Learning and Development News

Global businesses implications of cultural pesonality traits

By Sue Mennell (23-02-2007)
0 Comments Comments
Article Rating:

Poor Best

Email to a friend | Print Version

Learning and Development News - Global businesses implications of cultural pesonality traits

Newly released data from Personnel Decisions International's (PDI) cross-cultural personality research provides information for global managers on how organisations may need to adapt to these personality differences across cultures.

After observing that disagreements often arise not from what people communicate, but how they communicate it, PDI entered into this cross-cultural research looking for information that would be useful from a business perspective and used its Global Personality Inventory to question nearly 7,500 managers and executives in more than 500 organisations in 12 countries.The GPI is a questionnaire that looks at 39 specific traits that, in aggregate, compose what industrial/organisational psychologists refer to as "The Big Five," namely: emotional balance, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to new experiences.   

Chief among the research findings is the fact that agreeableness, or the tendency to seek harmony and put group needs above the individual versus putting individual needs first, and emotional balance, or the tendency to feel emotions strongly and quickly versus having muted emotional feelings, account for 85 percent of differences among managers and executives working across countries. PDI's research focused on business leaders in Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Between these countries, executives in the U.K. had among the lowest agreeableness scores, although they had average emotional balance scores.   

A high performer in the U.K. may be very conscientious, of average emotional control, and not overly concerned with group harmony. These traits that serve this person so well in their own culture, however, could easily sabotage their efforts in a culture such as Saudi Arabia, where such behaviour could be interpreted as rude and disrespectful, undermining his or her ability to successfully lead their Saudi team.

What defines a 'high performer' changes from country to country -- a crucial finding if an organisation's challenge is to identify high potential talent and manage performance globally.

 

 

Back to top | Latest news

 

Readers Comment

Comment on this story here >

Be the first to comment on this news story