8 pages

I currently work in a Chinese manufacturing company that mainly produces sugar. This large-scale multi-production company has more than 2,000 employees in China who work in shifts to ensure production efficiency. While working in a manufacturing company, organizational strategies are used while working on sugar production as a final product. The company has more than 200,000 acres of arable land and can purchase more than 16.2 million tons of main raw material sugarcane.

Any organization in the universe faces problems that affect the company positively but takes a high toll on negatively affecting the company. The pain often causes the organization not to execute its duties consecutively. These problems usually start at the grassroots level, where the employees are found. These kinds of problems are referred to as organizational behaviors. Organizational behaviors are the dynamic behavioral aspects that are set on display by groups of people in an organizational setting. Having worked in my company for two years, one of the main problems faced in my company is the difficulty in blending different personalities to become a working team.

The fellow employees in the company come from diverse social and cultural places, thus making it rare to find an organization with all employees having the same personalities. When these employees are assigned to work together, ideologies, beliefs, misconceptions, and self-control are always not the same, thus causing a dividing factor amongst them. Arguments may also occur when tasks are divided among individuals, as some will think the task distribution was not well conducted. This, therefore, causes bad blood between the employees.

On conduction of an interview, a coworker had the mentality that they are assigned tasks according to their social status in society. At this point, equity theory pops up to bringing forward the employee's concern about equality amongst themselves. Research done by Tanner (2018) supports the theory that equity is one of the many aspects that need to be considered when working with a group. It allows people in a group to work uniformly and unified. When equality is not met, some employees think they deserve better treatment than others. Thus fairness is a virtue that needs to be instilled in any company or organization, and that will allow employees to adjust to working together. Employees are motivated when they both earn an equal amount of wages for the same work rather than finding out that the other earns more wage for the same amount of work done. This eventually demoralizes them. Therefore to motivate the employees and to maintain a unified working strategy for a group of workers, companies need to set forward equity strategies among employees.

The other topic contributing to making personality differences a problem is leadership styles and behavior theories. Most successful organizations and companies are at the top echelon due to their leaders who have made it possible for the companies to catapult to higher levels. Leaders are the ones that influence, motivate, demoralize, value change, and promote values and cultures in an organization. They are the final effectors and executioners in companies and organizations. Cognitive abilities allow for the leaders to relate well with the employees. Some leaders, on the other hand, don't have these qualities, and instead of unifying their employees, they end up causing divisions in their companies, and they further this by not only choosing sides but by not finding a solution acceptable by all. Leaders need to implement leadership skills and styles that have a positive impact on the personalities of their own employees. They need to build trust among their employees, and thus, they will adjust to following instructions from their leaders. Leaders apply management styles like; accommodating style, in different style, sound style, dictatorial style, and status quo styles to ensure both the company and its employees are considered in any situation without having to bias on one side.

It's a leader's job to ensure employees that they need to adjust their personalities in order to work towards a common goal which is the growth of the company or organization. Adjustment in the employees' personalities can be triggered if the leaders are supportive and participative towards the employees through motivation and awarding employees who work hard to benefit the company at large.

Theories suggest that leaders are not born but made through the behaviors they learn and sometimes copy from other leaders. This theory allows leaders to learn the different personalities of their employees and how to cope with them. Sometimes taking action requires the leaders to study personalities in order to acquire a positive response from those being addressed. This helps in team development, supporting and aligning employees’ objectively promoting commitment and contribution towards organizational benefit.

For example, a study by Wroblewski(2019) shows that Behavioral theories also ensures that leaders notice the different personalities and perception of different employees towards a common objective in order to deduce the best ideology to help solve a problem or execute an organizational objective among many other decision-making momentums. Therefore managers need to incorporate a different set of skills to allow blend and manage different employee personalities. Research by Hassan et al. (2015) indicated how Personalities further a part in agreeableness, openness, neuroticism extraversion, and organizational performance among employees. The linkage is also related to psychology because this relates to the study of people who work together to achieve a goal through the coordination of individual efforts. It seems plausible that Leadership styles moreover moderates the commitments of employees towards their leaders, thus aligning their personalities towards a common person. Leaders need to develop effective communication with their employees. This diverts their personality as a result of the empowerment and mentorship given to them by their leaders, urging them to be more robust a creative in their day-to-day activities in the company. Allowing such a practice encourages and implements changes to the employees as they undergo changes in our modern dynamic world, and thus this will enable them to be comfortable and to ensure they satisfy the needs of the company in which they work.

Students on a study tour to the sugar company where I am employed were required to collect data that will help to provide evidence of the nature and extent of personality difference as a problem in the company. After several interviews with various co-employees, they resorted to the companies archives, where they were allowed to peruse through the company record books for the purpose of finding out how personalities amongst employees affect the company. A computer-generated questionnaire was used to come up with the findings as it was distributed to 10 people in the company who filled the questionnaires.

This project is primarily set up to put forward a conceptualized report that will help organizations and companies to come up with ways to deal with the problem of different personalities among their employees. Questions that were in the questionnaire included: Is equity theory practiced in the company, does leadership skill affect your personality? Do the behavioral theories of leaders affect your personality? , what trends negatively affect your personality as an employee? , Do you think there’s any policy that can be implemented to make your personality comfortable in this company? Those were the questions that were made available in the questionnaire to help in the research study. This study also allowed employees to speak out their grievances anonymously to the companies’ administration as their names were in disguise.

On presentation of results after successfully conducting the study exercises, findings on the questionnaire indicated that employees' personalities were not considered in decision-making processes made by leaders of the company. The employees also indicated that the styles implemented by the leaders had a toll on their personalities, and they need them to have a better approach towards them by finding out how to relate and coordinate with them without affecting their emotions and personalities in any way possible. One trend that affected employees negatively was the fact that some had to work extra hours without overtime pay; thus, this demoralizes the employee in the company. The survey also brought to light the fact that most companies set rules and regulations that run the companies without considering the employees' causes disputes between the administration and its employees.

Though the difference in personalities was the main problem facing my company, other companies face different problems that need to be thoroughly researched by researchers in order to ensure the development methods on how to get rid of the for better working experiences in companies and organization across the world. They also urged the need to document surveys for the purpose of future reference to companies that will have similar problems. It was also concluded the agreeing was most effective to the personality of employees as it allowed employees to be more open after they dwell on a common objective. Peterson (2021) states that openness plays a role that ensures employees have an impact on the effectiveness of their companies regardless of the status they hold in the company or organization. It also allows employees to feel satisfied with their decisions; thus, this makes them more motivated and self-driven to ensure the company acquires the best while, on the other hand, their flexibility at work is not hindered in any circumstance. Openness also created a mutual relation between leaders and employees as they are capable of presenting their concerns without any pressure instilled in them and without fear of any consequences that may be implicated on them for presenting ideologies that the company tends to ignore. Openness begets agreeableness among employees who have the same perspective towards the same objective that they think will have the benefit to both the company and them.

Professor comment:

The OB problem is not clearly defined here. I think it is conflict and poor performance of teams, but you don't provide specific examples of this.

Personality differences and leadership style can contribute to conflict in teams. Please note that it is not necessary for everyone to have the same personality in a team. Often what is called "personality conflict" is what OB calls affective conflict and can be managed with good conflict management strategies. Leadership is also important to create group cohesion and cooperation.

You do not need to review research for this Part 1 paper. That should be done in Part II. Please refer to the textbook for references on conflict in teams and leadership styles in teams.