Personality traits and workplace culture: Analyzing personality transformations in corporate environment

Abstract

The term personality originates from the Latin word ‘Personae’ which refers to the masks wornby the actors in ancient plays. It relates to the fact that people dawn upon different personae toportray different characters. In modern context, the term personality is often used to referindividual differences in patterns of reacting to various stimuli. The study of personality, inbrief, consists of two distinct areas – one, understanding individual differences in a person andtwo, understanding how these difference interact and come together as one personality.However, there is little agreement among researchers about the various personalitytheories defining the term. Gordon Allport classified over fifty definitions, Carl Roger stressedon the pattern of ‘I’ feeling that arises out of personal experiences. Skinner, on the other handdid not find it necessary to use any term like ‘self’ or ‘personality’ to explain human behaviour.For Sigmund Freud, arguably the most popular researcher, personality was all aboutsubconscious desires and hidden feelingsii. According to Barbara Engler, the approaches tostudying personality can be divided in two parts – academic psychology and clinical practice.Quite a lot of literature is available on personality theory. We have restricted ourliterature review to the theories which are of more relevance to our research. The following arethe most famous and most commonly cited studies done on personality theory