Welcome
Leadership, Sustainability and
Organizational Behavior (MGT 701)
Week 5 Lecture
Today’s agenda……
 Managers and traits
 Personality Traits
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Five personality traits
Internal & external locus of control
Need for achievement
Need for affiliation
Need for power
 Social Responsibilities and Managers
 Ethics and Managers
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Personality traits
 Personality traits are enduring tendencies to feel, think
and act in certain ways that can be used to describe
the personality of every individual.
 Managers’ personalities influence their behaviour
and approach to managing people and resources.
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Big five personality traits: extraversion
 Extraversion: Tendency to experience positive
emotions and moods and feel good about oneself
and the rest of the world.
 Managers high in extraversion tend to be sociable,
affectionate, outgoing and friendly.
 Managers low in extraversion tend to be less inclined
toward social interaction and have a less positive
outlook.
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Big five personality traits: negative affectivity
 Negative affectivity: Tendency to experience negative
emotions and moods, feel distressed and be critical of
oneself and others
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(cont. next slide)
Figure 5.2 A measure of negative affectivity (cont.)
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Big five personality traits: agreeableness
 Agreeableness: Tendency to get along well with
others.
 Managers
high in agreeableness
affectionate and care about others.
are
likable,
 Managers with low agreeableness may be distrustful,
unsympathetic, uncooperative and antagonistic ;
however, some jobs may see a low level of agreeableness
as an asset, e.g. drill sergeant in the military.
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Big five personality traits: conscientiousness
 Conscientiousness:
Tendency
scrupulous and persevering.
to
be
careful,
 Managers high in this trait are organised and selfdisciplined.
 Managers low in this trait lack direction and selfdiscipline.
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Big five personality traits: openness to experience
 Openness to experience:
 Tendency to be original, have broad interests, be
open to a wide range of stimuli, be daring and take
risks
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Managers and traits
 No single trait is right or wrong for being an effective
manager.
 Effectiveness is determined by a complex interaction
between the characteristics of managers and the nature
of the job and organisation in which they are working
(context).
 Personality
traits
that
enhance
managerial
effectiveness in one situation may actually impair
it in another.
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Other personality traits: internal locus of control
 Internal locus of control: Belief that you are
responsible for your own fate.
 Own actions and behaviours are major and decisive
determinants of job outcomes.
 People with this trait believe, ‘If it’s to be, it’s up to
me’.
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Other personality traits: external locus of control
 External locus of control: Belief that outside forces
are responsible for what happens to and around
them.
 People with a strong orientation to this trait do not
think their own actions make much of a difference.
 They believe that fate determines their progress, that it is
‘in the lap of the gods’.
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Other personality traits: self-esteem
 Self esteem: The degree to which people feel good
about themselves and their abilities.
 High self-esteem causes a person to feel competent and
capable.
 Persons with low self-esteem have poor opinions of
themselves and their abilities.
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Other personality traits: need for achievement
 Need for achievement:
The extent to which an individual has a strong desire to
perform challenging tasks well and meet personal
standards for excellence.
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Other personality traits: need for affiliation and power
 Need for affiliation: The extent to which an individual
is concerned about establishing and maintaining
good interpersonal relations, being liked and having
other people get along.
 Need for power: The extent to which an individual
desires to control or influence others.
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Managers, ethics and stakeholders
 Personality, values and attitudes affect the way
managers view their responsibility for the wellbeing of
individuals and groups that have an interest, claim or
stake in their organisations.
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Stakeholders
 Organisational
stakeholders are shareholders, employees,
customers, suppliers and others who have an interest, claim or
stake in an organisation and what it does.
 Managers are often juggling the interests of different stakeholders,
including themselves.
 A management decision to lay off employees might cut costs and
help shareholders but will impact workers and their families.
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Ethics and managers
 Ethics: The inner-guiding moral principles, values
and beliefs that people use to analyse or interpret a
situation and then decide what is the ‘right’ or
appropriate way to behave.
 Managers often experience ethical dilemmas where the
decision will help one group of stakeholders and
hinder or hurt another, yet the decision must be made.
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Ethics
 To help respond to ethical dilemmas, philosophers have debated
about the criteria that might be used for an ethical decision.
 Three models have been developed to try and determine if a
decision is ethical:
- Utilitarian model
- Moral rights model
- Justice model
 Theoretically, each model offers different but complementary
ways to solve ethical dilemmas, BUT ethical issues are rarely
clear cut.
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Utilitarian, moral rights and justice models of ethics
 Utilitarian: An ethical decision is one that produces the
greatest good for the greatest number of people.
 Moral rights: An ethical decision is one that best
maintains and protects the fundamental rights and
privileges (freedom, life, safety, privacy, free speech,
freedom of conscience) of the people affected by it.
 Justice: An ethical decision is one that distributes
benefits and harms among stakeholders in a fair,
equitable or impartial way.
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Ethical decision making
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Why do managers behave unethically?
 Because:
 they believe it will benefit their organisation.
 others are doing it, e.g. bribery, padding expenses.
 it is indirect and insignificant relative to benefits.
 they are pressured by a situation, e.g. work safety
compromised so that production targets are met.
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Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
 Corporate social responsibility is a manager’s duty or
obligation to make decisions that promote the
welfare and wellbeing of stakeholders and society
as a whole.
 It is still an evolving term without a recognised set of
specific criteria; does not have a standard
definition.
 It is generally understood to be the way in which an
organisation achieves a balance between its business
processes to produce an overall positive impact on
society.
 It is about balancing economic, environmental and
social obligations.
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Approaches to social responsibility: obstructionist
 When managers in organisations choose not to
behave in a socially responsible way and
behave unethically and illegally and conceal
their actions as much as possible.
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Approaches to social responsibility: defensive
 When managers behave ethically to the degree
that they stay within the law and abide strictly
with legal requirements.
 This is at least a basic commitment to ethical
behaviour, but managers using this approach
put the claims and interests of their
shareholders first, at the expense of other
stakeholders.
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Approaches to social responsibility: accommodative
 When managers behave legally and ethically
and try to balance the interests of different
stakeholders as the need arises.
 Such managers make choices that are seen as
reasonable by society.
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Approaches to social responsibility: proactive
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Managers taking a proactive approach
actively embrace the need to behave in
socially responsible ways,
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go out of their way to learn about the
needs of different stakeholder groups, and
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are willing to utilise organisational
resources to promote the interests not only
of stockholders but of the other
stakeholders.
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Burger king Case
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Any Question?????
Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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