Understanding Attitudes

• Attitudes are evaluative statements, either favorable or unfavorable, concerning objects, people, or events and reflect how one feels about something
• Attitudes are complex and to fully understand attitudes, one must explore their fundamental properties or components

Main Components of Attitudes

• Cognitive: description of or belief in the way things are
• Affective: the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude
• Behavior: intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
• The three components of attitudes are closely related, and cognition and affect in particular are inseparable in many ways
• Attitudes are important for their behavioral component in organizations

Attitudes and Behavior

• Attitudes may seem to be directly causal, but attitudes follow behavior
• Cognitive Dissonance: situations where attitudes followed behavior, and dissonance between what people say and do makes people uncomfortable
• Actions are taken to reduce discomfort, such as changing attitudes or behaviors
• Cognitive Dissonance: refers to any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes, or between behavior and attitudes
• The level of effort to reduce dissonance depends on three moderating factors
• Importance: The greater the importance, the more effort expended to reduce the dissonance
• Degree of influence: when a person feels they have control over the elements, more effort will be expended
• Rewards: affect the motivation toward making changes

Attitude Consistency

• People seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their behavior
• Attitudes or behavior is altered or a rationalization is developed for discrepancies

Moderating Factors

• Desire to reduce dissonance depends on moderating factors, including the importance of the elements creating it and the degree of influence over them
• The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are
• Importance: attitudes reflect fundamental values, self-interest, or identification; the greater the importance, the stronger the link between attitude and behavior
• Correspondence to Behavior: the more closely the attitude and the behavior are matched, the stronger the link
• Accessibility: the easier an attitude is to recall, the stronger the link
• Social Pressures: can override personal attitudes and may have a stronger relation to behavior than attitudes
• Personal Direct Experience: predictions of behavior are more accurate when the person has some experience regarding the situation

Major Job Attitudes

• Important attitudes toward work that include job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment
• Other work-related attitudes include perceived organizational support and employee engagement
• Job Satisfaction: A positive feeling about one's job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics
• Job Involvement: The degree to which people identify psychologically with their jobs and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth.
• Psychological Empowerment: Employees' beliefs in the degree to which they influence their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and the perceived autonomy in their work
• Organizational Commitment: A state in which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization
• A positive relationship appears to exist between organizational commitment and job productivity, but it is a modest one
• Research shows that employees who feel that their employers don't keep their promises feel less committed and creative
• Research demonstrates negative relationships between organizational commitment and absenteeism and turnover
• Research confirms that employees who are committed are less likely to engage in work withdrawal even if they are dissatisfied because they feel a sense of loyalty or attachment to the organization
• Perceived Organizational Support (POS): The degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being
• Organizations are considered supportive when they provide fair rewards, give employees a voice in decision-making, and provide supervisors who are seen as being supportive
• Research suggests employees with strong POS perceptions are more likely to have higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors, lower levels of tardiness, and better customer service
• Employee Engagement: An individual's involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the work he or she does
• Conditions that can increase engagement include opportunities to learn new skills, important and meaningful work, and positive interactions with coworkers and supervisors
• Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection to their company
• Evidence suggests employee engagements are highly related and are distinct from traditional job attitudes

Job Satisfaction

• Job Satisfaction: a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics
• An employee's assessment of job satisfaction is a complex summation of many discrete elements

Measuring Job Satisfaction

• Single Global Rating Method: single question to determine job satisfaction
• Summation Score Method: identifies key elements in the job and asks about each element

Measurement Type

• The single global rating method seems to be a more accurate measure of job satisfaction than the more complex summation method.
• Satisfaction levels vary a lot, depending on which facet of job satisfaction

Employee Job Ratings

• On average, people are satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself, and with their supervisors and co-workers
• Employees are less satisfied with their pay and with promotion opportunities
• No clear reason as to why people dislike their pay and promotion possibilities more than other aspects of their jobs
• Western cultures tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction than Eastern cultures.
• People in Eastern cultures value negative emotions more than do Westerners

Causes of job Satisfaction

• Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control satisfy most employees
• Strong relation exists between how well people enjoy the social context of their workplace and how satisfied they are overall
• Pay, once above a given level, does not increase satisfaction
• Job satisfaction is not just about job conditions, but personality plays a role

Job Satisfaction Impact

• Impacts include satisfied and dissatisfied employees on the workplace
• The Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect Framework helps in understanding the consequences of dissatisfaction
• The framework has four responses that differ from one another along two dimensions: constructive/destructive and active/passive
• Exit: This response involves directing behavior toward leaving the organization
• Voice: actively and constructively attempting to improve conditions
• Loyalty: involves passively, but optimistically, waiting for conditions to improve
• Neglect: involves passively allowing conditions to worsen
• Satisfaction and productivity research data shows that more satisfied employees tend to be more effective than organizations with fewer satisfied employees
• Job Satisfaction should be a major determinant of an employee's organizational citizenship behavior
• Satisfied employees are more likely to talk positively about the organization, help others, and go beyond expectations
• Evidence suggests job satisfaction is moderately correlated with OCBs, and fairness perceptions help explain the relationship
• Satisfied employees increase customer retention and loyalty
• There is a weak-to-moderate negative relationship between job satisfaction and absenteeism
• The relationship between job satisfaction and turnover is stronger than absenteeism
• Job dissatisfaction translates into turnover when employment opportunities are plentiful
• Workplace deviance, or employee withdrawal, takes forms including, unionization attempts, substance abuse, theft, lollygagging, and tardiness
• Deviance can be a cry for help, where workers wish for increased job satisfaction but do not get it and "act out" in response
• Managers should attack the source of dissatisfaction
• Many managers are unconcerned about the job satisfaction of their employees or believe employee satisfaction is high
• Job satisfaction must be a managerial priority and managers must measure it to manage it