The impact of personality traits on organizational cynicism in the education sector

Abstract

Purpose Today’s organizations try to keep their employees loyalty but employees may still feel unsatisfied and adopt negative attitudes. Cynicism, as a negative attitude of employees toward their organization, leads to unwanted outputs such as lower performance or lower loyalties that can appear in every kind of sector. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of personality traits on organizational cynicism in the education sector. Design/methodology/approach This study used the survey method to collect data and survey forms were distributed to teachers from various private schools in Istanbul, Turkey. With the e-mail survey method, the authors received 254 healthy survey forms from teachers. For personality traits, the five-factor model of personality traits that was developed by McCrae and Costa (1987) was preferred and the organizational cynicism model was evaluated with three basic dimensions as based on Brandes’s (1997) model. Findings Based on data from 254 teachers of various private schools in Istanbul, interrelationships amongst personality traits and organizational cynicism were tested. On the basis of the partial least-squares method, the authors found that agreeableness had a negative effect on cognitive cynicism and affective cynicism, conscientiousness had a negative effect on cognitive cynicism and affective cynicism, neuroticism had a negative effect on cognitive cynicism and behavior cynicism, and openness to experience had a positive effect on cognitive cynicism and affective cynicism. Thus, it can be said that personality traits of teachers had a significant effect on organizational cynicism as a result of this study. Research limitations/implications This study used two main scales: the scale of McCrae and Costa (1987) for personality traits and the scale of Brandes (1997) for organizational cynicism. The authors adapted both the scales for Turkish culture and the education sector that the results can be considered valid for only this study. Originality/value This study shows a significant effect of personality traits on cynicism in the education sector and thus can be considered to be useful for future studies.

Personality: How Does It Impact Teachers’ Organizational Commitment?

“…The last factor is openness to experience with average per indicator 3.56 or 32.64% of the total percentage. Similar result has been attested by Acaray & Yildirim (2017). They researched private school teachers and found out that their openness attitude brings positive effect on cognitive and affective commitment.…”

Gossiping About an Arrogant Leader: Sparked by Inconsistent Leadership, Mitigated by Employee Resilience

“…Beliefs About Inconsistent Leader Actions. We measured employees' cynical beliefs about their leaders' decision making with a five-item scale that reflects the cognitive dimension of organizational cynicism (Acaray & Yildirim, 2017;Scott & Zweig, 2016). The wording of the original items was adapted to capture employees' beliefs about the actions of their immediate supervisor, instead of the actions of their organization in general.…”

“…For employees who feel threatened by adverse, resource-draining work conditions, effective responses help them avoid the escalation of this negative situation into further resource losses (Hobfoll & Shirom, 2000). Similarly, the resource depletion that employees experience when arrogant leaders signal that they are somehow inferior might be countered by beliefs that their leaders are volatile and erratic in their actions (Acaray & Yildirim, 2017;Dean et al, 1998;Kouzes & Posner, 2005). Once they develop such beliefs, employees might seek to emphasize the failures of these leaders during conversations with peers (Dijkstra et al, 2014).…”

“…In particular, employees may engage in negative gossip, because they develop cynical beliefs about their leaders and those leaders' decisions (Dean et al, 1998;Kouzes & Posner, 2005). In so doing, we focus on the cognitive dimension of employee cynicism, manifest in beliefs about a discrepancy between leaders' words versus actions (Acaray & Yildirim, 2017;Dean et al, 1998;Scott & Zweig, 2016). The extent to which employees suffer from arrogant leadership may determine their need to protect their own sense of self-worth by developing beliefs that their leaders are inconsistent and unreliable (Borden et al, 2018), which, in turn, provides justification for describing the leaders negatively in conversations with other organizational members (Decoster et al, 2013).…”

El Cinismo del Empleado y su Relación con Factores Demográficos

“…Con el paso del tiempo, el cinismo se ha incremento de manera significativa en las empresas, pues esta variable es considerada como una actitud negativa que conduce a resultados no deseados, a una menor lealtad y bajo rendimiento, por lo que atribuye a la desconfianza, escándalos y comportamientos oportunistas [13] .…”