ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Lecture 4 – Chapter 3

HROB 502 Dr. Menatallah Darrag

ATTITUDES
 Attitudes are evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events.
 Attitudes can be positive or negative.
 Attitudes reveal what we feel about something.
 Attitudes are complex, thus understanding them is essential where it is composed of three related
components, which are as follows:

The emotional or feeling

Affective
segment of an attitude
Cognitive

The opinion or belief

segment of an attitude Behavioral

An intention to behave in a certain

way toward someone or
something

Attitude
On contrasting two
attitudes, one employee
worked overtime for no
pay gladly. As another one
got hired, she was paid
extra hours. The old
employee started to show
signs of unhappiness and
showed to work late.
Classify the 3 attitude
components in this
situation.

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DOES BEHAVIOR ALWAYS FOLLOW FROM ATTITUDES?
• Early research identified a causal relation between attitudes and behaviors, as in attitudes
precede behaviors.
• Nonetheless, one researcher; Leon Festinger; challenged this uniform relation claiming that
actually Behaviors can lead to Attitudes. Thus, the reverse causal relation is sometimes true!
• Festinger introduced the concept of “Cognitive Dissonance”, where it is any incompatibility
between two or more attitudes or between behaviors and attitudes.
 This incompatibility is witnessed when we see people shifting their attitude following a certain
behavior they exhibited or changing their behaviors after a certain attitude they had had.
 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 in other words
through rationalization.
• Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
o importance of elements;
o degree of individual influence;
o rewards involved in dissonance.
MODERATING VARIABLES & PREDICTING BEHAVIOR
FROM ATTITUDES Attitudes Predict Behavior

Moderating Variables

 The closer the match between attitude and behavior, the stronger the relationship:
 Specific attitudes predict specific behavior (e.g. intention to stay in the organization in next 6 months > turnover & not JS).
 General attitudes predict general behavior (e.g. JS>employee engagement /OCB).

 It is almost impossible to avoid dissonance, and that is where ‘moderating variables’ intervene in reducing
this gap of dissonance for people.
 The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are:
 importance of the attitude (attitudes your remember the most are the ones that are more likely to predict your
behaviors);
 accessibility (a more frequently expressed attitude is more likely to be remembered by an individual);
 personal and direct experience with the attitude (attitudes based on personal experience are stronger predictors);
 correspondence to behavior (the more you talk and discuss about an attitude, the more your relate to it);
 existence of social pressures (high social pressures reduce the relationship and may cause dissonance).

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 Marriott Hotels strives for consistency between attitudes and behaviour through its
motto ‘Spirit to Serve.’ Its CEO Bill Marriott takes time to roam around his chain &
acknowledges Marriott associates with job excellence awards upon exhibiting behaviours
that exemplify the attitude of service.
 WHAT ARE THE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES?
 There are various attitudes, but the OB domain concentrates on work-related
ones with an emphasis on the following :

Job Satisfaction (JS)

• A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.
• An employee with a high JS, holds positive feelings about the job & vice versa.

Job Involvement
 Degree of psychological identification with the job where perceived performance is
important to self-worth.
 An employee with a high involvement level, strongly identifies and really cares
about the kind of work they do.
 High job involvement is found to be positively related to reduced level of absences
and resignations (turnover) rates.

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WHAT ARE THE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES?
Psychological Empowerment

 It is a very closely related concept to job involvement.

 It’s the belief in the degree of influence employees have over the job, personal competence level, job
meaningfulness, and perceived autonomy in their job.
 High levels of job involvement & psychological empowerment are positively related to organizational
commitment and job performance.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES?
Organizational Commitment

 Identifying with a particular organization and its goals,

while wishing to maintain membership in the
organization.
 Thus, job involvement relates to identifying with a job,
whereas organizational commitment relates to identifying
with the overall environment of the organization.
 It includes three dimensions:
 Affective commitment
 Continuance commitment
 Normative commitment

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 WHAT ARE THE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES?
 OC’s components are:
 Affective Commitment: emotional attachment to an
organization and believing in its values.
 Continuance Commitment: perceived economic value of
staying with an organization compared with leaving it.
 Normative Commitment: moral or ethical obligations to
remain with an organization.
 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.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES?
Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
 The 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 exhibit a deep
connection with their companies; whereas disengaged employees become
indifferent as in putting time but not the needed effort or attention to perform
it.

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2014 RESULTS FOR JOB ENGAGEMENT IN MENA REGION

Source: https://www.bayt.com/en/research-report-20302/
ARE THESE JOB ATTITUDES REALLY DISTINCT?
Different attitudes are highly
related to a troubling degree!
E.g. POS & Affective OC.
Variables included per attitude
may be redundant (measuring the
same thing under a different name).
E.g. Employee Engagement & Job
Involvement
While there is some distinction,
there is also a lot of overlap.

Be patient, OB researchers are working on it!

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 JOB SATISFACTION
• Job satisfaction is one of the primary job attitudes measured.
• A job is not only about performing specific tasks at hand (e.g. waiting on customers) but it is rather
more holistic & includes aspects related to interactions with bosses & coworkers, following
organizational rules & policies, meeting specific performance standards, and living with working
conditions that are not always optimum to all individuals.
How to measure it?
 Single global rating (one question/one answer):
 It’s a simple straight-forward approach.
 Direct one question as in (all things considered, how are you satisfied with your job on a scale of 1-5 ranging from
‘highly satisfied’ to ‘highly dissatisfied’?)
 Summation score (many questions/one average):
 It’s a more sophisticated approach.
 It involves defining key elements in a job & asking employees about their feelings per element.
 These main elements are:
So, which measurement format is better?
 The nature of the work,
 Supervision,
 Present pay,
 Promotion opportunities, and
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 Relations with coworkers 15
JOB SATISFACTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST-BAYT.COM
2009 Pay and promotion are the most problematic elements
JOB SATISFACTION IN THE MENA REGION-BAYT.COM
2016

Source: https://www.bayt.com/en/research-report-29742/
JOB SATISFACTION IN THE MENA REGION-BAYT.COM
2016

Source:
https://www.bayt.com/en/rese
arch-report-29742/
 CAUSES OF JOB SATISFACTION
 The main facets of JS that cause its occurrence are:

 The nature of the work (the more challenging &

stimulating a work is, the more joy a person
exhibits rather than a routine, predictable job)

 Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point

(mainly affects JS up to overcoming the poverty
level and as well correlates to overall happiness..
i.e. money may bring happiness, but not
necessarily JS)

 Personality can influence JS. Negative people are

usually not satisfied with their jobs. Those with
positive core self-evaluation are more satisfied
with their jobs.
OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
Job performance
 Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive workers are usually more
satisfied!
 Hence, this relationship applies on both individual job performance & organizational
performance.

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)

 Satisfaction positively influences OCB through perceptions of fairness & trust.
 As employees are satisfied, they see organizations as fair, trust develops & they become more
willing to voluntarily engage in OCB behaviors going beyond their regular job responsibilities.

Customer satisfaction
 Satisfied frontline employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
 As employees are more satisfied, they tend to be more friendly, responsive which is
appreciated by customers and leads to their satisfaction.
 Alternatively, dissatisfied customers can lead to employee dissatisfaction. As in when an
employee has to deal with rude thoughtless customers, usually the experience is not fruitful
and leads to dissatisfaction by turn.
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OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
Absenteeism & Turnover

 Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to miss work so they have quite low absenteeism rates.
 Satisfied employees are less likely to quit with low turnover rates.
 The negative correlation is stronger with turnover rather than with absenteeism
 Many moderating variables intervene in this relationship (e.g. 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.

 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.
EMPLOYEE RESPONSES TO DISSATISFACTION
Active

Exit Voice
• Behavior • Active and
directed toward constructive
leaving the attempts to
organization improve
conditions
Destructive Constructive
Neglect Loyalty
• Allowing • Passively
conditions to waiting for
worsen conditions to
improve

Passive
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 GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS
Is job satisfaction specific to cultures?
 Most of the research so far has been in the U. S., but the concept of job satisfaction is not
specific to the U.S.
 More research is needed elsewhere.

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; or perhaps the employees in Western cultures have
better off jobs and hence higher levels of job satisfaction! Which do you think?

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 GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS

 Evidence suggests that employees in Eastern

cultures value negative emotions more than
those in Western cultures, whereas Western
cultures value positive emotions & individual
happiness. Accordingly, this is reflected on
levels of job satisfaction.
LECTURE ASSIGNMENTS

Do take the following test to identify your attitude towards achievement. Bring it to class in
hardcopies to discuss and overview your analysis versus your colleagues.
http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/bp/app/sal_custom/wam/q12.html
Thank you…