Organizational Attitudes and

Behavior
What is an attitude?
● Attitudes → Behaviors?
● Do you think attitudes always predict behavior?
○ Does it make sense to predict that someone who has a positive attitude toward the environment will
reduce their waste and recycle?
● Sometimes but not always, depends on number of factors
What is an attitude?
● Predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable way to persons or objects
○ “I like X” or “I dislike Y” are examples of expressing an attitude toward a person or
object
Affect, Moods, and Emotions
What are affect, moods, and emotions?
● Affect: broad term; range of feelings that are
typically described on a positive-negative
continuum
○ Mood: general and long-lasting feelings not directed at a
particular target
○ Emotions: target-specific feelings that are relatively short
in duration
Emotional Labor
● Requirement in some jobs that employees
express emotions to customers or clients that are
associated with enhanced performance in the job
○ Emotion regulation: attempts to control one’s emotions
or mood
● Which jobs do you think require employees to
engage in emotional labor more than others?
Attitudes and Behaviors at Work
Why should organizations care?
● Attitudes and behaviors affect things like: job performance, turnover, experience of
work, work-life balance, and more
● Major attitudes we will discuss:
○ Job satisfaction
○ Job involvement/employee engagement
○ Organizational commitment
○ Justice perceptions
How I-O Psychologists Help Organizations Assess and
Manage Attitudes
● Attitude surveys
● Job design
● Personnel selection
● Training
● Performance appraisal
Job Satisfaction
● The degree of pleasure an employee derives from his or her job
● One of the most highly researched topics in I-O psychology
● Have you ever been satisfied with a job overall, but dissatisfied with certain aspects
of the job?
○ Global job satisfaction: overall job satisfaction
○ Job facet satisfaction: feelings about certain dimensions of the job, including their supervisors,
coworkers, promotional opportunities, pay, and so on
Predicting Job Satisfaction
Predicting Job Satisfaction Implications
● There are dispositional aspects to job satisfaction
● Not easy to get long term changes in job satisfaction
● People often re-calibrate to new circumstances
Job Satisfaction
How do you think job satisfaction is related to the following key criteria:

● Performance:
○ Satisfaction is weakly to moderately related to performance (r = .17 - .30)
● Turnover:
○ Satisfaction is strongly related to turnover (r = -.40)
● Absence:
○ Satisfaction is moderately related to absence (r = -.25)
Job Involvement/Employee Engagement
● The degree to which a person identifies psychologically with their work, and the
importance of work to one’s self-image
Job Involvement/Employee Engagement
● How do you think job involvement is related to the following key criteria:
● Overall job satisfaction:
○ r = .45
● Conscientiousness (Big 5 personality trait):
○ r = .53
● Turnover:
○ r = -.13
● Performance:
○ r = .09
● Strongly related to how people view their work, but not so much to how well they
perform their jobs
Organizational Commitment
● The extent to which an employee feels a sense of allegiance to his or her employer
Organizational Commitment
● What are some reasons why people might feel committed to their organizations?
● The three components of organizational commitment are:
Organizational Commitment
● How do you think organizational commitment is related to the following key criteria:
● Overall job satisfaction:
○ r = .53
● Job Involvement:
○ r = .50
● Performance
○ r = .20
● Turnover:
○ r = -.28
● Organizational commitment strongly correlated with satisfaction and job
involvement, but modestly correlated with performance and turnover
Organizational Justice
● The theoretical concept pertaining to the fair treatment of people in organizations
Distributive Justice
● Perceived fairness of how outcomes or results are distributed
● Suppose I came to class today with 10 donuts. Everyone wants one. What would be
the fairest way to share the donuts?
● 3 general “rules” of interpreting fairness of outcomes:
○ Equity
○ Equality
○ Need
Procedural Justice
● Perceived fairness of the process used to distribute the results
● Examples of procedures in organizations where procedural justice is important:
○ Promotions are based on performance reviews
○ Selection based on a personnel selection system
● Employee voice is important
● What qualities make rules and procedures fair?
Interactional & Interpersonal Justice
● Interactional Justice: Perceived fairness with which people are treated within an
organization and the timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of the information
received in an organization
● Interpersonal Justice: Showing concern for individuals and respecting them as people
who have dignity
● Informational Justice: Providing knowledge about procedures that demonstrate
regard for people’s concerns
Interpersonal Justice Example
Organizational Justice
● Fair treatment of employees by organizations is important
○ Affects employee attitudes (e.g., satisfaction, commitment)
○ Affects employee behaviors (absenteeism, citizenship behavior)
○ Procedural justice relates strongest to employee attitudes and behaviors
Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs)
● The contributions employees make to the overall welfare of the organization that go
beyond the required duties of their job
● Actions that go above and beyond normal expectations (“going the extra mile”)
● 5 Types of OCBs:
○ Altruism – Willfully helping specific people with an organizationally relevant tasks
○ Conscientiousness – Being punctual, having attendance better than group norm, and judiciously
following company rules, regulations, and procedures
○ Courtesy – Being mindful and respectful of others’ rights
○ Sportsmanship – Avoiding complaints, petty grievances, gossiping, and falsely magnifying problems
○ Civic Virtue – Responsible participation in the political life of the organization (e.g., attending
meetings on current organizational issues)
Example Measure of OCBs
What can organizations do to promote OCBs?
● OCB is partly a product of an individual’s disposition
● What Big 5 personality traits do you think are related to OCBs?
○ Agreeableness & Conscientiousness
● OCB is also a product of organizational context (situational factors)
○ High perceptions of procedural justice predicts OCBs
○ Supervisors can increase employees’ OCBs by treating them fairly
Thought Questions
● Besides money, what do you expect from your employer?
● Some possibilities:
○ Opportunities for growth
○ Job security
○ Appreciation
○ Autonomy / control over your work
○ Interesting work
○ Loyalty from company
● How many of these things are actually included in a formal employment contract?
Psychological Contract
● Unwritten understandings and informal obligations between an employer and its
employees regarding their mutual expectations of how each will perform their
respective roles
Psychological Contract
● Explains:
○ How reciprocal promises oblige employee behaviors to do things for their employer
○ Why employees react when they believe promises made to them are broken
● Features:
○ Not necessarily mutual
○ The contract is revised over time
○ Very powerful influence over employee attitudes and motivation
Violations of the Psychological Contract
● Happens when one party in a relationship perceives that another has failed to fulfill
the promised obligations
● Examples of types of violations of the psychological contract:
○ Training and development: Absence of training or training experience not as promised
○ Compensation: Discrepancies in promised and realized pay, benefits, and bonuses
○ Promotion: Promotion or advancement schedule not as promised
○ Job Security: Promises not met regarding the degree of job security one could expect
○ Feedback: Feedback and reviews inadequate compared with what was promised
○ People: Employer perceived as having misrepresented the type of people at the firm, in terms of things
such as their expertise, work style, or reputation
Violations of the Psychological Contract
Are breaches of psychological contracts associated with higher or lower…

● …Mistrust?
● …Job satisfaction?
● …Organizational commitment?
● …OCBs?
● …Job performance?
Violations of the Psychological Contract
Are breaches of psychological contracts associated with higher or lower…

● …Mistrust? Higher
● …Job satisfaction? Lower
● …Organizational commitment? Lower
● …OCBs? Lower
● …Job performance? Lower
Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs)
● Also known as organizational deviance
● Behaviors exhibited in a work context that are harmful to other employees or to the
organization
○ Includes: insults, threats, bullying, lies, theft, sabotage, physical violence
● People who engage in CWBs often do so after a breach of the psychological contract
Workplace Violence
Takeaways
I-O psychologists study work-related attitudes and behavior that have important
implications for organizations (job performance, turnover, etc.)
Example Test Question
● Individuals may need to either hide feelings they are experiencing or fake feelings
they are not experiencing. This type of behavior is known as:
○ mood suppression

○ mood amplification

○ affective disposition

○ emotional labor