Chapter 3:

Attitudes & Job Satisfaction

 What is Attitude?
• Attitudes are evaluative statements or
judgments either favorable or
unfavorable about objects, people or
events.
• It reflects how we feel about something.
When I say “ I like my job” I am
expressing my attitude.
Behaviour towards objects is dependent
upon attitude towards objects.
 Components of Attitudes
There are three components of an attitude:
1. Cognitive (Evaluation): The opinion or belief segment of an
attitude and is reflected in the statement “My pay is low”.
2. Affective (Feeling): The emotional or feeling segment of an
attitude and is reflected in the statement “I am angry over
how little I’m paid”.
3. Behavioral (Action): The behavioral component of an
attitude describes an intention to behave in a certain way
toward someone or something and is reflected in the
statement “I’m going to look for another job that pays
better”.
Cognition causes affect which then causes behavior.
…Components of Attitudes
 THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE (1957)

Cognitive= thought
Dissonance= conflict

“The distressing mental state caused by

inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs
or a belief and an action.”
Leon Festinger

Behavior inconsistent Creation of

Attitude
with the attitude dissonance

3–5
 THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DISSONANCE
Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?
OR
Do Attitudes Sometimes Follow Behavior?

Early research on attitudes assumed they were causally related to behavior—that is, the
attitudes people hold determine what they do. However, one researcher— Leon Festinger—
argued that attitudes follow behavior. Other researchers have agreed that attitudes predict
future behavior.

Suppose a friend of yours has always argued that the quality of products, made in
Bangladesh, isn’t up to that of imports. But his father-in-law gives him an refrigerator-a
Walton product- and suddenly Bangladeshi products aren’t so bad!!!!
3–6
 Does Behavior Always Follow from
Attitudes?
Leon Festinger – No, the reverse is
sometimes true! He argued that attitudes
follow behavior because of cognitive
dissonance.
• Cognitive Dissonance refers to any
incompatibility an individual might perceive
between two or more attitudes or between
behavior and attitudes.
 …Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?
Festinger also argued that any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable
and for these --
1. Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap or dissonance to
reach stability and consistency.
2. Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes, modifying the
behaviors or through rationalization.
3. Desire to reduce dissonance depends on the following moderating
factors :
– Importance of the elements (individuals will be more motivated to
reduce dissonance when the attitudes or behavior are important)
– Degree of individual influence (individuals will be more motivated
to reduce dissonance when they believe the dissonance is due to
something they can control)
– Rewards involved in dissonance (high rewards accompanying high
dissonance tend to reduce the tension inherent in the dissonance)
 Moderating Variables
The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are:
1. The importance of the attitude: Important attitudes have a strong
relationship to behavior.
2. Its correspondence to behavior: The closer the match between
attitude and behavior, the stronger the relationship:
 Specific attitudes predict specific behavior
 General attitudes predict general behavior
3. Its accessibility: The more frequently expressed an attitude, the better
predictor it is.
4. The presence of social pressures: High social pressures reduce the
relationship and may cause dissonance. For example, employees of
tobacco don’t actively discourage others though many of them are not
smoker.
5. Possessing direct experience with the attitude: Attitudes based on
personal experience are stronger predictors.
 What are the Major Job Attitudes?
A person has thousands of attitudes but OB
focuses on a very limited number of work related
attitudes. Work related or job attitudes refer to
positive or negative evaluations that employees
hold about aspects of their work environment. The
Major job attitudes are:
1. 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. Dissatisfied
person holds negative feelings.
 …What are the Major Job Attitudes?
2. Job Involvement: Job involvement is the degree to which
a person identifies with a job, actively participates in it and
consider performance important to self-worth.
 Employees with a high level of job involvement create
psychological empowerment (employees belief in the
degree to which they affect their work environment, their
competencies, the meaningfulness of their job and their
perceived autonomy in their work).
 High levels of both job involvement and psychological
empowerment are positively related to organizational
citizenship behavior and job performance.
 High job involvement is related to reduced absences and
lower resignation rates.
 …What are the Major Job Attitudes?
3. Organizational Commitment: The degree to which
an employee identifies with a particular organization
and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in
the organization.
 There are three dimensions of organizational
commitment:
i. Affective: Emotional attachment to organization.
ii. Continuance: Economic value of staying.
iii. Normative: Moral or ethical obligations.
 Organizational commitment positively influence job
productivity.
 …What are the Major Job Attitudes?
4. Perceived Organizational Support (POS): POS is the
degree to which employees believe the organization
values their contribution and cares about their well-
being.
 For 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.
 People perceive their organization as supportive when
their supervisors are seen as supportive.
 Employees with strong POS perceptions have been found
more likely to have higher levels of organizational
citizenship behaviors, lower levels of tardiness, and
better customer service.
 …What are the Major Job Attitudes?
5. Employee Engagement: Employee engagement
is an individual’s involvement with, satisfaction
with and enthusiasm for the job.
 Highly engaged employees have a passion for
their work and feel a deep connection to their
company.
 Disengaged employees are putting time but not
energy or attention into their work.
 Higher level of engagement had higher levels of
customer satisfaction, high productivity and
lower turnover.
 What is Job Satisfaction?
• Job Satisfaction is a positive feeling about the
job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.
• Job Satisfaction or Employee Satisfaction is a
pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting
from the appraisal of one’s job or job
experiences.
• Job Satisfaction is the extent to which people
like (satisfaction) or dislike (dissatisfaction) their
jobs.
 Measuring Job Satisfaction
There are two most widely used approaches for
measuring job satisfaction:
1. Single Global Rating: 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.”
2. Summation of Job Facets: It identifies key elements in
a job, such as, nature of work, supervision, present
pay, promotion opportunities, relation with co-
workers. Respondents rate these on a standardized
scale, and researchers add the ratings to create an
overall job satisfaction score.
 Factors Influencing Job Satisfaction
1. Job Condition
2. Personality
3. Pay
4. Corporate Social Responsibility
5. Advancement opportunities
6. Supervision
7. Relation with co-workers
8. Training
9. Independence
10. Control
11. Challenging task
12. Routing work
13. Work-life balance
 Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
1. Job Performance: Happy workers are more likely to be productive workers.
organizations with more satisfied employees tend to be more effective.
2. Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Satisfied employees would seem more
likely to talk positively about the organization, help others, and go beyond the
normal expectations in their job.
3. Customer Satisfaction: Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
4. Absenteeism: Dissatisfied employees are more likely to miss work.
5. Turnover: The turnover rate is high for the dissatisfied employees with high
“human capital” (high education, high ability).
6. Workplace Deviance: Job dissatisfaction encourage undesirable organizational
behaviors, such as unionization attempts, substance abuse, stealing at work,
undue socializing, and tardiness. Researchers argue these behaviors are
indicators of a broader syndrome called deviant behavior in the workplace or
counterproductive behavior or employee withdrawal.
7. Life satisfaction: Job satisfaction is positively correlated with life satisfaction,
and your attitudes and experiences in life spill over into your job approaches
and experiences.
What Are the Main Causes of Job
Dissatisfaction?
 Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction
The exit–voice–loyalty–neglect framework is helpful in
understanding the consequences of dissatisfaction:
1. Exit: The exit response directs behavior toward leaving the
organization, including looking for a new position as well as
resigning.
2. Voice: The voice response includes actively and constructively
attempting to improve conditions, including suggesting
improvements, discussing problems with superiors, and undertaking
some forms of union activity.
3. Loyalty: The loyalty response means passively but optimistically
waiting for conditions to improve, including speaking up for the
organization in the face of external criticism and trusting the
organization and its management to “do the right thing.”
4. Neglect: The neglect response passively allows conditions to worsen
and includes chronic absenteeism or lateness, reduced effort, and
increased error rate.
…Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction
 Managerial Implications
1. Managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes
because attitudes give warnings of potential problems and
influence behavior.
2. Managers will also want to measure job attitudes effectively
so they can tell how employees are reacting to their work.
3. Managers should try to develop satisfied and committed
employees because satisfied and committed employees have
lower rates of turnover, absenteeism, and withdrawal
behaviors. They also perform better on the job.
4. Managers should realize that for attracting and keeping high-
quality employees the payment should be smart.
5. To raise employee satisfaction, managers have to focus on the
intrinsic parts of the job, such as making the work challenging
and interesting.
THE END