SAHIL RAWAL BA320 1/29/2015
CHAPTER – 5 Case Incident 1 On the Costs of Being Nice
Questions

5-16 do you think employees must choose between agreeable employees and top performers? Why or why not?
5-16 Yes, I believe that employers must choose between agreeable employees and top performers. In an ideal world, employees would have both these qualities: agreeability and great performance. However, for the most part – as the case states – agreeable employees tend to be good-natured, cooperative, trusting and accommodating, whereas top performers tend to focus on being leaders, or doing what is needed to do the job right, without caring for others. If an employer find amongst its possible future employees who have both these qualities, he or she should definitely be hired. If both qualities are not present in a single candidate for employment, then the employer must decide which is more important for the company: agreeability or top performance.

5-17 often, the effects of personality depends on the situation. Can you think of some job situation in which agreeableness is an important virtue, and some in which it is harmful to job performance?

5-17 Agreeability is always important if you want your firm to have a good working environment and not a hostile one. However, there are instances in which being agreeable is more important. Such cases may be when dealing with others. For instance, people who work in the customer service sector must be agreeable, as customer satisfaction is very important. Another job situation could be working with patients or students – especially young ones. Being too agreeable could be harmful, for instance, in the real estate sector, where every employee wants to get more commissions by selling more properties. Being too agreeable in this instance could be harmful, as the person could tend to help others, and forget that his or her own goal is the same: to sell houses. Another situation in which it may be harmful is in the military sector, as the leaders of which need to show dominance for others to follow their orders.

5-18 in some research we have conducted, we have found that the negative effect of agreeableness on earnings is stronger for men than for women (that is, being agreeable hurt men’s earnings more than women’s). What do you think this might be the case?
5-18