Analyzing Organizational Behavior Of Prime Minister Of New Zealand In An Essay.

Analyze the organizational behavior of Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Personality Traits of Jacinda Ardern

Organizational behavior is the study of people in organizations and their ability to respond and accept the changes in the workplace. Personality plays a significant role in both occupational and individual positions. It applies at all the stages of life and across all the nations. New Zealand is on the top rank on international comparisons of country’s performance like education, health, life quality and economic freedom. This is the reason that a famous personality of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern is chosen for this discussion. Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern is a famous politician of New Zealand who has served the country as 40^th Prime Minister since 26^th October 2017. She also served as the labor party leader since 1 August 2017.

Jacinda Ardern was born on 26 July 1980 in Hamilton, New Zealand. In October, 2017, she has become the youngest prime minister of the country in over 150 years. After completing graduation from University of Waikato in the year 2001, Ardern started her career working as researcher in Prime Minister (Helen Clark)’s office. Later, she worked in UK as policy advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the year 2008, Jacinda was chosen as the President of International Union of Socialist Youth. She is an effective leader in the country and Ardern defines herself as both progressive and social democrat leader. Along with the youngest prime minister, she has become the second elected head of government in the world to give the birth while in the office service (Anderson & Sun 2017).

Personality plays an important role in both personal and organizational life of an individual. Personality of an individual can be described by using Big 5 Personality traits. Big five traits of personality are the five domains which describe human personality and explain the individual differences (Curtis Windsor & Soubelet 2015). It is also known as five factor model that includes five factors such as Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. In today’s workplace environment, human resource professionals generally use the big five personality traits to place the employees. This is because these traits are regarded to become underlying dimensions which make up the overall personality of an individual (Keyes et al. 2015). This framework is totally descriptive model of personality that includes different traits which are discussed below:

• Openness

Openness is appreciation for the emotion, art, unusual opinions, curiosity, adventure and range of experience. This personality trait differentiates imaginative population from conventional population.

• Extraversion

Big 5 Personality Traits

Extraversion emphasizes on the level of comfort on a person in interacting with others. Extraverts gain the energy by communicating with other people, whereas introverts gain energy from within themselves. The major traits of extraverts are such as talkative, assertive and energetic.

• Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness refers to the level to which the people show reliable and constant behavior at workplace. People with higher degree of conscientiousness are more prompt and reliable. Under this, the major traits are such as being methodic, thorough and organized.

• Agreeableness

The people with this personality trait are more cooperative, compassionate and friendly. It refers to the behavior of a person towards others when communicating with them.

• Neuroticism

It is also known as emotional stability that is related to the level of negative emotions and emotional stability of an individual.

Hofstede’s cultural dimension is a framework that is used to analyze the cross cultural communication. This cultural model is introduced by Greet Hofstede that describes the impact of culture on the value of its people. In today’s globalized world, each and every business plans to expand its business to international countries. So, it is very important to analyze the culture and diversity of foreign nations (Bakir et al. 2015). Hofstede’s cultural framework is the model that can be used by expanding firms in order to analyze its cultural environment. There are five dimensions which can affect the attitudes, motivation and satisfaction on different levels. These dimensions are stated below:

• Power Distance

Under Hofstede’s framework, power distance refers to the measurement of inequality which presents and accepted by the population with and without the power (Saleem & Larimo 2017).

• Individualism

Individualism refers to the power of mutual ties between people within a particular community. This index indicates the level to which the individuals in a community are united into groups.

• Masculinity

Within the dimensions of Hofstede cultural framework, masculinity refers to how much a community obeys its values and conventional female and male roles (Mazanec et al. 2015).

• Low Uncertainty Avoidance

Under Hofstede framework, uncertainty index presents the extent of anxiety which the members of society feel when they face any unknown or uncertain condition (Beugelsdijk Maseland & Hoorn 2015).

• Short Term Orientation  

It refers to the rules of society on the basis of centuries old traditions and traditions. It develops a connection of the past with future and recent challenges.

People, who work for the political office, specifically for Prime Minister, are scrutinized by country’s population to determine if they have the rights traits and personality to become an effective leader. Looking at how the personality traits of leaders are related to the performance in political office may provide an examination of theories about how the personality is related to social effectiveness in real life. As mentioned above, there are some personality traits which a political leader should have so that he/she can handle his/her country. Big 5 personality traits of Jacinda Ardern are analyzed below:

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Framework

Extraversion

It is one of the most important dimensions under Big Five personality traits. As discussed above, the people with extraversion are sociable and more talkative. The people with this trait tend to become more interactive in nature. They do not hesitate in putting their thoughts to other people. About Jacinda Ardern, it can be stated that score of this dimension is high for this political leader as she is a social democrat (Northouse 2018). Jacinda is extrovert in the sense of expressing her views for or against the social issues like same sex marriage, homelessness in New Zealand, decriminalization of cannabis etc. Looking at her skills, leader Phil Goff promoted Jacinda to front bench and named her as a spokesperson of labor for Youth Affairs. As a leader of labor party and Prime Minister of New Zealand, she is fighting for justice and social issues related to children, women, arts, culture and small business. It indicates that Jacinda Ardern is extrovert and active political leaders who is making efforts for the development of society and country (Smyth 2018).

Agreeableness

Agreeableness is the dimension that measures how comfortable people are with others. This personality trait of an individual can be analyzed by considering his/her behavior with others. The extent of this dimension is medium for Jacinda Ardern as she is very kind and empathetic to the people. When she became Prime Minister of New Zealand, she declared that her government will be empathetic, strong and focused on country and population. She understands the feelings of its public so she has promised to eliminate the child poverty and enhance the life of most vulnerable people in the country (Leutner et al. 2014). It indicates that she understands the value of country’s population and their lives. She understands this very well that they play an important role in her success.

Openness

This personality trait indicates the creativity, cooperativeness and imaginativeness of an individual. This trait can help the people to find out the innovative solutions. By analyzing the personality of Jacinda, it can be stated that her openness to experience is very high. She is willing to implement new ideas and innovative ways to generate solutions to social issues in the country. In his political office, Jacinda fought for various social issues which are considered as orthodox (The Guardian 2017). For example, she has prepared the bills of members on gay couples’ adoption rights. In addition to this, she is making several efforts to reduce and eradicate the child poverty and working on policy for children of labor and apprentice schemes (Shenkar Luo & Chi 2014). This personality trait of Jacinda shows her openness to solving the problems of New Zealand and its population. It indicates that she is very willing and hard working to make quality changes in people’s lives.

Conscientiousness 

Conscientiousness indicates the personality trait of people that refers to that how much an individual considers the circumstances and others while making decisions related to them. As discussed above, Jacinda Ardern is using progressive and social democratic leadership in New Zealand. She makes decisions considering the situations of people. Her leadership approach emphasizes on values, vision and implementing change in the society (Usunier Herk & Lee 2017). Moreover, she always talks about the type of future that she wishes for New Zealand. It is supporting this by the values of equality, caring, inclusion and stewardship. Her personality reflects that she is very much motivated by her values and beliefs and she is always ready to go to the limits to attain what she desires. People in New Zealand trust and rely their prime minister and feel that Jacinda listens to them. She wishes to do well for them and make this country a better place. She has enough leadership potential to handle the country and its communities (Ross 2018).

Neuroticism

The people with this personality trait tend to experience negative emotions easily like anger, depression and anxiety. It refers to the extent of emotional stability. The score of this personality trait is medium for Jacinda Ardern as she handles every situation very calmly. Communication style of Jacinda has significant emotional warmth with a smiling and hand gestures reflecting a desire to connect with the people. There is the best example to understand the level of neuroticism in Jacinda (McLaren 2018). After getting into the political office as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda announced that she was expecting her first child in this year June. This declaration of a Prime Minister is revolutionary. She was a lady who is running a nation and expecting the baby. Even in the situation of pregnancy, Jacinda continued to work for country. After giving birth to baby, she has taken the maternity leave for six weeks only. It indicates that prime minister of New Zealand is emotionally stable and she can handle all the unexpected situations coolly. It shows that she is an inspirational leader in the country (Hampson 2018).

Thus, it can be stated that Jacinda Ardern has good personality traits which are beneficial for the growth of country and assists her to resolve the issues of people.

There are some dimensions of cultural differences which can be analyzed to evaluate the impact of diversity on Jacinda Ardern’s approach in New Zealand. These dimensions of cultural differences have a significant impact on international perceptions, attitudes, satisfaction and motivation (Ferraro & Briody 2017). The impact of diversity on Jacinda’s leadership ability is discussed below, by analyzing Hofstede cultural dimensions:          

(Source: Hofstede Insights, 2018)

Power distance is the dimension that reflects the fact that all of the people in society are not equally treated. It shows culture’s attitude to these inequalities among people. In New Zealand, the rate of inequality is very high. Poverty and increasing gap between poor and rich are major issues in the country. The above diagram shows that power distance index of New Zealand is 22 that is very low. Child poverty levels have been doubled in last 30 years. There are various differences between superiors and subordinates. This inequality in society is endorsed by community people as much as the government and leaders. In the country, Pacific and Maori people have worse housing, lower income and poor health than other communities in the country (Baker 2014).

When it is about the politics, this inequality enables the wealthy population to influence the politicians as they depend on them for donations. It shows that some of the people get more access than other people (Speed Butler & Collins 2015). It is an abuse of the democracy ideals. Due to this, Jacinda Ardern has to face various challenges to make the decision regarding the benefits of society. It has a large impact on her leadership approach as she needs to put inequality on priority. Considering the income inequality, Jacinda needs to encourage her policymakers to become concerned about the bottom 40% of country’s population (Daniels & Greguras 2014). She should focus on the taxes and benefits that these two are the most appropriate way to redistribute the income. Because of this diversity in the country, Jacinda will need to make justified decisions for all the communities of country.

This dimension of Hofstede framework addresses the basic issue i.e. the extent of interdependence which a community manages among its people. In the above diagram, the score of this aspect is 79 which indicate that New Zealand has an individualist culture. It can be stated that people of country look after themselves only and their close family members. However, this supports the individuals to grow their inner depths and potential but can exploit the wealth in New Zealand. It increases diversity and inequality in the country. This individualism has a moderate impact on the leadership ability of Jacinda (Nakata 2009). Looking at individualism in the country, Jacinda needs to develop the policies so that country can serve each and every community. Apart from this, it is good for the government as employees are working being self-reliant and taking initiatives.

Under this dimension, the higher score of masculine shows that society is driven by the achievement, competition and success. In masculine communities, females are competitive and assertive, but less than men. It indicates the diversity between men and women. The score of New Zealand is 58 that can be considered as masculine society. The people at workplace are striving to give their best. On the other side, this score shows that there is still a gap between the values of men and women (Hofstede Insights 2018). In the country, Jacinda is inspiring the women society being a strong political leader. This diversity has positive impact on the leadership approach of Prime Minister as she needs to form different policies for women society. Additionally, she needs to avail more employment opportunities for females. The diversity of gender will force the government to make different laws and regulations for women segment (Rajadhyaksha Korabik & Aycan, 2015).

This index of Hofstede dimension indicates that how people can handle different issues in an effective manner. It shows the level to which the people feel challenged by unknown situations. On this dimension, the score of New Zealand is 49 that are intermediate. It indicates the rational level of acceptance for new and innovative ideas. The people in New Zealand are not taking interest in the regulations of Jacinda so she needs to make changes in her style and approach so that it can overcome this diversity issue (Kelsey 2015).

In the Hofstede framework, this dimension is related to the link of past with future and current challenges/actions. The lower score shows that traditions are kept and honored by the societies, whereas loyalty is valued. In this, the score of New Zealand is 33 that reflect that New Zealand is normative nation. People in its societies are very much concerned with setting an utter truth. New Zealanders exhibit respect to their old traditions and they are focused on fast outcomes (Erdman 2018). It will also have impact on the approach of Jacinda as it will have large impact on the economic development of the country. She needs to encourage the people to adapt with their traditions and view the practical problem solving as a requirement. It will assist the country to become long term oriented and to grow its economic environment (Reisinger & Turner 2012).

In this way, it can be stated that above cultural differences will have huge impact on the leadership and behavioral approach of Jacinda. The culture of New Zealand is very much diverse so it is very important for prime minister to formulate equal policies and regulations for society people. By doing this, the government will be able to overcome the issues related to diversity and inequality (Lees-Marshment 2018). Jacinda needs to make changes in its approach by considering the needs of country and its societies.  

It is hereby recommended that the leaders should develop their personality as per the needs of their people and society. The above report is totally focused on the Prime Minister of New Zealand and her personality traits. However, she is leading the country in an effective way; still there is need of improvement. Jacinda should focus on emerging diversity issues in the country. Maori community is the most vulnerable community so she should work for their development and provide them entitlement for each and every service. Moreover, she should formulate and implement new rules and regulations to deal with the diversity issues in the nation.

Conclusion 

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Jacinda Ardern is a perfect leader who can lead a diverse country very effectively. Being a youngest prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda is making efforts to develop the country’s social, political and economic environment. The above report includes the introduction about the Prime Minister of New Zealand i.e. Jacinda Ardern. The report shows that she is very hard working, inspirational, charismatic, social democratic and empathetic leader. The personality of this political leader is analyzed by using big 5 personality traits i.e. Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. It is found that she possesses a great personality that a political leader especially prime minister of a country should have. In addition to this, the leaders should have moral face, energy and intelligence. New Zealand has a much diverse culture and society so government needs to make changes in its approach to lead the country accordingly. In the next section, the culture of New Zealand is analyzed by using the Hofstede dimensions. The prime minister of New Zealand will change her approach according to the cultural differences.

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