This is “Understanding People at Work: Individual Differences and Perception”, chapter 3 from the book An Introduction to Organizational Behavior (v. 1.1). For details on it (including licensing), click here.

For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page. You can browse or download additional books there. To download a .zip file containing this book to use offline, simply click here.

Has this book helped you? Consider passing it on:
Help Creative Commons
Creative Commons supports free culture from music to education. Their licenses helped make this book available to you.
Help a Public School
DonorsChoose.org helps people like you help teachers fund their classroom projects, from art supplies to books to calculators.

Chapter 3 Understanding People at Work: Individual Differences and Perception

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

  1. Define personality and describe how it affects work behaviors.
  2. Understand the role of values in determining work behaviors.
  3. Explain the process of perception and how it affects work behaviors.
  4. Understand how individual differences affect ethics.
  5. Understand cross-cultural influences on individual differences and perception.

Individuals bring a number of differences to work, such as unique personalities, values, emotions, and moods. When new employees enter organizations, their stable or transient characteristics affect how they behave and perform. Moreover, companies hire people with the expectation that those individuals have certain skills, abilities, personalities, and values. Therefore, it is important to understand individual characteristics that matter for employee behaviors at work.