Flattering and unflattering personality portraits of integratively simple and complex managers.

Abstract

Research has revealed a good deal about both the situational determinants and judgmental and behavioral consequences of integrative complexity. Little is known, however, about people who are prone to think in integratively simple or complex ways. The present study fills this gap by drawing on data collected during in-depth assessments of master of business administration candidates. Integrative complexity was correlated with a broad range of self-report, observer-rating, semiprojective, and managerial-simulation measures. Results revealed a more complex pattern of correlates than one would expect from the flattering theoretical portrayals of integrative complexity. On self-report measures, complex persons scored higher on openness and creativity and lower on social compliance and conscientiousness. On personality-observer ratings, they emerged as narcissistic and somewhat antagonistic. On managerial-observer ratings, complex persons emerged as higher on initiative and self-objectivity. On semiprojective measures, complex persons scored higher on power motivation. The integratively complex manager is reminiscent of creative architects, scientists, and writers who participated in previous assessments over the past 3 decades.

Punctuated incongruity: A new approach to managing trade-offs between conformity and deviation

“…People often choose ''standard setters'' who have high abilities as targets of comparison (Feldman & Ruble, 1981;Festinger, 1954), which can make these individuals targets of hostility among employees struggling to affirm their self-evaluations (Kim & Glomb, 2010). And cognitively complex individuals, who tend to constantly question underlying assumptions, may often be dismissed as too argumentative (Gruenfeld, Martorana, & Fan, 2000;Thomas-Hunt & Gruenfeld, 1998) or even as antagonistic and narcissistic (Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry, 1993). Combining these arguments, employees who explore ways of pushing out the optimal performance frontier may give off the impression that they are superior to ordinary culturecompliant employees, which has the potential to trigger political backlash and negative emotions.…”

Close-call counterfactuals and belief-system defenses: I was not almost wrong but I was almost right.

“…Peabody, 1967;Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry, 1993;Tetlock & Tyler, 1996). There are four logical possibilities:…”

Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Prosocial Difference

“…Stü rmer, Snyder, & Omoto, 2005) and favoring beneficiaries with similar backgrounds and experiences (Bunderson, 2003). Furthermore, employees may differ in their trust of and cynicism toward beneficiaries, openness to emotional cues from beneficiaries, and receptivity to information about beneficiaries (e.g., Kramer, 1999;Swann & Rentfrow, 2001;Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry, 1993). Therefore, researchers should explore how individual differences that affect the processes of filtering, encoding, and interpreting information about others moderate employees' reactions to relational job design.…”