Attitudes and Job

Satisfaction

3-1
3-2
What is Attitude?

• Attitudes are learned predisposition towards our

environment.
• Attitudes are relatively lasting feelings, beliefs and
behavioral tendencies directed towards specific
people, issues, ideas or objects.
• An individual’s background and experience are
reflected through attitudes.

3-3
Attitudes

Informational/cognitive
Attitudes component
Evaluation or analysis of
Evaluative available information
statements or
judgments Affective Component
concerning The emotional or feeling segment
objects, of an attitude.
people, or
events. Behavioral Component
An intention to behave in a certain
way toward someone or something.
Does Behavior Always Follow from
Attitudes?
• 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

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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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Cont’d……….

• 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 the past – now perhaps more
of an occupational commitment, loyalty to profession
rather than a given employer.

3-8
Cont’d……

• 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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What is Job Satisfaction?
(Pleasure of doing job)

• The extent to which people like (satisfaction) or

dislike (dissatisfaction) their jobs.
• An individual’s general attitude towards his/her job.
• How well a job provides fulfillment of a need or
want, or how well it serves as a source or means of
enjoyment.
• Job satisfaction is the degree to which individuals
feel positively or negatively about their jobs.

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Causes of Job Satisfaction
• Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.
• Pay includes all the packages of benefits like salary,
benefits, services etc.
• 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.
• Working Conditions
• Co-worker relations
• Promotional opportunity/ career advancment
• Work itself
• Job security
• Autonomy and feedback
• Skills variety and so on.
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Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction
Active

Destructive Constructive

Passive

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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.
Cont’d………
• 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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Questions

• Describe all learning theories in detail and also justify as a manager

how you would use these theories in managing people and
organization. (2018)
• Why are measures of job satisfaction not very predictive of outcomes
in the workplace? (2018)
• Our perception helps us in analyzing behaviors of people within
organization. Quite often, we do use shortcuts in judging others. At
times these shortcuts are valuable but also we realize that they are not
fool proof. Can you discuss any two such shortcuts you would have
used in making judgement of others? (2017)
• Managers are interested in their employees’ attitudes because
attitudes give warnings of potential problems and influence behavior.
In this context, explain the specific outcomes of job satisfaction and
dissatisfaction in the workplace. (2017)
Cont’d…

• What factors do you think differentiate good decision makers from poor
ones? Relate your answer to the six-step rational decision making model.
(2016)
• In today’s world, the most realistic personality model is known as Big Five
model. Explain the Big Five model giving examples from various types of
organizations. (2016)
• You are asked to find employees to fill two positions: one position requiring
a lot of face to face interaction with others and the other requiring an
employee who can take unpopular stands. Employee with which
personality attribute would be a good fit in each situation? Why? (2015)
• Reinforcement, either positive or negative, is applied to strengthen the
behavior. In this regard, what kind of behavior should be strengthened?
Why? Give an example of a behavior when you would use positive and
negative reinforcement to strengthen the behavior.
Cont’d…

• One of your friends consistently argues in support of his belief that

copying assignment is wrong. However, a number of times he is
caught for submitting someone else’s work as his own. Which
concept of OB explains this phenomenon? Explain what your friend
would do to seek consistency between his belief and his behavior.
(2014)
• What would be a destructive, yet an active response for job
dissatisfaction? Generally, people respond differently to job
dissatisfaction. In line with this statement, how would you respond
when you are dissatisfied with certain service at your college so that
your response helps to improve the condition? Also, explain what
kind of relationship can be expected between job satisfaction and
other dependent variables of OB model? (2014)