Executive Summary
This research paper explains organizational behavior concepts such as individual differences. The differences include age, gender, personality, and emotions. The idea is essential to an organization as it helps an organization to have all employees that contribute to the growth and success of the organization. For example, it influences sales an organization makes, innovation, and teamwork. However, the management uses the knowledge of individual differences to impact the organization’s productivity since it allows for a diversity of employees.
Table of Contents
Individual differences definition 5
Importance of Individual Differences 5
Relation of Individual Differences to an Organization 8
Importance of Information of Individual Differences to a Manager 10
Introduction
Globally, entrepreneurs thrive since they develop new approaches that help increase performance by improving workplace experience and job satisfaction. They build an organization through nurturing and creating a culture for employees who work towards a common goal. Typically, they establish organizational behaviors (OB) that identify what motivates employees and how they can interact towards achieving a common goal. OB typically refers to the analysis of how employees or people in a group setting interact (Akpapuna et al., 2020). Through the mechanisms, companies get to perform better. However, sometimes individuals or groups may behave distinctly, negatively impacting an organization. OB explores various concepts that can help managers unite employees, resulting in success. For instance, individual differences, employees’ perception, motivation, and social system, among many others.
Individual difference is also known as organizational diversity or functional diversity. Diversity elaborates how people are different and similar to each other. It describes features that vary within a specific work setting, such as age, education, race, nationality, training, habits, religion, and appearance. According to researchers, organizational diversity is a current issue in that organizations invest their time and money to train and educate employees. This ensures that employees develop a sense of belonging and consider their needs. Most employers or managers recognize that diversity is a significant aspect of any organization as it adds unique and intrinsic values to the workplace. Therefore, this paper will examine and analyze the OB concept on individual differences. Additionally, the report will explore the importance of organizational diversity, real-life applications of the idea, and the consequences of the concept. Also, it will highlight how managers can use this concept to facilitate performance.
Individual Differences Definition
Individual differences can be defined as accepting, understanding, and valuing diversity among individuals. Organizations need to embrace organizational differences and formulate ways to enhance inclusivity. This is because it yields a competitive advantage and work opportunities.
Importance of Individual Differences
Individual difference has several advantages in the workplace. One, it ensures there is higher creativity in decision-making. Employees will have different perspectives and opinions on distinct matters in a diverse organization. Some thoughts would be good, while others would be better (Blake et al., 2022). This is because employees would think beyond and consider alternatives that can benefit a company without causing challenges or overspending.
Consequently, individual differences boost marketing opportunities. Typically, when potential customers or employees notice that an organization represents a diverse environment, t6hey would feel like they can relate and connect more to a company. Similarly, a diverse workforce can synthesize commodities that attract a broader fan base. For instance, increasing the representation of women and minority communities creates new opportunities. Nowadays, it is not about the number of employees and organization but about having an inclusive workplace. Using advertisement strategies that show the inclusion of ethnic diversity, physically challenged and differently-abled individuals create a positive reputation that enhances market awareness.
Furthermore, it improves cultural awareness. A wide range of cultures enables organizations to deal with or handle different global market nuances. For instance, if a company is doing business in China, having a worker who can fluently speak Mandarin is a viral asset and would enhance relationships. On the contrary, individual differences would build the company’s reputation (Downey et al., 2017). Usually, job applicants check a company’s reputation before making their applications. When they notice that a company promotes inclusivity, they are more likely to persuade them to seek employment. Also, it improves the ability of the company to retain employees since the culture appreciates people from different backgrounds.
Furthermore, individual differences create a more significant opportunity for professional growth. An organization that adopts practices and ideas from other perspectives develops an inclusive culture that enables employees to be ambassadors. Uniquely the company attracts ambitious, talented, and diverse employees (Fossum, 2017). A diverse working environment is enriching since employees get exposed to developing new approaches and skills to work. Also, employees get an opportunity to develop international relationships with other people. Motivation would boost employees’ morale, driving them to deliver the best services. Naturally, coworkers will learn and appreciate each different culture. This would build trust and provide a deeper understanding of the world from a broader perspective, which filters or combines the opinions into new ideologies.
Despite that, individual differences boost innovation and creativity. According to experts, new ideas are typically developed from thinking outside the box. When individuals of diverse backgrounds come together, they bring distinct experiences and view the world in multiple ways; hence creativity arises naturally. The various people offer different solutions rather than a poor strategy inspired by coming from the same cultural place. It eliminates the typical approach that people use to approach matters.
In every workplace, different personnel works for the organization’s good. However, the employees and the management have people with individual differences while in the workplace. The differences in the workplace and has characteristics of the individual employees. The individual differences include gender, ethnicity, family responsibilities, nationality, language, and age. The members of an organization behave differently, which may affect the organization’s performance. Individual differences are classified into personality and capacity differences. There are many languages of categorizing personalities, and the main ones are five.
Personality Differences
Personality is defined as the stability patterns of a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It helps explain a person and the impact they play on the organization. The personality differences have both favorable and unfavorable conditions in the business environment. These differences are influenced both through nature and nurture. A person’s personality is defined by their mode of upbringing and the experiences that change a person (O’Connor & Barrett, 2017). Nurturing influences the personality of a person. The management of an organization works for the firm’s productivity and, therefore, may try to change the employees’ personalities. However, it is not the case since a person’s personality does not change, but the management should understand the employees’ personality. These differences differentiate people from one another through their likes and dislikes.
Different factors help define individual differences, including biographical characteristics and ability. The biographical features include gender, age, and tenure, while ability has physical and intellectual skills. Although hard work reflects the productivity in an organization, age relates to the performance in a job position since it influences turnover, productivity, absenteeism of employees, and satisfaction. Also, gender is an influence on job performance. For example, psychological studies show that women are more obedient to authority while men show aggression since they set standards and intend to meet them.
Understanding Personality
Personality is based on the stability of feelings and thoughts. The character allows the differentiation of one person to another. It will enable someone to understand the behavior of employees in an organization. When managers understand the nature of their employees, it allows them to place the employees in their jobs. Although personality is said to be stable, it changes, and therefore, in the organization, some experiences can change an employee’s personality (Sonnentag et al., 2022). However, these activities have to happen over a long period. Individuality is essential since it helps understand values, link values to human behavior, and explain the joint between work behavior and a person’s personality.
Relation of Individual Differences to an Organization
Five Personality Traits
Openness
This is the ability of a person to be creative, open to learning new ideas, intellectual, and original. In a workplace, people with openness are better performing since they are flexible to learn, curious, and conduct research. The people have the motivation and use the organization’s resources to satisfy their thirst for learning. The workers attend training often to expand their level of knowledge. Therefore, the employee helps to increase the organization’s productivity due to the innovative ideas (Stouten et al., 2018). People with this trait can connect concepts to ideas. Openness influences behavior since one develops creativity and influences the organization’s employees’ performance. The employee also acknowledges other employees and has clear communication.
Conscientiousness
It refers to the organization, punctuality, and dependability of a person. The person is oriented and focuses on achievement. The trait influences an employee’s productiveness due to how they organize and how dependable they are in the organization. The person is orderly, cautious, self-disciplined, and self-driven. However, this trait is influenced by environmental factors such as the activities in the organization. Therefore, it focuses on the organization’s responsibility to provide for its employees (Tacke et al., 2022). This trait influences the retaining and training of employees in an organization. In an organization, the organization motivates the employees and therefore allows the employees to develop conscientiousness, and therefore, employees improve the employee’s performance.
Agreeableness
It shows the level of tolerance, sensitivity, trustworthiness, and kindness. This trait influences the interactions between people in the workplace. In an organization, an employee is most likely to be a leader because of this trait since it affects the tolerability and communication between the employee and others. The person has strong interpersonal skills hence encouraging the development of teamwork that increases the organization’s productivity. The employee is also highly resilient and therefore finishes assignments and tasks in the organization on time and gives their best on the project. Employers influence the agreeableness of employees through developing training programmers, creating collaborative impacts, and encouraging the employees to lead and handle projects. Agreeableness affects the performance of an organization.
Extraversion
Extraversion defines a person’s sociability and impacts an employee’s performance in an organization. In organizations involving sales, the employee with this trait is essential since they are talkative and improve the sales in the firm. The employees have positive energy and emotions, confidence to market the organization’s products, and create effective teamwork in the workplace (Tasselli et al., 2018). This trait influences organizational behavior since it encourages employees to speak and give advice on methods of increasing the organization’s profitability.
Neuroticism
Neuroticism defines the aggressiveness and irritability rate of the employee in a workplace. People have emotional reactions to the problems and experiences in an environment. This information is essential in an organization since it helps explain an employee’s organizational behavior. The person has self-doubt and therefore has self-criticism. Although this affects an employee’s performance in a workplace, it helps indicate burnout among employees, hence challenging the employers to take action (Zaccaro et al., 2018). Since a person with this trait is afraid of failing, they work hard and prepare because of the fear, which helps to increase their performance in the organization.
Importance of Information of Individual Differences to a Manager
The information of individual differences is essential since it helps a manager understand an employee’s behavior in the organization. Also, managers develop diverse relationships with their employees to impact their productivity, engagement, and morale (Sonnentag et al., 2022). Also, the managers use the information to influence their hiring decision. It helps control the person that is fit for the organization since the job seeker’s goals, personality, and values match that of the organization. When managers understand the individual differences of their workers, it helps to work towards motivating the individuals to improve their performance in the organization (Fossum, 2017). Also, the management encourages diversity that increases the desire of the employee to perform better. There is inclusion in workplaces that have variety in the employees since every individual participates differently to the company’s success. People are unique in their mode of doing things and their targets. When managers understand employees’ differences, This helps increase employees’ self-esteem.
Conclusion
Individual differences are essential since they help define a person and influence their behavior. Individual differences affect an employee’s success and adaptiveness in workplaces. In an organization, employees require to work together to allow for the success of the organization, and therefore, all employees should understand and appreciate the differences of other employees. It also allows for an understanding of management that works for the well-being of the employees. It, therefore, provides both financial and social support to the employees to improve the areas of weakness of the employees. Also, individual differences in organizational behavior allow the management to employ job applicants according to the organization’s values.
References
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