Organizational Behavior

Arab World Edition

Robbins, Judge, Hasham

Chapter 3:
Attitudes and Job
Satisfaction

Lecturer:
Insert your name here

© Pearson Education 2012 3-1

 Chapter Learning Objectives

This chapter will enable you to:

1. Contrast the three components of an attitude.

2. Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior.

3. Compare and contrast the major job attitudes.

4. Define job satisfaction and show how it can be measured.

5. Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.

6. Identify four employee responses to dissatisfaction.

7. Show whether job satisfaction is a relevant concept in all

cultures.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-2

 Attitudes

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 Attitudes
Attitudes are evaluative statements or judgments concerning
objects, people, or events. It can be positive or negative.
Three components of an attitude:

The emotional or
Affective
Cognitive
feeling segment of
The opinion or an attitude
belief segment of Behavioral

an attitude
An intention to behave
in a certain way toward
someone or something
Attitude

© Pearson Education 2012 3-4

 Attitudes

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 Is there a relationship between behavior and
attitude ?
• We have two viewpoint :-
1) Early research , commonsense

Attitude
Behavior

2) Leon Festinger

Behavior

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Is there a relationship between behavior and
attitude ?
Cognitive Dissonance is 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
 through rationalization.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-7

 Is there a relationship between behavior and
attitude ?
Do Tobacco executives cope with the continuing
revelations about the health angers of smoking?
 They can deny any clear causation between smoking and cancer.
 They can brainwash themselves by continually articulating the benefits
 of tobacco.
 They can acknowledge the negative consequences of smoking but
rationalize that people are going to smoke and that tobacco companies
merely promote freedom of choice.
 They can accept the evidence and make cigarettes less dangerous or
reduce their availability to more vulnerable groups, such as teenagers.
 they can quit their job because the dissonance is too great

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 Moderating Variables

The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior

relationship are:
1. Importance of the attitude.
2. Accessibility.
3. Existence of social pressures.
4. Personal and direct experience of the attitude.

Attitudes Predict Behavior

Moderating Variables

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 Moderating Variables

The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior

relationship are:

1. Importance of the attitude.

Important attitudes reflect fundamental values, self interest, or
identification with individuals or groups that a person values.
Attitudes that individuals consider important tend to show a
strong relationship to behavior.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-10

 2- Accessibility.

Attitudes that are easily remembered are more likely to predict

behavior than attitudes that are not accessible in memory.

Interestingly, you’re more likely to remember attitudes that are

frequently expressed. So the more you talk about your attitude
on a subject, the more you’re likely to remember it, and the
more likely it is to shape your behavior

© Pearson Education 2012 3-11

3- Existence of social pressures.

The existence of social pressures. Inconsistencies

between attitudes and behavior are more likely to
occur when social pressures to behave in certain
ways hold exceptional power.
This tends to characterize behavior in organizations
This may explain why an employee who holds
strong anti-union attitudes attends pro-union
organizing meetings or why tobacco executives,
who are not smokers themselves and who tend to
believe the research linking smoking and cancer,
don’t actively discourage others from smoking in
their offices
© Pearson Education 2012 3-12
 4- A person’s direct experience with the attitude.

The attitude–behavior relationship is likely to be

much stronger if an attitude refers to something
with which the individual has direct personal
experience.
Asking college students with no significant work
experience how they would respond to working
for an autocratic supervisor is far less likely to
predict actual behavior than asking that same
question of employees who have actually worked
for such an individual.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-13

 Predicting Behavior from Attitudes (cont’d)

Marriott Hotels strives for consistency

between attitudes and behavior
through its motto ‘Spirit to Serve.’

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 People posses numerous attitudes , but OB
focuses on work-related attitudes .

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 What Are the Major Job Attitudes?

Job satisfaction
• A positive feeling about the job
resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.

• A person with a high level of job

satisfaction holds positive feelings about
his or her job
• while a person with a low level of job
satisfaction holds negative feelings.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-16

 What Are the Major Job Attitudes?
Job involvement
• Degree of psychological identification with the job where
perceived performance is important to self-worth.
Another closely related concept
Psychological empowerment
• Belief in the degree of influence over the job, competence,
job meaningfulness, and autonomy.
• Note that :-
 High levels of both job involvement and psychological empowerment
are positively related to organizational commitment and job
performance.
 High job involvement is also related to reduced absences and lower
resignation rates.

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 What Are the Major Job Attitudes? (Cont’d)
Organizational Commitment
• Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, while
wishing to maintain membership in the organization.
• Three dimensions:
– Affective commitment: emotional attachment to
organization and belief in its values.
– Continuance commitment: economic value of remaining
with an organization compared with leaving it.
– Normative commitment: is an obligation to remain with
the organization for moral or ethical obligations.

Whatever the type of commitment , employees determine

their connection to the workplace and this , in turn , determine
their level of performance

© Pearson Education 2012 3-18

 What Are the Major Job Attitudes? (Cont’d)

Perceived organizational support (POS)

• The degree to which employees believe the organization
values their contribution and cares about their well-being.

Example :-
an employee believes his organization would accommodate him if he had
a child care problem or would forgive an honest mistake on his part)

• Higher when rewards are fair, employees are involved in

decision-making, and supervisors are seen as supportive.
• High POS is related to higher performance.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-19

 What Are the Major Job Attitudes? (Cont’d)

Employee engagement
• The degree of involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the job.

 Engaged employees are passionate about their work and

company.
 Disengaged employees have essentially checked out—
putting time but not energy or attention into their work

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 What Are the Major Job Attitudes? (Cont’d)

To encourage employee engagement,

Phillips has a program rewarding
entrepreneurship in 22 Arab League
states.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-21

 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!

© Pearson Education 2012 3-22

 Are These Job Attitudes Really Distinct?

• You might wonder whether these job attitudes are really

distinct.
• After all, if people feel deeply involved in their job (high job
involvement), isn’t it probable that they like it (high job
satisfaction)?

• Similarly, won’t people who think their organization is

supportive (high perceived organizational support) also feel
committed to it (strong organizational commitment)?
• Evidence suggests that these attitudes are highly related,
perhaps to a troubling degree. For example, the correlation
between perceived organizational support and affective
commitment is very strong

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• If someone tells you she loves her company, it
may not mean a lot if she is positive about
everything else in her life.
• Or the overlap may mean that some
organizations are just all around better places to
work than others.
• This may mean that if you as a manager know
someone’s level of job satisfaction, you know
most of what you need to know about how the
person sees the organization.

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 Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is one of the primary job attitudes
measured
• Broad term involving a complex individual summation of a
number of discrete job elements.

 Jobs require interacting with co-workers and bosses.

 following organizational rules and policies.
 meeting performance standards.
 living with working conditions that are not always perfect.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-25

 Job Satisfaction

How to measure it?

1. Single global rating (one question/one answer) –
Best.

• 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” to “highly dissatisfied

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 Job Satisfaction

• Summation score (many questions/one average) –

OK

• is more sophisticated.
• It identifies key elements in a job such as the nature of
the work, supervision, present pay, promotion
opportunities, and relationships with co-workers.
• Respondents rate these on a standardized scale, and
researchers add the ratings to create an overall job
satisfaction score.

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 Job Satisfaction

• Is one of these approaches superior to

the other ?
• Both methods are helpful.
• The single global rating method isn’t very time
consuming, thus freeing time for other tasks,
• The summation of job facets helps managers
focus on problems and deal with them faster and
more accurately.

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 Job Satisfaction

Are people satisfied in their jobs?

• Results depend on how job satisfaction is measured.
• Pay and promotion are the most problematic elements.
• Figures 3-2 and 3-3 show motivation and satisfaction levels
in the Arab world.

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Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction
 Causes of Job Satisfaction

• The major job satisfaction facts (work itself , pay ,

advancement opportunities , supervision , coworkers)

• Enjoying the work is almost always the one most strongly

correlated with high levels of overall job satisfaction.

• Most people prefer work that is challenging and stimulating

over work that is predictable and routine.

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Causes of Job Satisfaction
Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily job satisfaction

Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily job satisfaction.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-33

 Causes of Job Satisfaction

Personality can influence job satisfaction

• Negative people are usually not satisfied with

their jobs.
• People who have positive core self-evaluations
, that is , those who believe in themselves and
have high self-confidence are more satisfied
with their jobs than those with negative core self-
evaluations

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 Causes of Job Satisfaction

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 Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction

Active
Exit Voice
•Behavior •Active and
directed constructive
toward attempts to
leaving the improve
organization conditions

Destructive Constructive
Neglect Loyalty
•Allowing •Passively
conditions to waiting for
worsen conditions to
improve

Passive

© Pearson Education 2012 3-36

 Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction

• 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
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 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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 Outcomes of Job Satisfaction (cont’d)

A major focus of Nissan Motor Company’s

Diversity Development Office in Japan is helping
female employees develop their careers.

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 Outcomes of Job Satisfaction (cont’d)

Lower 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.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-40

 Outcomes of Job Satisfaction (cont’d)

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact of

job satisfaction on the bottom line, most managers are
either unconcerned about, or overestimate, worker
satisfaction.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-41

 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.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-42

Global Implications
 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.

© Pearson Education 2012 3-44

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