Employee Personality Characteristics and Business Resiliency

Highly Resilient Organizations (HRO’s) are mindful. They are aware of unexpected events happening in the present, act quickly to stop them, and restore the organization’s system of functioning (Weick, K. & Sutcliffe, K., 2007). Successful companies are highly resilient – they are not disabled or destroyed by unexpected events. They strive to prevent and contain unexpected events through increased awareness of small failures, reluctance to simplify problems, sensitivity to operations, practice of resilience, and taking advantage of local expertise. Part of what makes an organization resilient is the personality traits of its employees and their relationships with each other.
Lounsbury, J., Smith, R., Levy, J., Leong, F., & Gibson, L. (2009), present research that examines the relationship between personality traits and successful careers. The study compared the personality traits between undergraduate students studying business and non-business majors to determine if personality traits have a correlation to vocation success.

The Resource Associates’ Adolescent Personal Style Inventory for College Students (APSI) scale was used to measure the personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, openness, assertiveness, optimism, tough-mindedness, and work drive. Data from a total of 2,599 undergraduate students was collected. The demographics of the student sample consisted of 832 men and 1,767 women. Ethnic make-up of this sample was 2,131 White, 312 Black, 53 Hispanic, 52 Asian, and 51 identified as Other. Ages ranged from 18 to over 30. 347 of the total students studied were business majors (Lounsbury, J., et al, 2009).

Lounsbury et al used the following personality trait definitions:
Agreeableness – being pleasant, equable, participative, cooperative, and inclined to interact with others;
conscientiousness – being reliable, trustworthy, orderly, dependable, organized, and rule following;
emotional stability – overall level of adjustment and emotional resilience in the face of stress and pressure;
extraversion – having a tendency to be sociable, outgoing, gregarious, warmhearted, expressive, and talkative;
openness – receptivity to learning, new experiences, novelty, and change; assertiveness – speaking up on matters of importance, expressing one’s position, seizing initiative, being forceful, and exerting influence in social settings; optimism – having an upbeat, hopeful outlook, especially concerning plans, prospects, people, and the future, even in the face of difficulty and adversity, a tendency to minimize problems and persist in the face of setbacks;
tough-mindedness – appraising information and making decisions on the basis of logic, facts, and data rather than feelings, sentiments, values, and intuition; and work drive – being hard-working, industrious, inclined to put in long hours and effort to make good grades and achieve at a high level in school.

The results of this study show that business majors had significantly higher scores than non-business majors for conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, assertiveness, and tough-mindedness, but lower scores on agreeableness and openness. These findings seem to be consistent with business success factors, as they correlate with the traits of highly resilient organizations.

Business environments produce both expected and unexpected events that require employees to interact. The way employees react to each other and to events, impact the success of a business. Therefore, personality traits of an organization’s employees will impact how they interact with each other and ultimately impact the organization’s ability to be resilient to unexpected events.

Corporate culture determines how an organization reacts to events. Corporate culture is defined by the personality traits and the actions of its employees. Conscientious employees excel at activities such as goal setting, organizing, managing time, paying attention to detail, adhering to rules, and meeting expectations. Emotional stability is essential for dealing effectively with the stress and pressure of the business world – decisions must be made intellectually not based on emotion. Employees with traits of strong extraversion, assertiveness, and tough-mindedness are more likely to speak up about matters and influence organizational change. An organization that hires employees with these traits is likely have more mindful infrastructure that is able to recover from unexpected events. This is because an organization is a complex system whose parts affect all other parts. The actions of an organizations employees can affect all other parts of the organization.

A single action by one part can cause unexpected events among other parts (Ollhoff, J. & Walcheski, M., 2002). In an effort to avoid unexpected events, a highly resilient organization continually tracks small failures; resists oversimplification; remains sensitive to operations; maintains capabilities for resilience; and takes advantage of shifting locations of expertise (Weick, K. & Sutcliffe, K., 2007). Since employees are a part of an organization’s culture and system, their personality traits impact the organization’s overall resiliency.

Lounsbury’s article, Personality Characteristics of Business Majors as Defined by the Big Five and Narrow Personality Traits, indicates that business majors seem to have personality traits that drive their success in business careers. Those same personality traits can help establish an environment of mindfulness within an organization because they are the same traits that identify well-differentiated people.

Differentiation is important to a resilient organization because it affects how employees react to each other. Differentiation is a healthy balance between autonomy and relationships, and the perception of the boundaries that define that balance. A well-differentiated person has the ability to be autonomous yet still maintain healthy relationships. Ollhoff states that well differentiated people are: not controlled by emotion – decisions are made intellectually; are less influenced by praise or criticism – they know where they stand on an issue; are autonomous; and are governed by intentional principles and goals, not emotional reactivity.

The research conducted by Lounsbury et al shows a correlation between mindful personality traits and students that major in business. Weick, K. & Sutcliffe, K. suggest a correlation between mindfulness and highly resilient organizations. A mindful infrastructure begins with the smallest part of the organizational system – the individual employee and his or her personality.

Is there a correlation between highly resilient organizations and the percentage of its employees with business degrees? Further research is needed to answer that question, but perhaps an organization striving for mindfulness should consider hiring a considerable percentage of college graduates with business majors.

References
Lounsbury, J., Smith, R., Levy, J., Leong, F., & Gibson, L. (2009). Personality characteristics of business majors as defined by the big five and narrow personality traits. Journal of Education for Business, 84.4, 200-204.
Ollhoff, J. & Walcheski, M. (2002). Stepping in wholes: Introduction to complex systems. Eden Prairie: Sparrow Media Group, Inc.
Weick, K. & Sutcliffe, K. (2007). Second edition. Managing the unexpected: Resilient performance in an age of uncertainty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass