cognition causes affect, which then causes behavior, in

Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

reality these components are difficult to separate.
➢ In organizations, attitudes are important for their behavioral
Attitudes component. If workers believe, for example, that managers,
auditors, and engineers are in a conspiracy to make
employees work harder for less money, we should try to
➢ Evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, understand how this attitude is formed, how it impacts job
people, or events. behavior, and how it might be changed.
➢ They reflect how we feel about something.

Attitudes and Bahavior

Three components of an attitude
➢ Cognitive Dissonance
- Any compatibility between two or more attitudes or
• Cognitive component between behavior and attitudes
- The opinion of belief segment of an attitude.
- Description of or belief in the way things are. ➢ Relationship of attitudes and Behavior
Example: “My pay is low”

• Affective component Job Satisfaction and Job Involvement

- The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
- Affect the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude ➢ Job Satisfaction
reflected in the statement. - A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an
- The effect can lead to behavioral outcomes. evaluation of its characteristics
Example: “I am hungry over how little I’m paid.” ➢ A person with high job satisfaction holds positive feelings
about the work, while a person with low satisfaction holds
• Behavioral component negative feelings
- An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone
or something. ➢ Job Involvement
Example: “I’m going to look for another job that pays - The degree to which a person identifies with the job,
better.” actively participates in it, and considers performance
important to self-worth
- Employees with high jobs involve strongly identifying
Viewing attitudes as having three components—cognition, affect, and with and really caring about the kind of work they do.
behavior—helps understand their complexity and the potential
relationship between attitudes and behavior. ➢ Psychological empowerment
- Employees’ belief in the degree to which they affect their
work environment, their competence, the
meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived
autonomy in their work.

Organizational Commitment

➢ Organizational Commitment
- The degree to which an employee identifies with a
particular organization and its goals and wishes to
maintain membership in the organization.
- Emotional attachment to an organization and belief in its
values is the “gold standard” for employee commitment.

Perceived Organizational Support

➢ His attitude toward his supervisor is illustrated as follows:
The employee thought he deserved the promotion (cognition), ➢ Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
he strongly dislikes his super visor (affect), and he has - The degree to which employees believe an organization
complained and acted (behavior). Although we often think values their contribution and cares about their well-
being.
 ➢ Life Satisfaction

➢ Power distance
- For most individuals, work is an important part of life,
and therefore it makes sense that our overall happiness
- The degree to which people in a country accept that
depends in no small part on our happiness in our work
power in institutions and organizations is distributed
(our job satisfaction).
unequally is lower.

Impact of Job Dissatisfaction

Employee Engagement

What happens when employees dislike their jobs?

➢ An individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the work he or she does. ➢ Exit
➢ Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and - Dissatisfaction expressed through behavior directed
feel a deep connection to their companies; disengaged toward leaving the organization.
employees have essentially checked out, putting time but not - The exit response directs behavior toward leaving the
energy or attention into their work. organization, including looking for a new position or
resigning. To measure the effects of this response to
dissatisfaction, researchers study individual
Causes of Job Satisfaction terminations and collective turnover, the total loss to the
organization of employee knowledge, skills, abilities,
and other characteristics.
Personality
➢ Core self-evaluation (CSE) ➢ Voice
- Believing in one’s inner worth and basic competence. - Dissatisfaction expressed through active and
- CSE influences job satisfaction as people with high constructive attempts to improve conditions.
levels of both CSE and career commitment may realize - The voice response includes actively and constructively
particularly high job satisfaction. attempting to improve conditions, including suggesting
improvements, discussing problems with superiors, and
➢ Pay undertaking union activity.
- Pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall
happiness for many people, but the effect can be
smaller once an individual reaches a standard level of
comfortable living

➢ Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

- An organization’s self-regulated actions to benefit
society or the environment beyond what is required by
law.

Causes of Job Satisfaction

➢ Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)

- job satisfaction should be a major determinant of an
employee’s organizational citizenship behavior (known ➢ Loyalty
as OCB or citizenship behavior - Dissatisfaction expressed by passively waiting for
- OCBs include people talking positively about their conditions to improve.
organizations, helping others, and going beyond the - The loyalty response means passively but optimistically
normal expectations of their jobs. waiting for conditions to improve, including speaking up
for the organization in the face of external criticism and
➢ Customer Satisfaction trusting the organization and it management to “do the
- Because service organization managers should be right thing.”
concerned with pleasing customers, it’s reasonable to
ask whether employee satisfaction is related to positive ➢ Neglect
customer outcomes. - Dissatisfaction expressed through allowing conditions
- Satisfied employees appear to increase customer to worsen.
satisfaction and loyalty.
 - The neglect response passively allows conditions to
worsen and includes chronic absenteeism or lateness,
reduced effort, and an increased error rate.

Exit and neglect behaviors are linked to performance variables such

as productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. But this model expands
employee responses to include voice and loyalty—constructive
behaviors that allow individuals to tolerate unpleasant situations or
improve working conditions.

Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)

➢ Actions that actively damage the organization, including

stealing, behaving aggressively toward coworkers, or being
late or absent

➢ Absenteeism
- Consistent negative relationship between satisfaction
and absenteeism, but the relationship is moderate to
weak

➢ Turnover
- The relationship between job satisfaction and turnover
is stronger than between satisfaction and absenteeism.

Summary

➢ Managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes

because attitudes influence behavior and indicate potential
problems. Creating a satisfied work force is hardly a
guarantee of successful organizational performance, but
evidence strongly suggests managers’ efforts to improve
employee attitudes will likely result in positive outcomes,
including greater organizational effectiveness, higher
customer satisfaction, and increased profits

Implications for Managers

➢ Of the major job attitudes—job satisfaction, job involvement,

organizational commitment, perceived organizational
support (POS), and employee engagement—remember that
an employee’s job satisfaction level is the best single
predictor of behavior.
➢ Pay attention to your employees’ job satisfaction levels as
determinants of their performance, turnover, absenteeism,
and withdrawal behaviors.
➢ Measure employee job attitudes objectively and at regular
intervals in or der to determine how employees are reacting
to their work.
➢ To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between the
employee’s work interests and the intrinsic parts of the job;
then create work that is challenging and interesting to the
individual.
➢ Consider the fact that high pay alone is unlikely to create a
satisfying work environment