Susan Peláez
Business 204 – Organizational Behavior
Chapter 5
October 6, 2014

Case Incident 1 On the Costs of Being Nice
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. 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. I believe being agreeable may hurt men’s earnings more than women’s because