Attitudes And Job satisfaction - organizational behavior (Chapter3)

Summary

Chapter 3 covers attitudes and job satisfaction, focusing on their components and how they relate to behavior. It outlines the three components of attitude—cognitive, affective, and behavioral—and introduces the concept of cognitive dissonance. The chapter explores major job attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and employee engagement. It discusses how job satisfaction is measured and its key causes, including personality and pay, while explaining how dissatisfaction leads to employee responses like exit, voice, loyalty, or neglect. The chapter concludes with the implications for managers to enhance job satisfaction, reduce turnover, and increase productivity and organizational citizenship behaviors.

Takeaways

• 😀 Attitudes are evaluative judgments about objects, people, or events, and consist of three components: cognitive (beliefs), affective (emotions), and behavioral (intentions).
• 😀 Cognitive dissonance occurs when there is incompatibility between attitudes or between behavior and attitudes, leading individuals to seek stability by changing their attitudes or behaviors.
• 😀 The relationship between attitudes and behavior is influenced by factors like importance, correspondence to behavior, accessibility, social pressures, and personal experience.
• 😀 Job satisfaction refers to the positive feelings about one's job resulting from the evaluation of its characteristics, with causes including pay, personality, and organizational support.
• 😀 Employees with high Perceived Organizational Support (POS) are more likely to exhibit positive behaviors like Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) and higher performance.
• 😀 Job involvement reflects the degree to which individuals psychologically identify with their job and perceive their performance as critical to their self-worth.
• 😀 Major job attitudes like job satisfaction, job involvement, and perceived organizational support are closely related, with overlapping aspects that researchers are still studying.
• 😀 Measuring job satisfaction can be done through methods like global ratings or summation scores, but results may vary based on job facets like pay and promotion opportunities.
• 😀 Pay influences job satisfaction only up to a certain point, after which it no longer correlates significantly with satisfaction. Personality traits, such as positive core self-evaluations, also impact job satisfaction.
• 😀 Employee responses to dissatisfaction include exit (leaving the organization), voice (constructively seeking improvements), loyalty (waiting passively for improvement), and neglect (allowing conditions to worsen).
• 😀 Job satisfaction influences job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and customer satisfaction. Satisfied employees tend to be more productive, loyal, and less likely to engage in absenteeism or turnover.

Q & A

What are the three components of an attitude?

The three components of an attitude are cognitive (beliefs or opinions), affective (emotional or feeling-based), and behavioral (intended actions towards something).

What is cognitive dissonance, and how does it relate to attitudes and behavior?

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort experienced when there is inconsistency between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes. Individuals seek to reduce this discomfort by changing their attitudes, modifying their behaviors, or rationalizing the discrepancy.

What are moderating variables, and how do they influence the relationship between attitudes and behavior?

Moderating variables are factors that influence the strength of the relationship between attitudes and behavior. These include the importance of the attitude, the correspondence to behavior, accessibility, social pressures, and personal experience.

What are the major job attitudes mentioned in the chapter?

The major job attitudes discussed are job satisfaction, job involvement, psychological empowerment, perceived organizational support (POS), and employee engagement.

How can job satisfaction be measured?

Job satisfaction can be measured using two primary methods: a single global rating (one question with one answer) or a summation score (multiple questions averaged into one score).

What causes job satisfaction, and how does pay relate to it?

Job satisfaction is influenced by various factors, including pay, personality, and the work environment. Pay has a limited impact on job satisfaction once a certain income threshold is reached (e.g., $40,000/year in the U.S.). Beyond this point, additional income does not significantly affect job satisfaction.

What are the four employee responses to dissatisfaction?

The four employee responses to dissatisfaction are exit (leaving the organization), voice (actively trying to improve conditions), loyalty (waiting for improvement without action), and neglect (allowing conditions to worsen).

How does job satisfaction impact organizational outcomes?

Job satisfaction has several positive outcomes, including higher job performance, increased organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), greater customer satisfaction, reduced absenteeism, and lower turnover rates.

What are some moderating variables that affect the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover?

Moderating variables that influence the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover include the economic environment, job tenure, and organizational actions aimed at retaining high performers or addressing low performers.

What should managers do to improve job satisfaction and its outcomes?

Managers should monitor employee attitudes, focus on intrinsic aspects of the job (e.g., making work more challenging and meaningful), and increase job satisfaction to reduce turnover, absenteeism, and theft, while improving performance and organizational citizenship behaviors.