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4/15/2005 12:06:00 AM

Business teamwork: A scout is helpful, conscientious ... also agreeable, extroverted & stable

"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.

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In today's dynamic work environment, employees' willingness to help others is increasingly important for a company to function smoothly. Researchers at Rice have found that conscientious employees are more likely to voluntarily help others in the workplace if they also are highly agreeable, extroverted or have a high degree of emotional stability. On the other hand, highly conscientious employees who aren't very agreeable, enthusiastic, or calm and well adjusted are unlikely to exhibit helping behavior.

"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," says Jennifer George of Rice University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

"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, 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 Rice 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 says. "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 which measured 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.

George is a professor of psychology and the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management in Rice's Jones School. Portions of the study, titled "Linking Personality to Helping Behaviors at Work: An Interactional Perspective," were presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's annual conference by George, Rice graduate student Eden B. King and Michelle Hebl, Rice's Radoslav Tsanoff Associate Professor of Psychology.

In addition to articles that have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including her award-winning paper on the role of emotional intelligence, George has co-authored two widely-used textbooks, Contemporary Management and Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior, which distill research findings for business school students.

George received her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and her M.B.A. and doctoral degrees from New York University. She joined the Jones School faculty in 1999.

To learn more about this research, contact George at jgeorge@rice.edu or Debra Thomas at the Jones School at dthomas@rice.edu .

Research @Rice, 2005