GEN 207: Industrial Psychology

Chapter 4: Job Attitudes

Md. Shaheen Mollah

Adjunct Faculty
Department of Social Relations
East West University
shaheen.mollah@ewubd.edu
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 Contents & Reference

➢ Nature of job satisfaction

➢ Assessment of job satisfaction
➢ Antecedents of job satisfaction
➢ Potential effects of job satisfaction
➢ Organizational commitment

Reference Book:
Industrial & Organizational Psychology (6th Ed.)
Written by Paul E. Spector (2012)
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 Nature of Job Satisfaction
Definition of Job Satisfaction
✓ Job satisfaction is an attitudinal variable that
reflects how people feel about their jobs overall as
well as various aspects of the jobs.
✓ Job satisfaction is the extent to which people like
their jobs.
✓ Job dissatisfaction is the extent to which people
dislike their jobs.

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 Nature of Job Satisfaction (Cont’d)
Approaches of Job Satisfaction
1. Global Approach
✓ The global approach treats job satisfaction as a single,
overall feeling toward the job.
2. Facet Approach
✓ The facet approach focus on job facets or different
aspects of the job, such as- pay, promotional
opportunities, fringe benefits, supervision, co-workers,
job conditions, job nature, communication, & security.
✓ The facet approach permits a more complete picture of
job satisfaction.
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 Assessment of Job Satisfaction
✓ Job satisfaction is almost always assessed by asking
people how they feel about their jobs, either by
questionnaire or interview.
✓ Most of the time, questionnaires are used because-
• Easy to use
• Require relatively little time and effort
• Can be anonymous
• Person best judge of own feelings
✓ Popular job satisfaction questionnaires/scales are-
▪ Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
▪ Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)
▪ Job in General Scale (JIG)
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▪ Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS)
 Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
✓ JDI is developed by Smith, Kendall and Hulin (1969).
✓ It is the most popular with researchers.
✓ JDI consists of 72 items and it has five subscales.

Subscales No. of Items

Work 18
Pay 9
Promotional Opportunities 9
Supervision 18
Co-Workers 18

✓ Each item is an adjective or short phrase that is descriptive

of the job. Responses are “yes”, “uncertain”, or “no”.
✓ JDI has high validity but the main limitation of JDI is that it
has only five facets. 6
Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)
✓ MSQ is developed by Weiss, Dawis, Lofquist, and England
(1966)
✓ MSQ is another popular job satisfaction scale.
✓ It has two versions: 100-item long & 20-item short version
✓ Both versions have items that ask about 20 facets of job
satisfaction, but facets scores are computed only for the
long version.
✓ MSQ has 20 dimensions.
✓ Each of the MSQ items is a statement that describes a
facet. The employee is asked to indicate how satisfied he or
she is with each one.
✓ The overall scale has been shown to have good reliability
and validity. 7
Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)
Dimensions of MSQ
Activity Ability utilization
Independence Company policies &
practices
Variety Compensation
Social status Advancement
Supervision (human Responsibility
relations)
Supervision (technical) Creativity
Moral values Working conditions
Security Co-workers
Social service Recognition
Authority Achievement
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 Job in General Scale (JIG)
✓ JIG is developed by Ironsen, Smith, Brannick, Gibson and
Paul (1989).
✓ It contains items that do not reflect the various facets of the
job.
✓ JIG was patterned on the JDI.
✓ it contains 18 items that are adjectives or short phrase
about the job in general.
✓ Responses are “yes”, “uncertain”, or “no”.
✓ The scale has good reliability and correlates well with other
scales of overall job satisfaction.

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 Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS)
✓ JSS is developed Paul E. Spector (1994).
✓ JSS is a 36 item, nine facet scale to assess employee attitudes
about the job and aspects of the job.
✓ Each facet is assessed with four items, and a total score is
computed from all items.
✓ A summated rating scale format is used, with six choices per item
ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
✓ The nine facets are Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Fringe
Benefits, Contingent Rewards (performance based rewards),
Operating Procedures (required rules and procedures),
Coworkers, Nature of Work, and Communication.
✓ Although the JSS was originally developed for use in human
service organizations, it is applicable to all organizations.

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 Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS)
✓ JSS is developed Paul E. Spector (1994).
✓ JSS is a 36 item, nine facet scale to assess employee
attitudes about the job and aspects of the job.
✓ Each facet is assessed with four items, and a total score is
computed from all items.
✓ A summated rating scale format is used, with six choices
per item ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly
agree".
✓ Although the JSS was originally developed for use in
human service organizations, it is applicable to all
organizations.

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 Antecedents of Job Satisfaction
Environmental Antecedents
1. Job Characteristics
2. Pay
3. Justice
1. Job Characteristics
✓ Job characteristics refer to the content and nature of job
tasks themselves.
✓ According to Hackman and Oldham (1976), the five job
characteristics are-skill variety, task identity, task
significance, autonomy, and feedback.
✓ The overall complexity of a job, computed as a combination
of all five individual characteristics is called job scope.
✓ Table 9-6 12
 Antecedents of Job Satisfaction
Personal Antecedents
1. Personality
a) Negative Affectivity
✓ Negative affectivity is the tendency for an individual to
experience negative emotions, such as anxiety or
depression, across a wide variety of situations.
b) Locus of Control
✓ Locus of control refers to whether or not people believe
they are in control of reinforcements in life.
2. Gender
3. Age
4. Culture and Ethnic Differences
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 Potential Effects of Job Satisfaction
1. Job Performance
2. Turnover
3. Absence
4. Health and Well-Being
5. Life Satisfaction

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 Organizational Commitment
✓ Organizational commitment is another attitudinal variable in
the work domain.
✓ Organizational commitment is the degree of psychological
identification with or attachment to the organization for
which people work.
✓ Organizational commitment is strongly related to job
satisfaction, but it is distinctly different.
✓ It has three components:
i. An acceptance of the organization’s goals
ii. A willingness to work hard for the organization
iii. The desire to stay with the organization

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 Types of Organizational Commitment
1. Affective Commitment
It occurs when the employee wishes to remain with the
organization because of an emotional attachment.
2. Continuance Commitment
It exists when a person must remain with the organization
because he or she needs the benefits and salary or cannot
find another job.
3. Normative Commitment
It comes from the values of the employee.
The person believes that he or she owes it to the
organization to remain out of a sense that this is the right
thing to do. 16
Organizational Commitment and Other Variables
Mean Correlations of Organizational Commitment with several
Work Variables:
Variable Mean Correlation
Skill Variety .14
Autonomy .15
Job Scope .38
Role Ambiguity -.24
Role Conflict -.27
Job Satisfaction .49
Job Performance .13
Absence -.12
Turnover -.25
Age .20
Gender -.09 (W<M) 17
 Occupational Commitment
✓ It concerns the occupation rather than a particular
organization.
✓ People might be very committed to their occupation, such
as teaching or pharmacist, and uncommitted to their current
employer.

Emotional Labor
✓ It is the required expression of positive emotions such as
smiling at customers and appearing to be enjoying work.
✓ It has been shown to have both positive and negative
effects on employees.

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“Complain less, give more”
Thank You

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