Interpersonal Personality Theory

Introduction

Personality – The motor that drives behaviour and performance.

“An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behaviour: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change. A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life.” – Dr.Joyce.

Personality seems to be the most important part of our social and interpersonal interactions with others. It is often suggested that an individual’s personality may predict his/her performance in an organization or in any work place. This is an important topic that has been debated over for years now. Although, it is critically important for an organization to employ people who are very efficient and high performing

It does not explain all of human personality. Some psychologists have dissented the big five theory because they feel that it neglects the other domains of personality such as religiosity, manipulative-ness, thrift-ness, conservativeness, snobby-ness, sense of humour, risk taking. It has also been referred to as ‘a psychology of the stranger’ (Dan P. McAdams- 1995) because they refer to traits that anyone can easily observe in a stranger and the more personal and privately held traits have been excluded or ignored. Correlations have been found between some of these variables and the Big Five, such as the inverse relationship between political conservatism and Openness (McCrae, 1996). Also, inconsistencies have been identified between traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability have been associated with better performance, however, conscientiousness has been found out to be a better predictor of work performance than emotional stability in a person. Few of the traits such as openness, agreeableness and extraversion are not universally important. Hence, the five factors are not orthogonal to one and another. The other issue we will be seeing is the methodological issue of the five

Conscientiousness was the strongest trait that related to OCB (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, Barrick, (1999). It shows that people who are reliable and hard-working have a better chance of being promoted at their work place. Also, people who are more outgoing, sociable and confident are more likely to be efficient managers. Also, personality assessments are helpful in selecting people for management roles. Such tests measure a person’s mental ability and give the employer a better opinion about the job