Types of Personality and Stress Coping Approaches (contrasting FCI and CWC Organisations)

Today the world is changing with -changing business environment .To keep a pace with this changing business environment one has to go through physical, mental, emotional and social stress. It has become important for an individual and the organization to keep them free from stress. For this purpose different kind of stress coping strategies are available. A comparative analysis was conducted on FCI and CWC organaisation to test stress coping approaches used by different personality type. For this t test, ANOVA and correlation analysis was conducted on a sample of 70 employees each from FCI and CWC organizations. Results indicated that extrovert people used emotional social support, planning as their stress coping strategies while as they rejected other strategies in both the organizations. Agreeableness type of personality people use mental disengagement, active coping, religious coping but both organizations do not use positive reinterpretation and growth, humor, restraint, emotional social support, acceptance ,planning as coping strategy The other types of personality consciousness, neuroticism ,openness use the same kind of stress coping strategies in both the organization.


INTRODUCTION
Today the world is changing with -changing business environment. To keep a pace with this changing business environment one has to go through physical, mental, emotional and social stress. It has become important for an individual and the organization to keep them free from stress. For this purpose different kind of stress coping strategies are available. While dealing with stress it is important to deal with your physical, mental, and social well being. One should maintain their health and learn to relax if they find themselves under stress. Mentally it is important to think positive thoughts, value oneself, demonstrate good time management, plan and think ahead, and express emotions. Socially one should communicate with people and seek new activities. By following these simple strategies, one will have an easier time responding to stresses in their lives. The personality also plays an important role for adopting the stress coping strategies. In the present study we have tried to explore that how personality helps to choose different kind of coping strategies in different organizations. Let us first define the variables under study i.e. personality and stress coping approaches.

Personality
Personality word was derived from the Latin word "persona" which means 'the mask'. Firstly it was defined by Gordon Allport in 1965 .He said personality is "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment." After this the renowned psychologist Eyseneck (1975) defined personality as "the main traits form two independent dimensions of personality. One dimension reflects a changeable -unchangeable dimension. It is called extraversion-introversion dimension. A s econd reflects an emotional-non emotional or insatiability-stability dimension. This is called neuroticism normal dimension." For psychologists studying the development of personality, "nature vs. nurture" was a central debate. "Nature vs. nurture" suggests that biology (a person's genes) and society (the environment in which a person grows up) are competing developmental forces. In the past, the debate sought to find whether one may be more important than the other. Today most psychologists would concede both nature and nurture are necessary for personality development. Both help to make us who we are. Several factors influence the shaping of our personality. Major among these are heredity, culture, family background, our experiences through life, and the people we interact with. There are some genetic factors that play a part in determining certain aspects of what we tend to become. Whether we are tall or short, experience good health or ill health, are quickly irritable or patient, are all characteristics which can, in many cases, be traced to heredity. How we learn to handle others' reactions to us (e.g. our appearance) and the inherited traits can also influence how our personality is shaped. It is true that a variety of social, biological, psychological and behavioral factors influence the development of the character. Psychologists agree that a largely genetic personal chemistry or in bom temperament influence an infant to react to its environment in ways that can be assertive or shy. Such tendencies are fiirther influenced by experience..The combination of inheritance and experience form an individual characteristic way of behaving, feeling and thinking-his personality.

Stress Coping Approaches
Coping is a dynamic process that fluctuates overtime in response to changing demands and appraisals of the situation (Moos and Holahan, 2003). A second way of define coping is as the changing of thoughts and actions to manage the external and/or internal demands for a stressful events Earl and Winkeljohn, (2006) suggested that Coping with stress can be difficult thus most individual deals with stress in two main levels. At the broader level, adjustments are made to relieve the stress each individual are experiencing. At an in-depth or specific level, coping strategies are utilized in order to deal with a specific problem or situation. It will gain maximum effectiveness and efficiency if both levels are functioning concurrently. Folkman and Lazarus (1980) identified six emotion-focused coping strategies: disclaiming, escape-avoidance, accepting responsibility or blame, exercising selfcontrol, seeking social support and positive reappraisal. One positive coping strategy, "anticipating a problem...is known as proactive coping." Anticipation is when one "reduce[s] the stress of some difficult challenge by anticipating what it will be like and preparing for how [one is] going to cope with it". Two others are "social coping, such as seeking support from others, and meaning-focused coping, in which the person concentrates on deriving meaning from the stressful experience". Abouserie (1996) identified sources of stress and consequent stress levels in university academic staff, to identify the coping strategies used by staff, and to examine the relationship between stress levels and job satisfaction. The results indicated that academic staff rate work as the most significant cause of stress in their lives (74%) and conducting research (40.3%) was the main cause of stress at work. The results also indicated that academic staff uses a wide range of coping strategies. Burke (2006) examined that work stressors and psychological burnout were fairly consistently and significantly related to levels of self-reported work attitudes and emotional and physical well-being. Somewhat surprisingly, work-family conflict and individual coping responses were generally unrelated to measures of work attitudes and self-reported emotional and physical well-being. Panday and Srivastava (2000) showed that the teachers expressed significantly better active coping than the bank employees did. The teachers adopted the strategies such as music, relaxation, yoga, planning type of coping strategies. Aujala et al., (2001) found that majority of working and non working was using various stress management techniques viz. relaxation, music, prayer, recreation with family, planning etc. Planning and relaxation were most preferred techniques between both the groups. Mryes (1996) concluded a study in police officers, fire fighters, electrician and executives aged between 18-23 years. Multiple regressions revealed that age moderated the relationship between various stressors and physiological symptoms as well as psychological depression and life satisfaction. Berkel (2009) revealed that the students with high harm avoidance and low self directedness reported increased stress, anxiety and depression while the low harm avoidance and high self directedness appeared to be the protective factor against the development of the stress. It also showed strong association between the personality and the stress coping, individuals with high reward dependence were more inclined to engage in emotion focused coping, while high directed individuals engaged in the problem focused coping. Carver and Smith (2009) found that the meta analysis link optimism, extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to more engagement coping, neuroticism to more disengagement coping. Leandroand Castillo (2010) examined the relationships between coping strategies in the stressful situations and the personality dimensions, and anxiety and the depression. It was concludcd task focused coping is used more by participants with low external locus of control, high self esteem and low anxiety and depression. On the contrary the emotion focused coping is used more by participants with high external locus of control, low self esteem and high depression. However gender exerts a modulating effect on these results.

LITERATURE REVIEW
In simple words, coping allows people to use various skills to manage the difficulties they face in life. Stressors will surface only those individuals that are unsuccessful in coping with the stress they had experienced.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The main objectives of the study are as follows; • To compare the types of personality and the stress coping approaches in FCl and CWC organizations.
• To find the correlation between the types of personality and the stress coping approaches in FCl and CWC organizations.

METHODOLOGY Present Study
The above mentioned and other similar studies made the plot for the present study. The aim of the present study is to find the relationship between types of personality and stress coping approaches of employees working in the organizations. In order to conduct the study, the employees from two organisations (FCI and CWC) were selected. A total of 140 respondents were taken.

H|,
There is no significant difference in the types of personality and the stress coping approaches of employees in FCI and CWC organizations.

Hj^
There is significant correlation between the types of personality and the stress coping approaches in FCI and CWC organizations.

Research Design
The study is descriptive and empirical in nature. Two organizations FCI and CWC were chosen using systematic random sample. Then a sample of managers, supervisors and workers was chosen from a sample frame of two organisations using stratified random sampling. Managers, supervisors and workers were taken in the ratio of 1:4:9, based on availability and feasibility of the study. Out of a total of 140 respondents; 10 respondents from top level, 40 respondents from middle level and 90 respondents from lower level were taken (70 from FCI and 70 from CWC).

DATA COLLECTION
Primary data was collected through preliminary interviews and questionnaires ultimately. Instrument Big Five Inventory questionnaire (John, Naumann & Soto, 2008) is used to undertake the study. The scale is multidimensional and included 44 items, suggesting five subscales i.e.; Extroversion (EXT), Agreeableness (AGR),Conscientiousness(CONSC) , Neuroticism(NEUR) and openness to experience(OPEN). The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.85. The second part of the questionnaire (Carver, Scheier & Weintraub, 1989) focused on stress coping and included ( Planning. The Cronbach Alpha coefficients for all coping strategies were found to be 0.9339. In order to meet the objectives of the study data collected was analyzed. However, before undertaking a comprehensive data analysis normalcy of data was checked. It was done to determine if the data was suited for parametric or non-parametric tests. Kolmogrov-Smimov test was conducted to meet these objectives. The table 1 presents the statistic of Kolmogrov-Smimov test for types of personality and stress coping approaches. The p value for both the variables was found to be p = 1.026 and p = 1.115. These results indicated that the data was normally distributed. Based on these results it was decided that the data was suitable for parametric tests and therefore, ANOVA, t-test, and Karl Pearson's correlation test were used to test the relationship between these two variables. In all the cases, we can assume equal variances for Personality and Coping strategies, as p-value of the F-test in both the cases comes out to be more than .05 (p equals 10.326 and 6 respectively).

There is no significant difference in the types of personality and the stress coping approaches of employees in FCI and CWC organizations.
The results of Independent Sample t-test suggested that there is difference in the type of personality and stress coping approaches for the employees of organisations, getting p-value less than .05 (p equals .000 and .000 in both the cases in order). Therefore, null hypotheses (HIa) that there is no significant difference in the personality types and the stress coping techniques in FCI and CWC organizations is not rejected or may be accepted. The result of Karl Pearson's Correlation (table 2) suggested that there is significant positive correlation between type of personality and stress coping approaches (r = .501, p = .000). Therefore the 1th null hypothesis (H2a) that there is significant correlation between the type of personality and stress coping strategies is not rejected or may be accepted. The result of Karl Pearson's Correlation (table 4) suggested that the extrovert people in CWC are less compatible with agreeableness than people in FCI but they are more compatible with consciousness in CWC. Extrovert people were less correlated with open people in both the organisation. As far as stress coping strategies are concerned extrovert people in CWC use of emotional social support strategy at the most but in FCI they use religious coping and humour at the most. Extrovert people do not use mental disengagement, instrumental social support, restraint, substance use, acceptance while as in FCI they do not use instrumental social support, active coping, denial, behavioural disengagement, substance use. In extrovert type of personality, the strategies rejected by both the organisation were instrumental social support and restraint

H3a There is significant correlation between the different types of personality i.e. Extroversion (EXT), Agreeableness (AGR), Conscientiousness (CONSC), Neuroticism (NEUR) and openness to experience (OPEN) and stress coping approaches -positive reinterpretation and growth (PRG), mental disengagement (MD), focus on and venting of emotions (EVE), use of instrumental social support (ISS), active coping, denial, religious coping (RECOPING), humour, behavioural disengagement (BHVRDISNGAGEMENT), restraint, use of emotional social support (ESS), substance use (SUBSTANCE USE), acceptance, suppression ofcompeting activities (SCA) and planning.
In the second category of personality type agreeableness people of this type were compatible with consciousness in both the organisation CWC and FCI but more in CWC as compared to FCI. Agreeableness people were more compatible with neuroticism in FCI than CWC but they were not compatible with neuroticism personality type people in FCI. Moreover they were not compatible with people open in nature in CWC but correlated in FCI organisation. People having agreeableness personality type in CWC organisation do not use positive reinterpretation and growth coping strategy but it is being used in FCI very effectively. Mental disengagement strategy is not being followed in FCI but effectively used in CWC by agreeableness type of personality type. Focus on and venting of emotions is mostly used by FCI employees but very less used by CWC employees. Instrumental social support is used effectively in CWC but not in FCI. Active coping was mostly and very effectively used by agreeableness people in CWC but very less used in FCI. Religious coping was used more in CWC than FCI. Humour and behavioural disengagement strategy was rejected by CWC employees but adopted by FCI employees. Restraint was rejected in CWC but effectively used in FCI. Table 4 showing the correlation between different types of personality and stress coping approaches. In the third type of personality neuroticism people having this trait was correlated with people having openness in FCI organisation but not in CWC organisation. For stress coping approaches FCI people prefer PRO strategy but CWC people did not use it. Mental disengagement coping approaches was used by FCI employees but very less used by CWC employees.FVE was effectively and rigour sly used by FCI but very less used by CWC employees same is the case with instrumental social support and active coping. FCI employees do not used denial stress coping approach but CWC employees use it. Humour and behavioural disengagement was used by FCI employees very effectively but CWC employees did not use it at all. Restraint was rejected by CWC employees but accepted by FCI employees. Acceptance and SCA was rejected by CWC but used by FCI employees.FCI employees used acceptance more than CWC employees. Planning was more used by FCI employees than that of CWC employees. In the third type of personality type that is consciousness it was more compatible with neuroticism in both the organisation, but not compatible with last type of personality i.e. openness to experience in CWC. The people having consciousness type of personality adopt PRG as the coping strategy in FCI but not used in CWC.MD, FVE both the strategies were highly adopted in FCI than CWC. Instrumental social support was rejected in CWC but accepted in FCI. Active coping was more adopted in CWC than FCI whereas reverse is the case of the religious coping Humour strategy was adopted as coping strategy more in CWC than FCI. Behavioural disengagement and restraint was adopted in CWC than FCI but emotional social support was rejected in CWC but accepted in FCI same is the case in substance use but reverse is the case in acceptance. Suppression of competing activities and Planning were used in both the organisations.
The last type of personality people having openness use positive reinterpretation and growth strategy most effectively in CWC and also in FCI but less than CWC. Mental disengagement was used in FCI but almost very negligibly used in CWC. Focus on and venting of emotions coping strategy was used in both the organisation at equal level. Instrumental social support and active coping was used more in FCI than of CWC. Denial was rejected in CWC but accepted in FCI. Religious coping, humour, behavioural disengagement, restraint, emotional social support. Substance Use was more used in FCI than CWC employees.

CONCLUSION
For the above data analysis we can conclude that there is significant correlation between the type of personality and stress coping approaches. In the present study it has emerged that personality is the only variable which helps the person to adopt a particular type of strategy. Ahmed and Salim (2009) found among the effective coping mechanisms to overcome stress among Malaysian entrepreneurs were disregarding, divert thinking (by doing something fun) and effective communication. Karve and Nair (2010) showed that executives tend to use more of proactive style of approach mode of coping with role stress wherein they deal with role stress through own efforts, seeking help from significant others and using organizational resources to reduce role stress. The results indicated that extrovert people used emotional social support, planning as their stress coping strategies while as they rejected other strategies in both the organizations. Agreeableness type of personality people use mental disengagement, active coping, religious coping but both organizations do not use positive reinterpretation and growth, humor, restraint, emotional social support, acceptance ,planning as coping strategy The other types of personality consciousness, neuroticism ,openness use the same kind of stress coping strategies in both the organization.