Organizational Behavior For Hierarchy Of Needs

Big Five Personality Theory

Discuss about the Organizational Behavior for the Hierarchy of Needs.

In the past century there has been ample research conducted on the relationship between performance of employees and their personalities. The performance of an employee not only depend on the knowhow of the trade but also depends on multiple factors like the initiative they undertake in solving the problem, resourcefulness of that particular employee, best utilization of available resources, time and energy spend in doing a particular task. There are two factors that influence job performance one is situational factors like the nature and characteristic of job coworker etc and another part is the personality factor of individual employees (McShane and Von Glinow 2015). The aim of this report is to test the employees of a reputed pharmaceutical company on the basis of big 5 personality’s traits and to prepare a report on the result.

In 1950 the initial model of personality theory was advanced by Ernest Tupes and Raymond christial based on the work conducted in US Air force Personnel laboratory. Then in 1990 J.M. Digman proposed the five factor model which was implemented at the highest level of organization by Goldman in 1993 (Cobb-Clark and Schurer 2012). 

The researchers collectively agree that all the personality measures can be grouped according to big 5 personality dimension. This theory is universal and has proven to be relevant across different cultures. The recent research also shows that the bases of these personalities are genetics and they are mostly inherited (Leutner et al. 2014).

Traits can be explained as particular pattern of thought, actions or feelings that distinguishes one person from another. The Big Five theory has identified five personality traits that make the overall personality of an individual and they are OCEAN or Openness, Consciousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (Credé 2012).

Openness- A person who is eager to learn new things and are always looking forward to new experiences is considered to be open. The traits like imaginative, insightful and divergent thinking are associated with openness. A person scoring high in this test is generally tolerant towards uncertainty and has the capacity to assimilate information. It is also found that they are more aware of feelings, thoughts and impulses as a result they have much deeper and intense experience. They are generally highly motivated and are comfortable in an unfamiliar and complex terrain.

Consciousness- A person with higher level of consciousness are usually more reliable and prompt. A conscious person is more determined, strong willed and purposeful which is reflect in their hard work, carefulness and the ability to plan and organize task appropriately. The characteristics of conscious person are that they are methodical, ordered and thorough.

Five Personality Traits Proposed by the Theory

Extraversion- An individual having energetic toward work and social life is termed as Extrovert. They have traits like assertiveness, activity, sociability and positive emotions. The extroverts are easily bored but they get motivated by change, variety and challenges. The recent researches show that extroverts are the hard working, adaptive and ambitious lot among the employees.

Agreeableness- An agreeable person is compassionate, cooperative, and friendly. They are always eager to help others and they hope that others will be equally helpful. The traits of agreeable person are that they are affectionate, sympathetic and kind.  

Neuroticism- It is also referred to as emotional stability. People scoring high on this test often suffer from negative emotion and they are generally moody or tense.

The Big 5 Personality test can be very helpful in providing an insight how employees will react to different situation. It is very helpful for an organization to assess the strength and weakness of employees. The objective of the research is to conduct a Big 5 personality on one of the popular pharmaceutical company Sun Pharma pvt ltd and to reflect the result in the report.

In order to achieve the research objective a survey was designed. This design was cross sectional which means sample is drawn from population at a particular point in time (Funder 2015).

The sample was taken from the company Sun Pharma ltd which is among the top ten Pharma Company in Malaysia. The company has various manufacturing units across Malaysia and has approval of Ministry of health. Among all the employees a total of 159 employees were chosen for the empirical study.

In order to measure the personality of individual based on Big 5 theory the NEO Personality Inventory Revised (NEO-PI-R) was used for the purpose. The NEO-PI-R has 240 items and the five personalities are further divided into 6 component. The alpha coefficient of personality dimension of 0,86 suggests openness and 0,92 indicates neuroticism. The job performances of the employees were measured using Performance Appraisal Questionnaire (PAQ). The PAQ primarily measures performance, creativity and management ability with 30 items of questions. The Performance Appraisal Questioner is validly constructed and it is proved by the fact that the factor loading between 0,41 and 0,98 was obtained.

The SAS program was used to carry out statistical analysis.  In order to analyze the result the descriptive statistics like mean, skewness, kurtosis and standard deviation were used. 

Research Design

The result of product moment correlation shows that there is no relationship between task performances, personality dimensions and creativity. The result is presented in the table below:

Table showing moment correlation coefficient between NEO-PI-R and PAQ

Items	Task Performance	Management	Creativity
Openness	0,13	0,41	0,26
Consciousness	0,05	0,10	0,07
Extraversion	0,17	0,21	0,22
Agreeableness	0,07	0,31	0,10
Neuroticism	-0,11	-0,22	-0,31

Table showing the result of Canonical Analysis

Particulars	Correlation	Coefficient
Personality dimension set
Openness	0,75	0,78
Consciousness	0,35	-0,04
Extraversion	0,51	-0,06
Agreeableness	0,23	-0,05
Neuroticism	-0,65	-0,73
Percent of variance	0,02	–
Redundancy	0,04	–
Performance Set
Task Performance	0,42	-0,76
Creativity	0,89	1,49
Percent of variance	0,48	–
Redundancy	0,07
Canonical correlation	0,38

The practically significant correlation is 0,30 and as the table shows there are no correlations found between personality dimensions. The result of Canonical analysis however confirms that openness is related to task performance and creativity. It can be seen that an employee who is open to experience are imaginative, sensitive, has a high degree of alertness of inner feelings and has a preference of variety. This all explains the reason behind high score that openness has on performance and creativity at work. The result is in conformity with the findings of the researcher Raudseep and Horton. The test shows that the work performance of an employee is much better than less conscious employees. It is also found that open, stable and agreeable management performs much better than those scored low in this dimension. The finding shows that there is a negative relationship between neuroticism and managerial performance. The managers scoring high on this are unable to cope up with stress; they have irritational ideas and fail to control their impulses. The sun Pharma has relatively young employees so the managers are require to continuously adapt to the new changes as a result there exists significant relationship between managerial performance and openness to experience.

Conclusion

In conclusion it can be said that the pharmaceutical company is required to consider the personality dimensions of their work force in order to predict successfully the creativity and managerial performance during career development and selection. It recommended that further research is to be conducted in order to draw a broader conclusion between the job performance and personality dimension.

If an individual has the dream of achieving the highest in life then he needs to do some serious planning for life (Pellegrino and Hilton 2013). Life is dynamic and it is continuously changing sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. When the shore of life is continuously crushed by the waves of apathy and hopelessness then a proper plan acts as a light in the midst of darkness. In this essay therefore an attempt is made to plan my career goals and objective in the light of Maslow’s Theory of Hierarchy of Needs.

Research Sample

I have a bachelor degree in science from a recognized university and have experience in working as medical representative for a multinational company and currently working in Sun Pharmacy. The responsibility of my work is to increase sales and expand the business in the South western frontier of Malaysia. I have also been given the responsibility to develop an educational program to increase the brand awareness of the company. In this work the depth of my marketing and sales skill were tested which highlighted my ability in the eyes of the senior manager. I was also engaged in developing a strategic initiative with management so that use of the product of the company could be increased. As soon as I joined the company targets were achieved and I secured a salary hike within 3 months of joining. I have adequate knowledge of the latest industry development. The main soft skills that would be helping me in achieving career goals are patience, pleasing personality and the ability to communicate well with the physician.

I have classified my career goals in two parts short term goal and long term goals. The goal that I have includes:

• To become senior medical representative within 6 months.
• In two years time to attain to the post of the area sales manager.
• In 4 year to become the sales manager of the Sun Pharma Company.

The long term goal is to become the executive officer of the Sun Pharmacy on or after 5 years time.

The main objective of The Maslow’s Theory is to understand the reason that motivates an individual. In 1943 Maslow proposed the theory that peoples have certain motivation to achieve their needs (Anderson 2014). If one need is satisfied then the person looks to achieve the next needs and this cycle continues. The wide spread and most popular version of Maslow hierarchy of needs is the Maslow five stage motivational model:

Self actualization: It is a self fulfillment needs that one achieve through self actualization. The self actualization is achieved by accomplishing one’s own full potential which includes creativity.

Esteem Needs: The psychological needs include esteem needs which is associated with reputation and sense of accomplishment.

Love needs and belongingness: A good relationship and sense of belonging is a very important psychological need that cannot be ignored (Cao et al. 2013).

Safety needs: It is a basic need that is concerned with safety and security of the job.

Physiological needs: This are the basic needs like food, water, rest etc without which no other achievement could be satisfying.

The basic needs if not fulfilled motivates people to achieve those needs. One can satisfy the basic need by taking one job. A job of any kind will satisfy the basic need. As I already have a good job so this job so the basic needs of food, water etc are satisfied.

Measuring Mechanism

It is important to note that after lower level of needs is satisfied then one progress to satisfy the higher levels of needs either wise the higher level goals will remain meaningless (Lester 2013). I am currently a medical representative therefore my psychological and safety needs are satisfied. The planned goals that I have include becoming the Executive officer of the Sun Pharmacy. It shows that a sense of belonging and love needs are satisfied as there is a strong bond between employees. As a result my goal is to grow with the company and achieve the highest position of the executive.

It is my goal to achieve the promotional objective that I set for myself in order to satisfy the psychological needs of self esteem. It is important to maintain self esteem in order to achieve the highest goal. The achievement of the goal of area sales manager will help me maintain the self esteem and then further development of goals will be possible.

The ultimate self actualization goal will be achieved when the career goal of becoming the Sales Manager within 4 years and the ultimate goal of becoming the Executive officer on or after 5 years is achieved. Then at this level full potential will be achieved thus satisfying the self fulfillment needs (Jerome 2013).

Conclusion

The essay shows that Maslow’s theory is very helpful in achieving and fulfilling the career goals of life.

Reference

Anderson, A., 2014. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The Prairie Light Review,36(2), p.7.

Cao, H., Jiang, J., Oh, L.B., Li, H., Liao, X. and Chen, Z., 2013. A Maslow’s hierarchy of needs analysis of social networking services continuance.Journal of Service Management, 24(2), pp.170-190.

Cobb-Clark, D.A. and Schurer, S., 2012. The stability of big-five personality traits. Economics Letters, 115(1), pp.11-15.

Credé, M., Harms, P., Niehorster, S. and Gaye-Valentine, A., 2012. An evaluation of the consequences of using short measures of the Big Five personality traits. Journal of personality and social psychology, 102(4), p.874.

Funder, D.C., 2015. The Personality Puzzle: Seventh International Student Edition. WW Norton & Company.

Jerome, N., 2013. Application of the Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory; impacts and implications on organizational culture, human resource and employee’s performance. International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 2(3), pp.39-45.

Lester, D., 2013. Measuring Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Psychological reports, 113(1).

Leutner, F., Ahmetoglu, G., Akhtar, R. and Chamorro-Premuzic, T., 2014. The relationship between the entrepreneurial personality and the Big Five personality traits. Personality and individual differences, 63, pp.58-63.

McShane, S.L. and Von Glinow, M.A., 2015. Organizational Behavior 7/e.

Pellegrino, J.W. and Hilton, M.L. eds., 2013. Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. National Academies Press.