Effects of personality on work performance and organization behaviour Essay

Effects of personality on work performance and organization behaviour - Essay Example Workforce diversity has increasingly become a major issue for an organization in the contemporary work environment. As observed by Mkonji & Sikalieh (2012), organizational performance has been therefore increasingly becoming highly dependent on behavioural patterns and personality of individuals; it is one of the important factors when gauging such dependent factors. Personality refers to the unique pattern of emotions, thoughts and behaviour exhibited by individuals. It is important that organizations understand different personalities and nurture them to perform towards a harmonized organization value or goals (Borman, 2004). The increasingly globalised and technologically enhanced operational environment has meant that today’s organizations have been pushed towards post-modernism. In effect, management has to be conscious of the different personalities within the organization so that performance is not negatively affected. This paper examines the extent to which personality of workers is likely to affect both performance and behaviour in today’s organizations. It looks at the negative and positive effects of different personality traits in relation to job performance. Different organizational behavioural theories will be used as the basis of discussions. The five factor model of different individual’s personality that includes extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience will be mainly used in the discussions. This paper will also address the implications of the findings to management in today’s organizations. ... This approach where an individual’s personality is gauged on the way they react in certain situations is referred to as the interactionist perspective of viewing personalities. A violent worker, for instance, will be likely to react negatively to agitation by other workers or interruptions in the systems. However, this might vary due to the implications of his actions or the consequences. In such cases, the personality of the individual may be restrained to the benefit of the organization even though it may not fully guarantee performance. Consequently, personality may, in turn, be influenced by several factors that may include job demands and social norms (Funharm, 2008). Whereas job demands are those duties or tasks assigned to particular jobs, social norms refer to the pressures that come with an individual’s association or otherwise to certain groups that may include organizational culture. Generally, these factors are classified as either facilitators or constraint s. On one hand, the facilitators are those that encourage an individual to behave in a certain way whereas the constraints discourage individuals from certain behaviours. This is therefore an important aspect of personality influence on organizational behaviour and work performance. An organization with a standard personality that is likely to encourage faster execution of tasks and fewer interruptions is likely to record performance. On the other hand, an organization with conflicting personality types that have no bearing on each other will likely be faced with difficulties in ensuring good performance. This is because it is likely to have both non performers and good performers in the same set up who cannot guide each other to success. While there are factors that influence an