Team players help business run smoothly

Team players help business run smoothly

BY PAM SHERIDAN
Special to the Rice News

“Teams” and “teamwork” are the rage in business. Employee cooperation and willingness to assist colleagues are seen as essential for the smooth functioning of an organization. Rice researchers have found that the personality trait of conscientiousness is closely associated with this “helping behavior,” but that it is not enough. The conscientious employee also must be highly agreeable, extroverted and have a high degree of emotional stability.

“Conscientiousness is the personality dimension most consistently related to work behaviors, yet under certain conditions, it could actually inhibit interpersonal helping, which is also very important in today’s organizations,” said Jennifer George, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and professor of psychology. “To the extent that highly conscientious individuals are agreeable, outgoing or have a high degree of emotional stability, they are more likely to exhibit helping behaviors.”

George and her colleagues suggest that when individuals are low on these traits, conscientiousness could actually inhibit interpersonal helping. For example, if someone is low in agreeableness or is antagonistic or rude, they may be self-centered and focus on their own job performance. Individuals who are highly conscientious but low on extraversion may prefer to be alone rather than help others. If they’re highly conscientious but low on emotional stability or high on neuroticism, they may be anxious about their own performance and too pressured to help others.

Prior personality studies examining the connection between personality traits and helping behavior generally have focused on individual traits with inconclusive results. The study was the first to analyze the combined impact of different traits. “It’s important to appreciate that people have different aspects to their personalities,” George said. “So, to really understand people’s behavior — in this case, the factors that play a role in spontaneous acts of helping — you have to take into account multiple traits.”

Data for the study was drawn from questionnaires distributed to members of the National Association of Women In Construction (NAWIC) and from ratings completed by their supervisors. The NAWIC subjects responded to a 15-page survey to measure their levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, emotional stability and openness to experience. The degree to which the employees exhibited helping behavior was based on responses from their supervisors.