Personality
Stress
A recent stress audit in a large retail company has indicated that employees are experiencing high stress levels at work. Discuss this in terms of what may be causing stress and what the potential outcomes of these stress levels may be.
What are the major sources of workplace stress and what effect can stress have on employees and organisations?
Personality
What evidence is there that personality traits can predict performance at work?
With reference to the published literature consider whether personality traits are useful for predicting work performance.
Different approaches : 1. Nomothetic paradigm
-individual differences can be described using predefined attributes. E.g Extraverted 2. Idiographic paradigm * Individuals are unique * Not possible to describe people using the same terms – Kellys personal construct Theory 1955 3. Psychoanalytical (e.g Freud)
-ID = Primary instinctual drives (pleasure principle)
-EGO = executive control (reality principle)
-SUPEREGO = Moral control (internalised parental values) 4. Social learning * Personality develops through socialisation * Reward and punishment (reinforcement) * Children mimic “models” or behaviour e.g – Bandura 1977 5. Humanistic * Personality driven by self-development * Acquisition of knowledge * Desire to grow e.g Maslow 6. Psychometric * Development of measures of individual differences e.g Questionaires and tests * Reliant on statistics: structure; reliability and validity 7. Type * Distinct groupings * Emphasises similarities within types
Trait
* Distribution of scores * Emphasises differences between people
* Early research – Allport and odbert (193) and the lexical hypothesis
“those individual differences”….” Become expressed as a single word” – therefore to assess personality examine distinct adjectives – survey revealed 17,953 potential personality words * Cattell
A recent stress audit in a large retail company has indicated that employees are experiencing high stress levels at work. Discuss this in terms of what may be causing stress and what the potential outcomes of these stress levels may be.
What are the major sources of workplace stress and what effect can stress have on employees and organisations?
Personality
What evidence is there that personality traits can predict performance at work?
With reference to the published literature consider whether personality traits are useful for predicting work performance.
Different approaches : 1. Nomothetic paradigm
-individual differences can be described using predefined attributes. E.g Extraverted 2. Idiographic paradigm * Individuals are unique * Not possible to describe people using the same terms – Kellys personal construct Theory 1955 3. Psychoanalytical (e.g Freud)
-ID = Primary instinctual drives (pleasure principle)
-EGO = executive control (reality principle)
-SUPEREGO = Moral control (internalised parental values) 4. Social learning * Personality develops through socialisation * Reward and punishment (reinforcement) * Children mimic “models” or behaviour e.g – Bandura 1977 5. Humanistic * Personality driven by self-development * Acquisition of knowledge * Desire to grow e.g Maslow 6. Psychometric * Development of measures of individual differences e.g Questionaires and tests * Reliant on statistics: structure; reliability and validity 7. Type * Distinct groupings * Emphasises similarities within types
Trait
* Distribution of scores * Emphasises differences between people
* Early research – Allport and odbert (193) and the lexical hypothesis
“those individual differences”….” Become expressed as a single word” – therefore to assess personality examine distinct adjectives – survey revealed 17,953 potential personality words * Cattell