ATTITUDES, ATTRIBUT’N,

AND COMMUNICATION
Dynamics of Organizational Behavior
Virginia Tech MBA Program
Andrew Watson
Agenda
• A lot of material, covering most of Ch. 3, 4, 14
• Values and attitudes
• Video and discussion
• Break
• Perception and attribution
• Group discussion of next week’s presentations
• Communication
• Looking ahead
Justice
• We’ve covered organizational justice as a source of motivation
• We now look at justice is terms of values
• Concern with allocation of benefit and harm
• In a fair, equitable, or impartial manner
• Examples:
• Group presentations in class meetings
• More examples in video
Values, Attitudes, Moods, and Emotions
• Title of Ch. 3 is actually: Values, Attitudes, and Moods and
Emotions
• Suggests a focus on Values and Attitudes (VAme?)
• Relevant attitudes include job satisfaction
• Perhaps the biggest single topic in the chapter
• And this is one of the “bigger” chapters in the book, in terms of slides
• But we’ll start with values
• Then go on to attitudes
• And hear about moods and emotions next week
Values
• Personal convictions
• Broad and long-lasting
• Work values
• Intrinsic: about the work itself
• Extrinsic: about the consequences of work
• Ethical values
• About right and wrong: remember, these are personal convictions
• Code of ethics
• Rules provided by organization
• Not sufficient to ensure ethical behavior
Attitudes
• Collections of feelings, beliefs, and thoughts toward something
• Three components:
• Affective
• Behavioral
• Cognitive
• Less broad and durable than values
• Job satisfaction: attitude toward current job
• Organizational commitment: attitude toward current
organization
Job Satisfaction
• Attitude to current job
• Affected by:
• Personal variables, e.g., personality, values
• Genetic factors seem to account for ~30% of variance in job satisfaction
• Situational variables, e.g., work and conditions, co-workers
• Two theories emphasizing personal variables
• Steady-state
• Each person has own equilibrium level of job satisfaction
• Events may cause temporary move away from equilibrium
• Discrepancy
• Each person has own ideal job
• Job satisfaction is low when the real job doesn’t match the ideal
More Theories of Job Satisfaction
• Facets
• Facet: element of job
• e.g., Achievement, Compensation,…
• May have different levels of satisfaction with different facets of job
• From these levels, can compute overall job satisfaction
• Motivator-hygiene
• Hertzberg: job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are different dimensions
• Motivator needs are associated with work itself
• Job satisfaction depends on motivator needs being met
• Hygiene needs are associated with work conditions
• Job dissatisfaction results from unmet hygiene needs
• Theories of job satisfaction combine well
Consequences of Job Satisfaction
• What does job satisfaction predict/determine/influence?
• Isn’t it obvious that it will positively affect job performance?
• In fact it is weakly related to:
• Performance
• Absenteeism
• Turnover
Other Concepts
• Organizational commitment
• Attitude to organization
• Affective: happy to be member of the organization
• Continuance: stay, even if unhappy
• Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
• Above and beyond the call of duty
• May well entail helping co-workers (e.g., with tech)
• Employee well-being
• Happiness, health, prosperity
• Moods and Emotions
• Student group presentation(s)
Relationships Among VAme
• Closing slide for the chapter
• Follows student accounts of Moods and Emotions
• There is a hierarchy based on breadth and stability
• Values
• Attitudes
• Moods
• Emotions
• Influence tends to flow down the hierarchy
• So values influence everything else more than they are influenced
• However, over time, influence can flow up the hierarchy
• See Exhibit 3.4 in text (but arrow emphasis may mislead)
Perception
• First of the three topics in ch 4, along with:
• Attribution (AW)
• Diversity (student group(s), next week)
• Perception: the process by which individuals select, organize,
and interpret the data from their senses
• Not always accurate
• Three components: perceiver, target, situation
Perceiver and Other Components
• Perceiver
• Schemas
• Abstract knowledge structures allowing the organization and interpretation of
information about a target
• Include stereotypes
• Motivational state and mood
• Target
• Impression management
• Situation
• Salience of target within situation
Biases of Perceiver
• Example: professor perceiving students and their work
• May involve biases including the following
• Primacy of early information
• Halo effect
• General impression distorts specific, often more work-relevant,
perceptions
• Knowledge of predictor
• Similar-to-me
• Raises questions of difference and diversity
• So let’s have the Diversity presentation now
Attribution
• Explanation of the cause of target’s behavior
• e.g., stumbling through doorway
• Two broad types of attribution by the perceiver/attributor:
• Internal: behavior due to characteristic of the target
• e.g., target is clumsy
• External: behavior due to factors outside the target
• e.g., threshold is uneven, needs fixing
Biases in Attribution
• Fundamental attribution error
• Overstate internal effects
• e.g., “That’s a clumsy person”
• Actor-observer effect
• FAE plus explaining own behavior in terms of external causes
• Self-serving bias
• Explain own successes in internal terms, failures in external terms
Communication Basics
• What: sharing of information
• Between two or more individuals or groups
• To reach a common understanding
• Why?
• Provide knowledge
• Motivate stakeholders
• A wider population than “organizational members”
• Control and coordinate activities
• Including group activities
• Express feelings and emotions
Communication Networks
• Within group: may depend on task interdependence
• Wheel, with leader at the hub: pooled
• Chain: sequential
• All-channel: reciprocal
• Circle
• Within organization
• Formal, according to organization chart
• Informal networks
• A network each for advice, trust and communication?
• HBR article (Krackhardt & Hanson, 1993) describing these three networks is
excellent
Communication Process
• Sender: the starting point
• Message: information to be shared
• Encoding: turn message into words or symbols
• Intention is that receiver can understand
• But jargon may inhibit understanding
• Medium: verbal or nonverbal
• Richer account of media is a few slides away
• Decoding of message by receiver
• Receiver
• May reply, thus activating feedback loop
• Reply may be acknowledgement, request for clarification, disagreement,…
Barriers to Effective Communication
• Some barriers may be obvious from process on previous slide
• May arise from sender/message, from receiver,…
• Other barriers include
• Workforce diversity, e.g.:
• Functional background
• Demographics
• Rumors, which may compete with “the message” for attention
and credibility
• “Avalanche of information”
• As Cialdini describes it
• Due to technology
Choice of Medium
• Face-to-face verbal communication best in terms of
information richness
• But it’s expensive in terms of time
And perhaps in terms of travel expenses
• Technology: pros and cons of
• Email
• Multi-site video conferencing
• Self-documenting communication technologies
• Social media
• Local example: group communicates to rest of class
• Use visuals?
• Could be PPT, board, flipchart, poster, handout,…
Persuasive Communication
• General case
• X transmits information to Y
• attempt to get Y to accept, agree with, follow, and seek to achieve…
• X’s goals and objectives
• Example on next slide
• From an exam answer in a previous semester
Persuasive Example
• Quotes from answer to exam question on stress
• Feeling and knowing that Chris’s professors care about… students… likely
to help reduce… stress
• Perhaps knowing that Chris has a very demanding work situation and/or
a sick child (just an example) his professors would be a little bit more
lenient in handing out assignments and assigning their due dates
• Professors at Virginia Tech should be very understanding of everyone’s
“situation” outside of school may it be their job or… their family
• What “tricks” did the student use?
Looking Ahead and…
• Due from you before we meet next week
• Group Presentation PowerPoints
• Treadway Tire case
• Skim, if you’re not presenting on it
• More than that, if you are!
• Standard Closing
Standard Closing
• Anything else I should say to the whole class?
• Rest of evening
• Safe home
• Enjoy
• Anything you’d like to discuss with me?
• As individual or group