Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

Attitudes are evaluative statements – either favourable or unfavourable – concerning objects, people,
or events. Attitudes have cognitive, affective, and behavioural components. Cognitive components of
attitude relate to what a person knows, while the affective components relate to how people feel.
Managers tend to be most concerned with behavioural components – how people behave or intend to
behave.

Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their attitudes and between
their attitudes and their behaviour. Cognitive dissonance occurs when an individual has two or more
attitudes that are inconsistent, or if one or more attitudes is inconsistent with behaviour.
Inconsistency causes discomfort and individuals will seek a stable state in which there is a minimum of
dissonance. The desire to reduce dissonance will be determined by the importance of the elements
creating the dissonance, the degree of influence the individual believe that she has over the elements,
and the rewards that may be involved in the dissonance.

Finally, the text examines the issue of whether attitudes cause behaviour or if behaviour, instead,
influences attitude. Research has shown that attitudes influence future behaviour, moderated by a
number of variables, including the importance of the attitude, its specificity, its accessibility, whether
there are social pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitude.

Three of the more prominent attitudes in organizational behaviour research are job satisfaction, job
involvement, and organizational commitment. Job satisfaction can be defined as a positive feeling
about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. A related attitude is job
involvement, which measures the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with his or her
job. The third attitude is organizational commitment, an employee’s desire to maintain continued
membership within his or her organization. Organizational commitment, which has affective,
continuance, and normative components, has a positive correlation with productivity.

A related job attitude is perceived organizational support, the degree to which employees believe that
the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Research show that people
perceive their organization as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a
voice in decisions, and when their supervisors are seen as supportive.

Employee engagement refers to the extent to which the employee is involved with, and satisfied by,
the work that he or she does. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep
connection to their company, while disengaged employees put time, but not energy or attention, into
their work.

Job satisfaction is a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics. The most widely used approaches to measuring job satisfaction are a single global
rating and a summation score made up of a number of job facets. Interestingly, the single global
rating is as effective at measuring job satisfaction as the more complex summation score. In the
United States and most developed countries, workers are generally satisfied with their jobs, although
satisfaction varies among individual facets of jobs.

Although workers generally indicate that they are satisfied with their jobs, job satisfaction levels in the
US are dropping. American workers are most satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself, and
with their supervisors and coworkers. However, they are less satisfied with their pay and promotion
opportunities. Pay appears to have a limited effect on job satisfaction, particularly among higher
income employees. Personality also affects job satisfaction. People with positive core self-evaluations
are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations.

When employees dislike their jobs, they may exhibit a variety of behaviours. The behaviours may be
categorized as constructive or destructive and active or passive. Responses to dissatisfaction include
exit (looking for a new position), voice (actively and constructively attempting to improve conditions),
loyalty (passively waiting for conditions to improve), or neglect (passively allowing conditions to
worsen, to include chronic absenteeism, reduced effort, or apathetic attitude).

The possible outcomes of job satisfaction related to performance, organizational citizenship

behaviour, customer satisfaction, absenteeism, turnover, and workplace deviance. The relationship
between productivity and job satisfaction is positive, but it is unclear whether satisfaction leads to
productivity or if productivity leads to satisfaction. Organizational citizenship behaviour is closely
linked to job satisfaction and implies that an employee is willing to go above and beyond job
requirements through such actions as talking positively about the organization, helping others, and
going beyond the normal expectations of their job. The evidence indicates that satisfied employees
increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, particularly in service organizations. There is also a
consistently negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism and turnover, although the
negative correlation between satisfaction and turnover is more significant. Finally, job dissatisfaction
predicts a broad range of behaviours associated with workplace deviance.

Evidence suggests that there may be some cultural differences in job satisfaction. Workers in Western
cultures have higher job satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures. There are a number of possible
explanations. Among these, Eastern cultures appear to be more accepting of negative emotions than
Western cultures.

Managers can positively impact satisfaction levels through providing mentally challenging work,
equitable rewards, and through providing supportive working conditions. Although high pay is effective
in attracting employees, high pay alone is unlikely to create a satisfying work environment.