Personality in Work Organizations

by James, Lawrence R.; Mazerolle, Michelle D.

• ISBN13: 9780761902959
• ISBN10: 0761902953
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Sage Pubns

Summary

Why is there a resurgence of interest in personality in organizational research? Why have organizations turned to personality experts to assist in the early identification of employees who are likely to be motivated, conscientious, prosocial, and stable? Organizations are finding an ever-more-pressing need to select people with high probabilities of adjusting to and succeeding in work situations. To understand how and why individuals frame the same set of environmental factors differently, this thorough review of personality theory and measurement in work settings isolates the specific vital impacts on behavior in industrial and organizational settings. Topics addressed include: Job performance Leadership Team functioning Interdepartmental conflict Tardiness and attrition Mental and physical health Motivation Integrity Personality at Work is an excellent resource for researchers, scholars, and advanced students.

Author Biography

Lawrence R. James holds the Pilot Oil Chair of Excellence in Management and Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the University of Tennessee Michelle D. Mazerolle is the Director of Management and Organization Development at Philips Consumer Electronics North America

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Series	ix
Preface	xi
The Role of Personality in Organizations	1	(20)
John's Description of His Supervisor	4	(2)
The View of John's Coworkers	6	(2)
Use of Personality and Social Cognition to Explain Individual Differences in Framing and Analysis	8	(10)
Justification Mechanisms for Aggression	9	(4)
Socially Adaptive Individuals	13	(3)
Conditional Reasoning	16	(2)
General Comment: Personality in Organizations	18	(1)
Organization of This Book	18	(3)
Fundamental Concepts of Personality	21	(50)
Traits: The Behavioral Indicators of Personality	22	(7)
The Trait of Achievement Motivation	24	(1)
Characteristics of Traits	25	(1)
The Trait of Fear of Failure	26	(2)
A Caveat of Multiple Causation	28	(1)
Causes of Traits: Needs (Motives)	29	(5)
The Need to Achieve	29	(1)
The Need to Avoid Failure	30	(1)
Resultant Achievement-Oriented Tendency and Relative Motive Strength	31	(2)
How Do Needs Influence Traits?	33	(1)
The Mediating Role of Social Cognition in Need-Trait Relationships	34	(35)
Conditional Reasoning as a Product of Justification Mechanisms	38	(9)
The Five Themes of the Social Cognitive Approach: A Further Attempt to Integrate the Trait and Social Cognition Approaches	47	(1)
Developmental and Self-Regulatory Processes for AMs	48	(4)
Environmental Influences on Motivation: The Person-by-Situation Interaction and Person-Environment Fit	52	(8)
Cross-Situational Consistency, Situational Specificity, and Coherence	60	(9)
Concluding Comments	69	(2)
Personality Variables	71	(36)
Prominent Traits in Contemporary Personality	71	(1)
The Etiology of ``Trait''	72	(18)
Allport and the Idiographic Versus Nomothetic Approach to Traits	72	(6)
The Organization of Traits	78	(12)
Broad Categories of the Social Cognitions That Are Used to Justify Characteristic Behavioral Adjustments	90	(15)
Types of Implicit Biases That Give Rise to Justification Mechanisms	95	(7)
How JMs Influence Reasoning Strategies	102	(3)
Implicit Biases: Wanted or Unwanted	105	(2)
The Measurement of Personality in Organizational Settings	107	(58)
Criteria for Evaluating Measurement Procedures	108	(5)
Reliability	108	(3)
Validity	111	(2)
Exemplars of Measurement Techniques for Personality	113	(25)
Self-Report Measures	113	(19)
Projective Techniques	132	(4)
Conditional Reasoning Measures	136	(2)
An Efficient, Indirect System for Measuring Implicit Reasoning Biases	138	(14)
Justification Mechanisms	142	(4)
Use of Discretionary Judgments of Logical Persuasiveness to Make Inferences About JMs	146	(4)
Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression	150	(2)
Model for Empirical Validation Analyses	152	(3)
Psychometric Evaluation of the Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression	155	(8)
Estimates of Reliability	156	(1)
Results of Eight Empirical Validation Studies	157	(6)
Conclusions	163	(1)
Concluding Comments	163	(2)
Three-Fertile Domains for Future Personality Research in Organizations	165	(52)
Integrative Models of Personality Assessment	166	(29)
Channeling Hypothesis	167	(1)
Integrative Model	168	(5)
Integrative Models Based on Self-Reports and Conditional Reasoning	173	(22)
Coherence	195	(11)
Situational Discriminativeness in Organizational Research	196	(3)
In Search of Coherence	199	(7)
Differential Framing	206	(9)
Does Job Satisfaction Have Dispositional Components?	209	(6)
Conclusion	215	(1)
Closing Comments	215	(2)
References	217	(24)
Index	241	(10)
About the Authors	251