons’ are generally based on what we
perceive as their behaviour.
• The accuracy of prediction depends on our
observational ability.
Nature of Attitude
• It is bigger than belief. Belief is consisted of
cognitive component, the elements of knowledge
obtained from a perception of certain facts
(either correctly or incorrectly)
• Attitudes has got two further elements. i.e.
affective or feeling component (Attitude holder
feels certain things, e.g. it is good to work and
Behavioural tendency (predisposition to act
towards the attitude objects).
Link between Individual, Personality
and attitudes
• They are social construct sometimes stable
and sometimes unstable.
• Individual built attitudes through selectivity.
Some important problem for managers and
employees in organizations are
Actor-observer problem.
Non-verbal physical feature based perception,
Self-fulfilling prophecies.
Thank you.