Organizational Behavior Chapter 3: Job Attitudes

Components of Attitudes

• Attitudes: Evaluative statements or judgments—favorable or unfavorable—about objects, people, or events.
• ABC Model of Attitudes:
  • Affective Component: Emotional or feeling segment of an attitude (e.g., "I don't like my boss"). Measured by physiological indicators and verbal statements about feelings.
  • Behavioral Component: Intention to behave in a specific way toward someone or something (e.g., "I want to transfer to another department"). Measured by observed behavior and verbal statements about intentions.
  • Cognitive Component: Belief or opinion segment of an attitude (e.g., "I believe my boss plays favorites"). Measured by attitude scales and verbal statements about beliefs.
• Factors Influencing Attitude Formation: Direct personal experience, social roles and norms, classical and operant conditioning, and observing individuals in the environment.

Attitudes and Behavior

• Cognitive Dissonance: Any perceived incompatibility between two or more attitudes, or between behavior and attitudes, resulting in psychological discomfort.
• Individuals actively seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and behavior.
• Dissonance Reduction Factors: Importance of the elements, perceived degree of control, and rewards involved.
• Dissonance Resolution Strategies: Changing beliefs, changing actions, or changing the perception of actions.

• Moderating Variables: The strength of the attitude-behavior relationship increases with attitude importance, correspondence to behavior, accessibility, social pressures, and direct personal experience.

Major Job Attitudes

• Job Satisfaction: A positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. Represents the single best predictor of overall workplace behavior.
• Organizational Identification: The degree to which employees define themselves by the characteristics of their organization.
• Psychological Empowerment: Employees' belief in their degree of influence over their job, competence, job meaningfulness, and autonomy.
• Organizational Commitment: Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, accompanied by a desire to maintain membership:
  • Affective Commitment: Emotional attachment to the organization (strongest predictor of performance, retention, attendance, and OCB).
  • Continuance Commitment: Perceived economic value of staying versus leaving.
  • Normative Commitment: Obligation to remain with the organization due to moral or ethical reasons.
• Perceived Organizational Support (POS): The degree to which employees believe an organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being.
• Employee Engagement: An individual's involvement, satisfaction, and enthusiasm for work. Top drivers include employee rewards, employee wellness, empowered employees, workplace culture, career growth, brand alignment, workforce data, and social relations.

Measurement and Causes of Job Satisfaction

• Measurement Approaches:
  • Single Global Rating: Overall summary score in response to a single general question.
  • Summation of Job Facets: Identifies key work elements (work tasks, pay, supervision, coworkers) and aggregates ratings.
• Primary Causes:
  • Job Conditions: The intrinsic nature of work, social interactions, and supervision quality.
  • Personality: Individuals with positive Core Self-Evaluations (CSE)—who believe in their inner worth and basic competence—report higher job satisfaction.
  • Pay: Financial compensation influences satisfaction up to a point. Major reasons for pay dissatisfaction according to the PEW Research Center include:
  • Pay failing to keep up with cost-of-living increases ($80\%$).
  • Pay too low for quality of work ($71\%$).
  • Pay too low for amount of work ($70\%$).
  • Earnings insufficient to pay bills ($54\%$).
  • Paid less than coworkers doing similar work ($28\%$).

Outcomes and Responses to Dissatisfaction

• Outcomes of Job Satisfaction:
  • Job Performance: Satisfied employees perform better and exhibit higher productivity.
  • Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB): Satisfied employees are more likely to perform discretionary task duties beyond formal job descriptions.
  • Customer Satisfaction: Higher employee satisfaction increases customer loyalty and satisfaction.
  • Life Satisfaction: Job satisfaction positively correlates with overall life satisfaction.
• Responses to Dissatisfaction (EVLN Model):

• Exit: Active and destructive response directed toward leaving the organization.
• Voice: Active and constructive effort to improve conditions by offering suggestions.
• Loyalty: Passive and constructive response consisting of waiting optimistically for conditions to improve.
• Neglect: Passive and destructive response allowing conditions to deteriorate (e.g., absenteeism, tardiness, reduced effort).
  • Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB): Intentional actions that actively harm the organization or individuals within it.

• Interpersonal Deviance: Harassment, gossip, verbal abuse, and fighting.
• Organizational Deviance:
  • Property Deviance: Theft and sabotage.
  • Production Deviance: Intentional poor work, substance abuse, and acting unsafely.
  • Work Withdrawal: Absence and tardiness.