ORGANIZATION-LEVEL INTERVENTIONS IN MITIGATING THE BURDEN OF WORKPLACE CONFLICTS

Conflicts are unavoidable at workplace and become a burden in case managers and leaders ignore their roots. Despite conflicts appear annoying and destructive, they sometimes provide a positive way to strengthen employees- manager’s relationship and reveal the means to solving repetitive organization issues occurring at workplace. Conflicts within organizational settings are therefore an interesting topic to be discussed by researchers or scholars so that they can propose adequate solutions to handle them. This paper identifies conflicts handling styles recommended for managers and leaders to address and mitigate the burden of workplace conflicts whose outcomes are burnout, psychological and physical illness, absenteeism, lost productivity (from being unwell in the workplace) and turnover resulting from personality, diversity, perception, culture, occupational stress, etc., based on the types (task, process and relationship conflicts) with proper diagnosis and organizational- level interventions of such conflicts as compared to non-intervention controls. The researcher concluded that as negative outcomes of workplace conflicts are unpredictable, it is better to prevent conflicts than to cure them.

Managing Team Diversity in the Workplace

The study of team diversity has generated a large amount of research because of the changing nature of workplaces as they become more diverse and work becomes more organized around teams. Team diversity describes the variation among team members in terms of any attribute in which individuals may differ. Examples are demographic background diversity, functional or educational diversity, and personality diversity. Diversity can be operationalized as categorical (variety), continuous (separation), or vertical (disparity). Initial research on team diversity was dominated by a main-effects approach that produced two main perspectives: social-categorization scholars suggested that diversity hurts team outcomes, as it decreases feelings of cohesion and increases dysfunctional conflict, whereas the information and decision-making perspective suggested that diversity helps team outcomes, as it makes more information available in the team to help with decision-making. In an effort to integrate these disparate insights, the categorization-elaboration model (CEM) proposed that team diversity can lead both to social categorization and to information elaboration on the basis of contextual factors that may give rise to either process. The CEM has received widespread support in research, but a number of questions about the processes through which diversity has an effect on team outcomes remain.

The Personality Underpinnings of Strategic Leadership: The CEO, TMT, and Board of Directors

“Strategic leadership” is the umbrella term used to describe the study of an organization’s top leaders—what they do, their interactions, and how they influence important organizational outcomes. The three major areas of focus within this field are the chief executive officer (CEO), the top management team (TMT), and the board of directors. Although each area has vibrant bodies of literature on important topics of inquiry, the integration of research findings, frameworks, and insights across the three areas remains underdeveloped. For example, the study of leader personality is a rich line of inquiry within the broader management literature, and all three areas are developing, albeit at different rates and with little integration across the three areas. The work on CEO personality is the most developed, and the work on board personality is the least developed. CEOs personality traits that have been studied include the Big Five personality traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, and emotional stability), locus of control, core self-evaluations, narcissism, overconfidence, hubris, humility and regulatory focus (a person’s general approach to goals as either promotion focused or prevention focused). TMT personality traits that have been studied include the Big Five, trait positive affect, propensity to innovate, and competitive aggressiveness. Finally, board of directors’ personality traits that have been studied include only personality diversity.

Using behaviour observations to study personality in a group of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in captivity

This article presents a novel approach to the study of primate personality and illustrates it with a study of capuchin monkeys. While most personality studies with capuchin monkeys have used rating questionnaires, the research method of this study relies instead on direct behaviour observations. In an effort to capitalize on the full richness of behavioural observation data, we used both statistical and non-statistical methods to analyse data from behavioural observations of a group of capuchin monkeys in captivity. Interest in capuchin monkeys as a species has increased due to their cognitive capacities, behavioural flexibility and complex social structure, as well as many similarities with great apes in dimensions of personality. In this study we focus in three aspects of personality: diversity, flexibility and complexity. Our results provide a detailed picture of these aspects of capuchins’ personality, including the degree of “predictability” and “unusualness” of individual capuchins’ behaviour.

When Demographic and Personality Diversity Are Both at Play

This chapter reviews what we know about the effects of demographic diversity (age, sex, and ethnicity) and personality diversity (conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness) in teams in organizations. It also outlines challenges to today's diversity management and Human Resource (HR) practices, such as the lack of definite conclusions from research results, the mismatch between team diversity research designs and organizations' needs, and the lack of research examining simultaneously different aspects of diversity. Drawing from analysis results of team data from 55 teams of volunteers from Shanghai, the author recommends that HR training and selection take specific team contexts into account and increase attention on functions that support important team processes such as communication and mutual support among team members.

Customer Personality Taxonomy: A Theoretical Analysis of Customer Diversity Management in the Hospitality Industry

Development in Nigerian Tourism industry and the emerging shift toward the culture of leisure by most Nigerians have attendant challenges in management of customer satisfaction in hospitality industry. Cultural diversity combined with personality diversity calls for improvement of understanding of interface staff in hospitality based firms to enhance customer satisfaction. This paper presents a theoretical taxonomical analysis of customer personality typologies and further designs a framework of corresponding treatments for managing each identified and isolated personality, for effective customer satisfaction. The paper adopted the DISC framework to identifying and isolated four distinct personalities corresponding to: Expressiveness, Assurance, and Compliant personalities. The framework for managing DISC is FEAS, corresponding to Firmness, Expressiveness, Assurance, and Straightforwardness. The paper concluded that every unique personality typology demands an appropriate attention to achieve the customer expectation and satisfaction based on his uniqueness. Therefore, FEAS should be adopted to manage DISC in the hospitality industry.

Team composition of new venture founding teams: does personality matter?

Purpose – First, using the task-relationship dichotomy as a framework, the purpose of this paper is to examine the direct effects of team personality level and team personality diversity on new venture growth. Second, the study examines the interaction effects of team personality level and diversity on venture growth. Design/methodology/approach – The sample consisted of 154 teams in a technology incubator in China. Data were collected through an online survey. Findings – Results indicate that high level but low diversity of team task-oriented personality was beneficial for new venture founding teams. Diversity of team task-oriented personality would hurt the new venture growth more when the level of task-oriented personality was low. Relationship-oriented personality diversity, but not the level of relationship-oriented personality, influenced new venture growth. Research limitations/implications – These findings advance research in entrepreneurship, groups, and teams, and provide practical policy implications as well. Practical implications – This study provides practical implications for policy makers regarding what supports should be provided in incubators and for entrepreneurs regarding team member selection. Originality/value – This is one of the first papers to study the personality composition of new venture founding teams.