1. Topic 3
Attitudes and Job Satisfaction [Robbins, SP, Judge, TA, Millett, B & Boyle, M 2011, Organisational behaviour, 6th edn, Pearson/Prentice Hall]

2. Chapter Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
Contrast the three components of an attitude.
Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior.
Compare and contrast the major job attitudes.
Define job satisfaction and show how it can be measured.
Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
Identify four employee responses to dissatisfaction.
Show whether job satisfaction is a relevant concept in countries other than the United States.
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3. The opinion or belief segment of an attitude
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events.
Three components of an attitude:
Attitude
Behavioral
Cognitive
Affective
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude
The opinion or belief segment of an attitude
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
See E X H I B I T 3–1
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4. Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?
Leon Festinger – No, the reverse is sometimes true!
Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap, or dissonance, to reach stability and consistency
Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes, modifying the behaviors, or through rationalization
Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
Importance of elements
Degree of individual influence
Rewards involved in dissonance
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5. Moderating Variables Behavior Predict Attitudes
The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are:
Importance of the attitude
Correspondence to behavior
Accessibility
Existence of social pressures
Personal and direct experience of the attitude.
Behavior
Predict
Attitudes
Moderating Variables
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6. Predicting Behavior from Attitudes?
Important attitudes have a strong relationship to behavior.
The closer the match between attitude and behavior, the stronger the relationship:
Specific attitudes predict specific behavior
General attitudes predict general behavior
The more frequently expressed an attitude, the better predictor it is.
High social pressures reduce the relationship and may cause dissonance.
Attitudes based on personal experience are stronger predictors.
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7. What are the Major Job Attitudes?
Job Satisfaction
A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics
Job Involvement
Degree of psychological identification with the job where perceived performance is important to self-worth
Psychological Empowerment
Belief in the degree of influence over the job, competence, job meaningfulness, and autonomy
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8. Another Major Job Attitude
Organizational Commitment
Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, while wishing to maintain membership in the organization.
Three dimensions:
Affective – emotional attachment to organization
Continuance Commitment – economic value of staying
Normative - moral or ethical obligations
Has some relation to performance, especially for new employees.
Less important now than in past – now perhaps more of occupational commitment, loyalty to profession rather than a given employer.
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9. And Yet More Major Job Attitudes…
Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
Degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
Higher when rewards are fair, employees are involved in decision-making, and supervisors are seen as supportive.
High POS is related to higher OCBs and performance.
Employee Engagement
The degree of involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the job.
Engaged employees are passionate about their work and company.
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10. Are These Job Attitudes Really Distinct?
No: these attitudes are highly related.
Variables may be redundant (measuring the same thing under a different name)
While there is some distinction, there is also a lot of overlap.
Be patient, OB researchers are working on it!
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11. Job Satisfaction One of the primary job attitudes measured.
Broad term involving a complex individual summation of a number of discrete job elements.
How to measure?
Single global rating (one question/one answer) - Best
Summation score (many questions/one average) - OK
Are people satisfied in their jobs?
In the U. S., yes, but the level appears to be dropping.
Results depend on how job satisfaction is measured.
Pay and promotion are the most problematic elements.
See E X H I B I T 3–2
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12. Causes of Job Satisfaction
Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.
After about $40,000 a year (in the U. S.), there is no relationship between amount of pay and job satisfaction.
Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily job satisfaction.
Personality can influence job satisfaction.
Negative people are usually not satisfied with their jobs.
Those with positive core self-evaluation are more satisfied with their jobs.
See E X H I B I T 3–3
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13. Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction
Active
Exit
Behavior directed toward leaving the organization
Voice
Active and constructive attempts to improve conditions
Neglect
Allowing conditions to worsen
Loyalty
Passively waiting for conditions to improve
Destructive
Constructive
Passive
See E X H I B I T 3–4
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14. Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
Job Performance
Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive workers are more satisfied!
The causality may run both ways.
Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
Satisfaction influences OCB through perceptions of fairness.
Customer Satisfaction
Satisfied frontline employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Absenteeism
Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to miss work.
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15. More Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
Turnover
Satisfied employees are less likely to quit.
Many moderating variables in this relationship.
Economic environment and tenure
Organizational actions taken to retain high performers and to weed out lower performers
Workplace Deviance
Dissatisfied workers are more likely to unionize, abuse substances, steal, be tardy, and withdraw.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact of job satisfaction on the bottom line, most managers are either unconcerned about or overestimate worker satisfaction. !
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16. Global Implications Is Job Satisfaction a U. S. Concept?
No, but most of the research so far has been in the U. S.
Are Employees in Western Cultures More Satisfied With Their Jobs?
Western workers appear to be more satisfied than those in Eastern cultures.
Perhaps because Westerners emphasize positive emotions and individual happiness more than do those in Eastern cultures.
See E X H I B I T 3–5
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17. Summary and Managerial Implications
Managers should watch employee attitudes:
They give warnings of potential problems
They influence behavior
Managers should try to increase job satisfaction and generate positive job attitudes
Reduces costs by lowering turnover, absenteeism, tardiness, theft, and increasing OCB
Focus on the intrinsic parts of the job: make work challenging and interesting
Pay is not enough
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19. The Components of an Attitude

20. Summarize the Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior
The attitudes people hold determine what they do.
Festinger proposed that cases of attitude following behavior illustrate the effects of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance is incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their behavior.
Sometimes we observe people who will change what they say so it doesn’t contradict their behavior. When attitudes and behaviors don’t line up, individuals will experience cognitive dissonance. This incongruity is uncomfortable and individuals will seek to reduce the dissonance to find consistency.
People are willing to live with some discomfort but the degree to which this is true depends upon the importance of the elements, how much influences the individual has in the situation, and the rewards available.

21. Summarize the Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior
Importance of the attitude
Its correspondence to behavior
Its accessibility
The presence of social pressure
Whether or not a person has had direct experience with the behavior
The attitude/behavior relationship is stronger if it refers to something in our direct personal experience
Attitude
Predicts
Mitigating Variables
Some variables do moderate the relationship between attitude and behavior. These factors include the importance of the attitude to the person, the correspondence of the attitude to the behavior, the accessibility of the attitude, the existence of social pressures on behavior, and the personal and direct experience of the attitude.
These mitigating variables will affect the ability to predict how a certain attitude will predict behavior. The mitigating variables must be considered in the analysis process to alter what might be considered standard response as behavior to a specific attitude.
Behavior

22. Compare and Contrast the Major Job Attitudes
Job Satisfaction
A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics
Job Involvement
Degree of psychological identification with the job where perceived performance is important to self-worth
Logical Empowerment
Belief in the degree of influence over the job, competence, job meaningfulness, and autonomy
OB focuses our attention on a very limited number of job-related attitudes. Most of the research in OB has been concerned with three attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. The field of Organizational Behavior focuses on how attitudes will influence the workplace. There are several major job attitudes we will look at throughout the book. The first is job satisfaction, which is the positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. The second is job involvement. Job involvement looks at the degree of psychological identification with the job. An additional job attitude is logicalempowerment, the belief in the degree of influence their work environment,their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, andtheir perceived autonomy.

23. Compare and Contrast the Major Job Attitudes
Organizational Commitment
Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, while wishing to maintain membership in the organization.
Three dimensions:
Affective – emotional attachment to organization
Continuance Commitment – economic value of staying
Normative – moral or ethical obligations
A very important job attitude is organizational commitment or identifying with a particular organization and its goals. There are three dimensions to this job attitude – affective, continuance commitment, and normative.

24. Compare and Contrast the Major Job Attitudes
Organizational Commitment (cont)
Has some relation to performance, especially for new employees.
Theoretical models propose that employees who are committed will be less likely to engage in work withdrawal even if they are dissatisfied, because they have a sense of organizational loyalty.
Organizational commitment has been found to have some relationship to performance and in particular for new employees. One distinct benefit to organizational commitment is the likelihood that an employee will engage in work withdrawal even if they are dissatisfied to a tolerable level, because in spite of a feeling of dissatisfaction, the employee feels a sense of organization loyalty.

25. Compare and Contrast the Major Job Attitudes
Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
Degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
Higher when rewards are fair, employees are involved in decision making, and supervisors are seen as supportive.
High POS is related to higher OCBs and performance.
Perceived Organizational Support is the degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. The perception of fairness in the employees mind is a key factor in determining employees’ willingness to work hard for the organization. In addition, employees have a higher POS when they perceive they have some input to decision-making processes. Employees with strong POS perceptions have been found more likely to havehigher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors,lower levels of tardiness, andbetter customer service.

26. Compare and Contrast the Major Job Attitudes
Employee Engagement
The degree of involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the job.
Engaged employees are passionate about their work and company.
Employee Engagement goes beyond just job satisfaction and includes involvement and enthusiasm for the job. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection to their company.Disengaged employees have essentially checked out—putting time but not energy or attention into their work.Engagement becomes a real concern for most organizations because surveys indicate that few employees—between 17 percent and 29 percent—are highly engaged by their work.Engagement is a very general concept, perhaps broad enough to capture the intersection of the other variables we’ve discussed. In other words, it may be what these attitudes have in common.

27. Employee Engagement: Genetech case

28. Compare and Contrast the Major Job Attitudes
Are These Job Attitudes Really Distinct?
No: these attitudes are highly related
Variables may be redundant (measuring the same thing under a different name)
While there is some distinction, there is also a lot of overlap
Overlap may cause confusion
There is a high degree of overlap between the different job attitudes. If a worker has higher job satisfaction, they tend to be more engaged and show a stronger commitment to the organization. Researchers are looking into trying to find ways to measure the different attitudes to get at their distinctiveness. This overlap can cause considerable confusion when trying to assess them.

29. Define Job Satisfaction and Show How It Can Be Measured
A positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics
Two approaches for measuring Job Satisfaction are popular:
The single global rating
The summation of job facets
Job satisfaction is defined as a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. This is an important job attitude because it incorporates so many of the other measures. There are multiple ways to measure job satisfaction, but the most accurate way is to ask the question if people are satisfied in their jobs and provide them with a scale to report their degree of satisfaction. The single global rating is a response to one question, such as “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?” Respondents circle a number between 1 and 5 on a scale from “highly satisfied” “highly dissatisfied.”The second method, the summation of job facets, is more sophisticated. It identifies key elements in a job such as the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities, and relations with coworkers.

30. Define Job Satisfaction and Show How It Can Be Measured
Insert Exhibit 3.2
Most people are satisfied with their jobs in the developed countries surveyed. Research shows that over the past 30 years, the majority of U.S. workers have been satisfied with their jobs. As shown in Exhibit 3-2, people have typically been more satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself, and with their supervisors and co-workers than they have been with their pay and with promotion opportunities.Workers do seem to be less satisfied with their pay and promotion opportunities.

31. Main Causes of Job Dissatisfaction

32. Summarize the Main Causes of Job Satisfaction
Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.
After a certain amount of money there is no relationship between amount of pay and job satisfaction.
Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily job satisfaction.
Pay has an influence on job satisfaction but not as much as one might think. Typically, once a worker exceeds $40,000 per year, pay has limited impact on the level of satisfied workers.

33. Summarize the Main Causes of Job Satisfaction
Insert Exhibit 3-3
Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control satisfy most employees.There is also a strong correspondence between how well people enjoy the social context of their workplace and how satisfied they are overall.Interdependence, feedback, social support, and interaction with co-workers outside the workplace are strongly related to job satisfaction even after accounting for characteristics of the work itself.
Insert Exhibit 3-22

34. Summarize the Main Causes of Job Satisfaction
Personality also plays a role in Job Satisfaction.
People who have positive core self-evaluations, who believe in their inner worth and basic competence are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations.
Those with negative core self-evaluations set less ambitious goals and are more likely to give up when confronting difficulties.
Personality also plays a role in Job Satisfaction. Research has shown that people who have positive core self-evaluations who believe in their inner worth and basic competence—are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations. Not only do they see their work as more fulfilling and challenging, they are more likely to gravitate toward challenging jobs in the first place. Those with negative core self-evaluations set less ambitious goals and are more likely to give up when confronting difficulties.
Insert Exhibit 3-22

36.
Top 5 aspects of Job Satisfaction Most Important to Employees (2002 to 2011)