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Management History Module), managers believed that happy workers were productive
workers. Because it’s not easy to determine whether job satisfaction “caused” job pro-
ductivity or vice versa, some management researchers felt that the belief was generally
wrong. However, we can say with some certainty that the correlation between satisfaction
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and productivity is fairly strong. Satisfied employees do perform better on the job. So
managers should focus on those factors that have been shown to be conducive to high lev-
els of employee job satisfaction: making work challenging and interesting, providing eq-
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uitable rewards, and creating supportive working conditions and supportive colleagues.
These factors are likely to help employees be more productive.
3. Managers should also survey employees about their attitudes. As one study put it,
“A sound measurement of overall job attitude is one of the most useful pieces of informa-
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tion an organization can have about its employees.” However, research has also shown
that attitude surveys can be more effective at pinpointing employee dissatisfaction if done
multiple times rather than just at one point in time. 19
4. Managers should know that employees will try to reduce dissonance. If employees are
required to do things that appear inconsistent to them or that are at odds with their atti-
tudes, managers should remember that pressure to reduce the dissonance is not as strong
when the employee perceives that the dissonance is externally imposed and uncontrol-
lable. It’s also decreased if rewards are significant enough to offset the dissonance. So the
manager might point to external forces such as competitors, customers, or other factors
when explaining the need to perform some work that the individual may have some
dissonance about. Or the manager can provide rewards that an individual desires.

What Do Managers Need to Know About Personality?

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Many colleges use roommate compatibility tests to assign rooms in on-campus housing. If
9-3 Describe you’ve ever shared a living space with someone else (family or nonfamily), you know how
different important it can be for roommates to be compatible and to get along with each other. This
personality compatibility is affected and influenced by our own and by other people’s personalities.
Some of us are quiet and passive; others are loud and aggressive. When we describe
theories. people using terms such as quiet, passive, loud, aggressive, ambitious, extroverted, loyal,
tense, or sociable, we’re describing their personalities. An individual’s personality is a
unique combination of emotional, thought, and behavioral patterns that affect how a person
reacts to situations and interacts with others. Personality is most often described in terms of
measurable traits that a person exhibits. We’re interested in looking at personality because
just like attitudes, it affects how and why people behave the way they do.

78 percent of employers say that personality is the most
important attribute in a job candidate. 21

How Can We Best Describe Personality?
Your personality is your natural way of doing things and relating to others. Your personal-
ity traits influence, among other things, how you interact with others and how you solve
problems. Literally dozens of behaviors are attributed to an individual’s personality traits. But
how can we best describe personality? Over the years, researchers have attempted to focus
personality specifically on which personality traits and personality types would describe an individual’s
A unique combination of emotional, thought, and personality. Two widely recognized personality research efforts are the Myers-Briggs Type
behavioral patterns that affect how a person reacts
®
to situations and interacts with others Indicator and the Big Five model. In addition, we can’t possibly describe personality and
behavior without looking at emotions.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI)
A personality assessment that uses four dimensions What is the Myers-Briggs type indicator? One of the more widely used meth-
of personality to identify different personality types ®
ods of identifying personalities is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI