Accounting for Individual Differences in the Workplace

Accounting for Individual Differences in the WorkplaceIntroductionIn todays society, there is little doubt that individualist differences atomic number 18 certainly important in the run forplace as one of critical predictors of training outcome, individual productivity or stress at work. For the reason it affects us most in every way to name a few, we perceive and respond information, our abilities and skills much(prenominal) as logic, creativity and critics, etc., it is necessary for an organisation to understand, value and applaud the benefits it would bring. This essay would write about the definition of individual differences to begin with analysis individual differences in demographics, experience, and psycheality some comm and mistaken assumption in measuring them and recommendation for improving it in selecting and managing people. The aim of the paper in the end is to provide some suggestions for managers to mitigate some(prenominal) false assumptions impacts in perso n differences legal opinion.What are individual differences?Studying individual differences is concerned with variations between one person to another, in other words, it is defined by Ashleigh and Mansi (201268) as those parts of us which differentiate us from others. Investigating individual differences is a continuing concern within organisations enables us to, in the view of predicting peoples behaviours, making team up formation easier, in turn, managing the team more effectively while there is a common goal and value among team members. The features remain that each individual is likely to have a regular pattern of behaviour towards similar detail. While there are other key differences between individuals, such as creativity, values, emotions, the scope of this essay entrust be boil downed on 3 key points in demographics, wisdom and personality and the way to measure them in a setting of organisational behaviour.Individual differences in demographicsAccording to a def inition provided by Ashleigh and Mansi (201280), it refers to differences within a population group-such as race, age, income, disabilities, pedagogyal level, experience, marital status and sexual activity. For work psychologists, it is important to take those factors into consideration in order to know the group of people involved in research, and their impact on finding results if any in the way to design data application in reality.For example, in the research carried out by Tsui and OReilly (1989), some demographic factors, namely age, sex, race, education level, commerce tenure were used to investigate their impacts on the relationship of supervisors and subordinates. This study outlined that a negative relation between differences and work effectiveness had been reported, not mention to increased role ambiguity for subordinates. Hence, reducing dissimilarity from those factors mentioned above in job allocation and team formation is likely to improve work effectiveness.Moreo ver, criteria in demographics like age or experience can be employed as supporting factors in the generation-specific HR strategies. For example, young employees are spirit for an attractive and supportive environment in which offers learning goal orientation, in exchange, they will display job commitment while, this environment, on the balance of it, should retain a wealth of valuable knowledge and skills from the older ones (DAmato and Herzfeldt, 2012). Thus, proper and suitable HR strategies should be bedeviln differently to each group. Additionally, while younger employees are, in a way, more creative, fast action, quick response to changes, especially with modern technology, risk-loving, precisely do lack of professional experiences coming with prices, as against with a bit conservative, lazy in response to new changes, but a more professional way of working, rational decision-maker for the older ages. Therefore, it is undoubtedly true that when HR managers fit the job with a person or design training strategies for staff, demographic differences should be given a serious consideration to provide suitable programs.Individual differences in comprehensionTo explain the definition of intelligence, let just put it versus ability. While Wiseman (1967290) declared that ability is defined operationally by the carrying out of an individual in a specific website, for Cooper (19996), in general, are any behaviours that can sensibly be evaluated by either supervise behaviour or enquire others to give evaluation such as typing, reading a map, cooking, etc.On the other hand, as for intelligence Binet and Simon (1905) concord that it has shown the ability to judge, understand and reason easily, while Vernon (1956) added the more general qualities of thinking, level of concept developing, reasoning and grasping relations. By comparison, the term ability has a broader meaning than that of intelligence which means mental ability.There is in addition a room open ing for ongoing debate whether it is fixed or not, or nature-nurture debate. In the study of Dickens and Flynn (2006), increasing nitty-gritty of nutrition, render familiarity, educational games, TV show complexity, etc. have been attributable to intelligence improvement. However, Lynn Vanhanen (2006) found that such IQ discrepancies found in across ethnicities, races, and nationalities are proposing a difference in innate brain capacity. Furthermore, Marks (2010) analysed the association between IQ and situational factor like literacy skills across time, nationality, and race.In addition, regarding to the nature-nurture debate, there are those who believed that only environmental factor is absolutely qualified enough to account for individual differences in intelligence Karmin (1977), however, nearly 20 years later, Mackintosh (1995) declared that heritability should be taken into consideration as well. In more details to what extent, Cooper (1999) argued that, with constant cond itions, intelligence is influenced by genetic component to the extent of 50 60%. These results are consistent with other studies (Plomin et al. 2001 Neisser, 1996) and suggesting that genetic factor may account for more in IQ differences than environmental factors. Therefore, if we are fortunate enough to be born by clever parents and have appropriate educational training, it is possible that our IQ home run can be shifted.That leads to another question, i.e How to measure intelligence?. In order to measure it, cognitive ability examine which is a part of psychometric test has long been used to reflect individuals intelligence quotient (IQ) (William Stern, 1912) is calculated as follows a mental age divided by chronological age, and then(prenominal) multiplied it by 100. One of the most popular and widely used tests of intelligence is Wechsler Scales of Intelligence first introduced by David Wechsler in 1955.A great mount of research and literature has been taken place in the r elationship of intelligence and work performance. This combination of findings provides some support for the conceptual premise that general intelligence is certainly a good predictor in assessment of job performance and training proficiency (Sakett et all., 2008 Furnham, 2005 Drasgow, 2003). Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true while other conditions should dwell the same, otherwise, this criteria is absolutely not the only variable that influences performance, but job knowledge and motivation, do also rate a mention here (Kamin, 1995).One of the advantages associated with psychometric test is that it provides a comparison ability in scores which based on the same standard within a group of people. Secondly, this kind of test offers a prediction of performance in a various settings. For example, to assess ones ability in the recruitment process, situational judgement tests would be given, e.g communicate reaction of salesman towards customers complaint. Particularly, in the conte xt of the organisation, a great number of organisations have found these tests are effective enough, both in the wiz of cost and means for employee selection in recruitment and after-training seasion.On the other hand, there exists some special skills which can not be assessed quickly and accurately finished psychometric tests, such as hand and eye coordination (Cooper, 1999). In fact, some previous study found that about half to two-thirds of large companies gift psychometric testing in senior managers assessment in Europe (Cook, 2004 Furnham, 2004 Salgado, 1997), and 72% of UK organisations employed ability tests in selecting and assessing process (CIPD, 2007).Individual differences in personalityThere is a degree of lacking consensus around the terminology of personality. For Furnham (1997161), the term refers to enduring traits or characteristics that account for consistent patterns of responses, later on, Pervin added (20046) more details in the sense of feeling, thinking an d behaving. Although there have been some other ways to elaborate its definition, they all shared the common feature is that making every charitable beings unique in their interaction with the environment.The key theories of personality can be listed as follows psychodynamic, behaviourist, adult maleistic, biological, trait and type and social-cognitive. However, due to limited scope, this essay will focus on behaviourist (Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike and Skinner, 1849-1990) and trait and type (Allport, Cattell and Eysenck, 1916-1998).Regarding behaviourist possibility, they put emphasis on psychological investigation in observable, measurable behaviour regarded as the exclusively appropriate method. They stated that through reinforcement either punishment or reward, all behaviours can be modified. The environment can, however, initiate our initial response but on the account of reinforcement experiences, our behaviours are possibly shaped, thus creating learnt associations which, i n turn, direct our future behaviours provided in the same settings.As for the type and trait theory, their flacks similarity lies in the fact that both of them consider grouping people into personality characteristics. While the type theory places people into discrete groups, as against with seeing personality feature as a continuum for trait theory. For example, a person would be considered either introvert or extrovert in a view of the type theory. By contrast, the trait theory (Allport, Cattell and Eysenck) would find anyone can be anywhere in the between of introvert and extrovert included those towards the extremes (Matthewman, et all., 2009) and that amount and type of trait would be constant. Later on, Costa and McGrae (1992) discovered the essence of traits had been found in 5 factors which were developed into Ocean theory mentioning about 5 traits, namely Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. It is regarded as a widely acknowledged templ ate in explaining the human personalitys structure (Arnold, 2010).Although Ashleign and Mansi (2012) agreed that trait theory is considered the most useful of personality theories for organisational psychologists so far for its pattern of behaviour detection and classification, its limitations can not be overlooked. In particular, this approach not only offers frameworks in major pattern of behaviours, in which personality assessment can be constructed and employed (Bayne, 1994). However, the fact remains that human behaviours are affected by lots of situational factors (Bandura, 1999), thus individuals are highly unlikely to behave in the same way all the time (Armstrong, 2003). That is the reason why this approach will probably have a limited prediction in value to typical behaviours (Pervin, 1994). Moreover, it fails to explain how these 5 factors develop and the way of their influence on human behaviours which is the centre of work psychologys interest. Therefore, Makin (1996) c laimed that their level of anticipation is not quite high.One question that needs to be asked, however, is whether reading Big fiver traits may make people jump into conclusion too quickly that Neuroticism is something least favourable among all. The answer is it should be dependent on the situation and jobs characteristics. There are actually some jobs requiring a high N scale. For example, Spencer Lord, a HR specialist, says highly neurotic people are often strong in roles that require attention to detail, e.g positions in finance or compliance. Due to their natural caution for avoiding worry about consequences, they can also be very effective in assessing risk (2013). By contrast, being too extroverted may be associated with try to be dominant, attention want which are possibly not a good thing in teamwork. In addition, Robertson (2001) claimed that the strongest predictor of job performance is Conscientiousness. However, it failed to consider in a situation demanding being cre ative and innovate which high C scale usually lacks of. Futhermore, not mention of the fact that, especially in such a cursorily changing world, being adaptive and flexible is certainly necessary (Maltby, et all., 2013414).Personal characteristics meter probably remains significantly important in the occupational assessment process in organisations. In fact, there have been some popular ways, such as personality questionnaires which is another part of psychometric tests, interviewing and behavioural observation.Firstly, a personality questionnaire contains a lot of standardised statements which need to be responded by candidates. Those statements are filtered from a large database to the target group based on all important(p) characteristics that an organisation needs to know (Matthewman at all., 2009). Their scores would be compared with that of specific group which is norms tables. Therefore, this kind of measurement is also called as normative personality measurement. For examp le, 16PF5 was developed from the Cattell model of personality, as for NEO-5 was based on the OCEAN model (Costa and McCrae, 1985), or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is also a usually used one. The fact remains that 56% of UK companies using personality tests at some point of their assessment procedure (CIPD, 2007).On the other hand, despite the great benefits that it offers if being employ in the right way, personality tests can not be trusted as the only source of assessment in people selection. Firstly, candidates may give fake answers in the way they think that would score them up in employers eyes. However, this problem can be mitigated by three ways, namely through direction as be honest, no right and wrong answer, social desirability (Crowne and Marlowe, 1964) and answers whose choices are forced.Secondly, the interview has long regarded as the most commonly used forms of people selection (Keenan, 1995). Although it was brought into criticism for being subject to bia s and unreliability, some recent researches show that a structured interview with well educate interviewers is highly likely to improve its validity (Dipboye, 2005 Posthuma et al., 2002). Therefore, it is essential to ensure that those questions in the interview should be a job analysis related and consistent. Moreover, as for the interviewer, he should keep set of assessing criteria constant among interviewees in general, and in their responses in particular (Arnord et al., 2010), e.g rating each answer with multiple rating scale, taking special notes, asking multiple interviewers if possible.ConclusionIn most situations it is best to use a combination of several personnel selection techniques to ensure fairness and accuracy.