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Relationship Between Personality Traits, Work Environment And Interpersonal Relationship At Work
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1.6 Operational Definition Of Terms
Interpersonal relationship: refers to patterns of interaction with specific partners such as fellow employees over time.
Work Environment: In the context of this study, refers to the psychosocial aspects of the office as perceived by the employee.
Extraversion:
this refers to high energy and activity level, dominance, sociability,
expressiveness, and positive emotions as measured by the Big Five
Inventory by John, Donahue & Kentle (1991).
Agreeableness:
refers to prosocial orientation, altruism, tender mindedness, trust,
and modesty as measured by the Big Five Inventory by John, Donahue &
Kentle (1991).
Conscientiousness: refers to impulse control, task
orientation, goal directedness as measured by the Big Five Inventory by
John, Donahue & Kentle (1991).
Neuroticism: refers
to anxiety, sadness, irritability, and nervous tension as measured by
the Big Five Inventory by John, Donahue & Kentle (1991).
Openness:
refers to the depth and complexity of an individual’s mental and
experiential life as measured by the Big Five Inventory by John, Donahue
& Kentle (1991).
1.7 Literature Review
1.7.1 Theoretical review
Employee Interpersonal Relationships
Past
research has focused on the formation of interpersonal relationships at
work as a function of employee demographics and the work environment.
Song and Olshfski (2008) proposed that who we claim as our friends is
influenced by our family ties, class, ethnic background, race, gender,
age, experience, interests, and geography. Many theories support the
proposition that demographic characteristics impact social relationships
between individuals (Sacco & Schmitt, 2005). Social categorization
(Turner, 1987) and social identity theories (Tajfel & Turner, 1986;
Turner, 1982) put forth that people categorize themselves and others
into in-groups and out-groups according to salient characteristics,
including race and sex.
Individuals tend to minimize differences
among in-group members and maximize perceived differences between
groups. Individuals react more positively to interactions with people in
the same group, even when group distinctions are arbitrary (Sacco &
Schmitt, 2005; Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961).
Similarly, the similarity-attraction paradigm (Berscheid & Walster,
1978; Byrne, 1971) and relational demography theory (Tsui, Egan, &
O’Reilly, 1992; Tsui & O’Reilly, 1989) suggest that demographic
similarity leads to attraction and liking and positively impacts the
social relationships between employees. Interestingly, these theories
suggest that demographic effects on workplace relationships and the
consequences of such relationships may occur even without extensive
employee interaction.
In addition to demographic antecedents,
organizations have many environmental characteristics that can
facilitate friendship making (Pogrebin, 1987). Song and Olfshki (2008)
suggest that organizational cultures which foster informal communication
provide more opportunities to form friendships. Specifically,
organizational norms and rules that encourage communication between
immediate superiors and subordinates have a positive impact on
friendship opportunity. Further, friendships at work may form simply
because of the close proximity, interactions and shared experiences of
coworkers (Lu, 1999; Berman et al., 2002).
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]Studies have shown that in as much as there are more than one person who work in an Organisation, interpersonal relationship is about the most important factor in the productivity and success of such Organisation. The objective of this study therefore is to examine the influence of Personality factors and work environment on interpersonal relationship at work.A survey research design was adopted using a total sample of one hundred and eighty-one employees, across different industries in Lagos. T ... Continue reading---
