Chapter 3: Attitudes and Job

Satisfaction
Student Study Slideshow

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 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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 Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning
objects, people, or events.
Three components of an attitude:
– Affective – The emotional or feeling 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
(See Exhibit 3.1)

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 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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 Moderating Variables
• 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
• Attitudes predict behavior, as influenced by
moderating variables.

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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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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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• 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 to a given employer.

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• 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, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the job.
– Engaged employees are passionate about their work and
company.

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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.

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 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 Exhibit 3-2)

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 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.
(Exhibit 3-3)

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 What are factors that cause
employee satisfaction?
• 1. Nature of Work
– Task Complexity: jobs that are mentally challenging have been consistently found as a main cause
of job satisfaction. Simple, repetitive, less challenging jobs are found to a source of frustration
and dissatisfaction in employee.
– Task Meaningfulness: employees’ belief that the work done by them is meaningful and has
significance causes job satisfaction in them. Furthermore, giving autonomy to employees make
them feel that they can display their competence and make a positive impact to the organization,
is another factor in job satisfaction.
– Physical Strain: reasonable amount of physical strain and exertion is another determinant in job
satisfaction. This factor is sometimes overlooked in the present age of technology. Fact is that
advancement in technology has made physical strain even more undesirable work characteristic.
• 2. Relationship with Supervisor and Colleagues
People expect more out of work than merely money or tangible achievements. For most employees,
work also fills the need for social interaction. The behavior of an employee’s manager is found a
major cause of satisfaction. Studies generally find that employee satisfaction increases when the
immediate supervisor understands the employees, is friendly, praises for good performance,
listens to employees’ opinions, and shows a personal interest in them.

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• 3. Compensation and benefits factors
Employees want pay systems that they perceive as just, unambiguous, and in line with their
expectations. When pay is seen as fair based on job demands, individual skill level, and community
pay standards, satisfaction is likely to result.
• 4. Promotion Policies and Career Development Factor
Opportunities for promotion, training programs, and capacity of career development are other factors
that cause job satisfaction. Employees seek fair promotion policies and practices. Promotions
provide opportunities for personal growth, more responsibilities, and increased social status.
Individuals who perceive that promotion decisions are made in a fair and just manner, therefore,
are likely to experience satisfaction from their jobs.
• 5. Working conditions and environment factors
Employees want work environments that support personal comfort and good job performance. Studies
demonstrate that employees prefer physical surroundings that are not dangerous or
uncomfortable. Most employees also prefer working relatively close to home, in clean and
relatively modern facilities, and with adequate tools and equipment. Physical features of
workplace like temperature, lighting arrangements, cleanliness, working outdoors, health hazards,
sick-building syndrome, social density, privacy in work, all may result in satisfaction or
dissatisfaction to employees.

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• 6. Organization development factors
Brand of organization in business field and comparison with leading competitor and
potential development of organization is a cause of job satisfaction in employees.
Missions and Vision of organization is another source of job satisfaction if it complies
with employee’s personal views and goals.

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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
(Exhibit 3-4)

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 Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
• Job Performance
– Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive
workers are more satisfied!
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
– Satisfaction influences Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
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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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.

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 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.
(Exhibit 3-5)

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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, and 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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