Thesis Direction
Pr Heiko Hansjosten
Thesis Title
Agility as a reflection of personality and cultural characteristics in international organisations
Abstract
The aim of the thesis is to investigate how individual determinants, in particular “culture” and “personality”, influence “the attitude to agility”.
Agility, in the sense of self-organization, in the professional environment is, and was even before Corona, one of the challenges of our time. The investigation of the connections between culturally determined social competences and personality in relation to agility defines the need for research and a research gap. In order to reduce the research gap, interviews were conducted in a qualitative study. In addition, accompanying data on culture according to the Lewis cultural model and on personality according to the Jung/MBTI/Keirsey model were collected. Evaluation was done exploratively with the analysis software MaxQDA. For this purpose, 61 participants of different nationalities and professions as well as different ages, who were professional novices, professionals and pensioners, were interviewed.
Key findings are: Great affinity for agility was found in the cultural group of the “linear active” (L-type) and the personality type “ENFP”, i.e. people who are “outwardly” oriented, perceive “intuitively”, decide “emotionally”. According to Keirsey’s scheme, this would be the group of the ‘Guardians’ (Wächter). Low affinity was found in the type “ISTJ” and a reactive culture (R-type), according to Keirsey the “Idealists” (Idealisten). Significant parameters in relation to a positive attitude towards agility include membership of the working group (p=0.041) and the number of countries travelled (p=0.00013). The desire for structure is very pronounced, especially among professional novices. ‘Culture’ can be determined neither by the origin nor by a self-assessment of the participants. A correlation with the competence ‘reading’ has been shown especially in the group of professional novices.
Taking into view the proven influence of travel activities, further investigation should look at the effect of cultural contacts on attitudes towards agility. Further research in the field of measurability of personality in the form of neurophysiological measurements makes sense.