Attraction Theory Trait Activation Theory -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Attraction Theory Trait Activation Theory? Answer: Introducation: Every employee in an organization has unique personality, skills, values and emotions. Different personality attributes contribute differently to the success of organization. The personality characteristics of employees determine how they will behave and perform to fulfill core responsibilities in their job position (Judge Zapata, 2015). In many organizations, understanding personality characteristics is important during recruitment process to match the skills, abilities, personalities and values of an individual with key responsibilities in desired job position. Assessment of individual characteristics is also important to determine their behavior at work (Van Hoye Turban, 2015). Measuring the role of personality has now become important in operations as it has an impact on productivity, performance and job satisfaction. With reference to the above context, the main purpose of this essay is to explain the importance of studying behavior of people in organization and evaluate the r ole of organizational behavior theories to understand personality and behavior of people in organization. Organization is a social unit where group of people work together to pursue collective goals. Assessment of personality in organizational behavior has become important to control behaviors that are not suitable for key objectives of the organization. Personality assessment has gained importance in companies because employees are the building blocks of organization and their personality can have a direct impact on the performance in organization (Handa and Gulati 2014). Hence, when managers engage in the task of personality assessment, they try to evaluate how an individual will fit in the overall atmosphere of the company. They also try to match personality with different set of responsibilities so that they can put the best foot forward in their job position. Certain specific personality traits are reflective of employees management in job performance. Evidence has also revealed that personality significantly affects job performance, however job characteristics like feedback, autono my and skills determine the satisfaction with job (Yang Hwang 2014). Hence, personality together with organizational structure determines the behavior of people in organization. There are different personality theories that determine the presence of specific personality characteristics in an individual and their influence on organizational behavior. Proper understanding and application of these theories determine how particular individual fit with certain job attributes. The Big Five Personality theory is one of the highly used theories used in personality test. It is based on the five traits like openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism that defines human personality as well as differentiates one individual from another (Saucier Srivastava, 2015). All the five traits illustrates different element of personality. For example, openness is about being imaginative and open to new experience. Agreeableness is the degree to which someone is cooperative and conscientiousness is the ability to responsible. neuroticism is the characteristics of being calm and secure, whereas extraversion is the ability to be sociable. The traits ment ioned in the Big Five Personality theory are widely accepted trait framework in the history of personality psychology (Judge Zapata, 2015). The application of the theory in predicting organizational behavior has revealed that personality exhibited by employees at work shows both stability as well as variation within an individual. Measurement of personality traits has helped to measure daily behavior of employees at work. However, study also pointed out to the fact that deviations in work occur not only because of personality traits, but also because of organizational factors and interpersonal conflict in job (Judge et al., 2015). Hence, weakness found in the utility of Big Five personality traits can be addressed by managers, if they devote time to foster employees participating in decision making and empowering activities. This would have positive implication on organizational behavior too. In contrast to Big Five personality traits which is based on the assumption that traits are stable across different situation, the Eyesenck theory of personality is based on the idea that behavior can be represented in second order personality. Hence, in contrast to five traits in Big Five personality traits, the Eyesencks theory is based on two personality traits. These include the dimension of introversion/extroversion and neuroticism/stability. A third element of neuroticism was added later. The key strength of this theory for testing personality dimension is that it offers clear and concise level and it is a highly testable theory (Furnham Petrides 2014). However, some criticism seen in this theory is that it is biologically grounded compared to big five theory. Despite these differences, both theories have extraversion dimension. Extraversion is a desirable trait in many job positions which many companies look for. This can be said because extraverts are more likely to hold job and engage in rich social interaction in workplace. Hence, extraversion is a desirable trait in recruitment process extraverts are more likely to stay in jobs particularly with high interpersonal role ( Huang et al., 2016). However, the demand for extraverts may not be the same in jobs with low level of interpersonal communication. In the same way, the favor for specific trait may differ in organization according to different structure of work. John Holland is a famous theorist in the field of psychological theory for career. The Hollands theory is based on the approach that people can be categorized on the basis of their personal attributes. Hence, the key personality themes in Holland model are realistic, investigative, artistics, social, enterprising and conventional (Brown Lent, 2016). One major strength of Hollands vocational theory is that it explains jobs and work environment on the basis of personality types. Through this statement, it has proved that people can flourish in their job position when there is a good fit between personality type and environment. Hence, instead of single focus on personality assessment during recruitment process, much brain storming should be done regarding the congruence between personality and environment of the organization. This is crucial because such congruence between personality and environment can lead to job satisfaction, good organizational performance and stable career paths (Lounsbury et al., 2009). Apart from employees, organizations are focusing on psychology assessments process also to determine how well managers can fit into organizational culture. For this purpose too, personality variable has been found to be an important variable for leadership identification and development. After the critical discussion on three personality related theories, it can be said that Big Five personality theory is universally accepted in big organizations. In contrast, Eysencks theory has been criticized because the theory is highly linked to biological cause and has little application in the context of career planning and development. In addition, inconsistent results have been found regarding connection between biological process and behavioral side (Claridge, 2016). Although Eyesencks theory has found less application in organization for studying organizational behavior, however the Big Five factor and the Hollandss theory has been favored by researchers. The Big Five Factor model and the Hollands theory can be used simultaneously in organization as the Big Five Model may help to evaluate personality characteristics, whereas the Hollans theory may help to determines person-environment fit of employees in organization. Both the model complements each other because the weakness found in one model is addressed by another. Evidence has also revealed high application of Hollands vocational theory with Big Five model of personality in distinguishing IT professionals. The study done with IT professionals has revealed that they have high level of agreeableness, but lower conscientiousness and assertiveness in work (Lounsbury et al., 2014). Hence, the finding clarified both functional value and person-occupation fit for IT professional. With this finding , the study proved that the process of recruitment and determining the suitability of candidate can be supported by the use of Big Five trait test and the Hollands theory. Such theoretical aspects of personality may have good implications in mentoring, recruitment and promote effective assessment of work culture in organization. In the context of organizational behavior, growing interest in personality assessment is seen due to its link with work engagement which ultimately has an impact on different measures of performance. Big Five personality trait has particularly found application in organization behavior study because of its wide utility in assessing personality attributes and job performance. It has played a major role in providing effective conceptual framework for multidimensional organizational commitment. One study investigating relationship between Big Five personality traits and job performance has revealed that affective commitment mediates the relationship between job performance and Big Five Traits of extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism (Ahmad, Ather Hussain, 2014). Hence, presence of such evidence, it is proved that the theoretical model give by the Big Five Trait theory has good future implication in assessing work related behavior of employees and controlling negative behavior in organization. The essay gave an insight into the importance of organizational behavior in improving workplace performance and productivity. As employees are the main pillar on the performance of whom organizational objectives are achieving, assessing employees personality in terms of their suitability for different job role in considered important. 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