Topic: Individual Differences and Diversity

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Topic Individual Differences and Diversity
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Topic Individual differences(values,
personality and intelligence)
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Values

• Global beliefs that guide actions and judgments
  across a variety of situations

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Work Values

• Achievement
• Helping and concern for others
• Honesty
• Fairness

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Value Congruence

• Person-Organization fit
• ? commitment
• ? satisfaction
• ? turnover
• ? stress
• Person-Supervisor fit
• ? job satisfaction
• ? satisfaction with supervisor

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Personality
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The Big 5 personality traits

• Extraversion (outgoing, talkative, assertive)
• Agreeableness (trusting, cooperative)
• Conscientiousness (dependable, responsible,
  persistent)
• Emotional stability (relaxed, secure, unworried)
• Openness to experience (curious, imaginative,
  broad minded)

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The Big 5 personality traits and performance

• Extraversion (Predicts performance in sales
  management.)
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness (Best predictor of performance
  r.20)
• Emotional stability
• Openness to experience (predicts training
  proficiency)

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Jung and the Myers-Briggs

• Summary of Myers-Briggs types available on
  website Humanmetrics.com (introvert/extrovert
  thinking/feeling sensing/intuition
  judging/perceiving)
• Not predictive of performance
• Is predictive of makeup of professional groups
  (dentists, etc.)
• (Al Gores campaign used this)

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Other Common Personality Attributes

• Locus of control
• Internalown destiny
• Externalsfate
• Machiavellianism
• Self-esteem
• Self monitoring
• Risk Propensity
• Type A/Type B

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Other Common Personality Attributes

• Locus of control
• Internals
• More satisfied
• Less risk seeking
• More self control
• More effort (when linked to performance/rewards)
• Better on learning and problem solving tasks
  (when linked to performance/rewards)

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Other Common Personality Attributes

• Machiavellianism
• Manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less,
  persuade more
• Flourish when
• Face-to-face
• Minimal rules
• Other is emotionally involved

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Self-monitoring

• High self-monitors
• More sensitive to others
• Alter their responses to cues of others
• More flexible and responsive to the environment
• Self-monitoring is associated with Emotional
  Intelligence

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Mental Abilities
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Seven Major Mental Abilities

• Verbal comprehension Meaning of words and
  reading comprehension
• Word fluency Ability to produce isolated words
  to meet specific requirements
• Numerical Arithmetic computation
• Spatial Perceive spatial patterns and visualize
  geometric shapes
• Memory Good rote memory of words, symbols, and
  lists
• Perceptual speed Perception of similarities and
  differences in figures
• Inductive reasoning Reasoning from specifics to
  general conclusion

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A better view of intelligence

• Its G
• It can be reliably validly measured (The
  Wonderlic Personnel Basic Skills Tests (WPT
  WBST)
• Its going up (you vs. your bosses and/or
  professors?)
• (The sociology of all of thishigh and low G in
  the workplacelikely outcomes)
• It matters Best predictor of job performance

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How big is the influence?

• Heredity vs. environment?
• Heredity about 30
• Person personality vs. situation?
• Personality and G gt 20 variance in managerial
  success
• 80 other factors (but what are they?)
• 20 may constitute a significant C.A.
  (competitive advantage)

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Emotional Intelligence

• EI is defined as
• Self awareness
• Self-management
• Self-motivation
• Empathy
• Social skills (emotion management)

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Emotional Intelligence

• Some suggest that EI is the best predictor of
  work success
• Its learnable
• Its related to communication, motivation (self
  and others)
• (Hendrie Weisinger, Emotional Intelligence at
  Work (Jossey-Bass, 1998).

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Topic Diversity
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Diversity is goodsometimes

• Whether it is or not, depends
• On the job youre trying to do
• Solving a recurring process problem on the shop
  floor? People from engineering, manufacturing,
  different levels, tenures, etc.
• Assembling a Superbowl-capable offensive line?
  Really big, strong, fast, mean guys.

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Diversity is goodsometimes

• Some studies show a
• positive relationship between diversity
  performance (Watson et al. 1993 AMJ Wright, et
  al., 1995 AMR)
• others show mixed (Chatman et al. 1998 ASQ Ely
  Thomas 2001 ASQ Richard, 2000 AMJ Simons et al.
  1999 AMJ)
• others show negative relationship (Chatman et al.
  1998 ASQ Tsui et al. 1992 ASQ)

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Diversity comes in many forms...

• Race
• Gender
• Age
• Socio-economic status (SES)
• Education
• Religion
• Political persuasion
• Cant afford to focus on just 1 or 2

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Its a big issue...

• White males comprise only 32.2 entrants into the
  US workforce, 1990-2005
• White males comprise 47.6 of leavers (see next
  slide)
• Thus, most of the action is elsewhere
• Missing that means missing opportunities for
  competitive advantage
• Look around you...

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Workforce Demographics
Percent Entrants Percent Leavers
1990-2005 1990-2005 Total 100
100 Men 50.5 57.3
Women 49.5 42.7 White
Non-Hispanic 65.3 81.8 African
American 13.0 10.5 Hispanic
15.7 5.2 Asian and Other Races
6.0 2.4
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Complexity of Diversity Gender as an example
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Some things we do know...

• Sex differences in verbal skills (w gt m) seem to
  be declining or gone
• Differences in math skills (m gt w) seem to be
  declining or gone
• Men are more aggressive
• Men are less conforming
• When its about social approval
• More conforming for task completion

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Some things we do know...

• Women and men communicate differently
• Venting/sharing vs. problem solving (Deborah
  Tanner You Just Dont Understand)
• Communication/linguistic styles (see next slides)

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Sex differences in linguistic styles

• LinguisticCharacteristic Men Women
• Taking credit Greater use of I
  Greater use of We statements
  statements more likely to boast less
  likely to boast about their about
  their achievements achievements
• Displaying confidence Less likely to
  More likely to indicate that they
  indicate that they are uncertain about
  are uncertain about an issue an
  issue
• Asking questions Less likely to ask More
  likely to ask questions questions

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Sex differences in linguistic styles

• Men Women
• Conversation rituals Avoid making
  More frequently apologies because it
  say Im sorry puts them in a
  one-down position
• Giving feedback More direct and blunt More
  tactful tend to temper criticism
  with praise
• Giving compliments Stingy with praise
  Pay more compliments than
  men
• Indirectness Indirect when it comes Indirect
  when telling to admitting fault or
  others what to do when they dont
  know something

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Some things we do know...

• Women are better at nonverbal communication
  (sending receiving)
• Men are better at lying
• Women are better at detecting lying
• All-male groups tend to perform at higher levels
  than all-female groups (but most groups arent
  single-sex)
• Men anchor the ends of the scales (Nobel prizes,
  social pathologies)

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Some things we do know...

• Women perform better at social behavior
  (consensus-reaching)
• Men perform better at task-oriented behavior
  (brainstorming, etc.)
• Women do not reason differently in ethics
  (contrary to Carol Gilligans hypothesis)
• Finally, men and women believe there are
  differences, irrespective of whether they really
  exist or not

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Implications?