Adaptive and Maladaptive Perfectionists: Do They Really Differ on Hardiness and Using Coping Strategy?

Demand – ability fit reflects the match between the person’s knowledge, skills and abilities and the individual’s job. While hundreds of specific traits have been studied in the context of person-environment (P-E) fit, the focus here is on the less frequently studied one’s namely, perfectionism.  Perfectionism is defined as a striving to achieve excessively high standards while adopting stringent evaluations; it has been regarded both as an adoptive personality trait and a debilitating vulnerability factor (Blatt, 1995 & Pacht, 1984). With this rationale, the present study (i) firstly, aims at finding out the attributes of perfectionism (adaptive and maladaptive) among junior and senior executives working at public at private and public  sector banks; (ii) secondly, to study the level of hardiness and coping strategy (functional and dysfunctional) among executives of banking sector with respect to their level of perfectionism (adaptive and maladaptive) and (iii) to find out the relationship among perfectionism and coping strategy, hardiness of executives. Sample includes 200 executives drawn from 6 public and private sector banks in Kolkata (India) using simple random sampling method. Primary data were collected using a standardized questionnaire and were analyzed using mean, t-test, Pearson’s product moment correlation and multiple regression analysis. Results indicated the following points:

• Senior and junior executives of private sector depicted different levels of perfectionism.
• Coping strategy (functional and dysfunctional) and hardiness vary with respect to the level of perfectionism of the executives.
• Adaptive perfectionism indicted the significant positive correlation with hardiness and functional coping style.
• Maladaptive perfectionism revealed the significant positive correlation with dysfunctional coping style and the reverse trend is evident in case of hardiness.
• Various coping strategies and hardiness in relation to adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism are discussed.