CHAPTER 3
Attitudes and
Job Satisfaction
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
3-1. Contrast the three components of an attitude.
3-2. Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior.
3-3. Compare the major job attitudes.
3-4. Define job satisfaction.
3-5. Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
3-6. Identify three outcomes of job satisfaction.
3-7. Identify four employee responses to job dissatisfaction.
INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter.
Text Exercises
An Ethical Choice: Office Talk
Personal Inventory Assessment: Core Self Evaluation (CSE) Scale
Career OBjectives: How Can I Make My Job Better?
Myth or Science?: “Happy Workers Means Happy Profits”
Point/Counterpoint: Employer-Employee Loyalty Is an Outdated Concept
Questions for Review
Experiential Exercise: What Satisfies You About Your Dream Job?
Ethical Dilemma: Tell-All Websites
Text Cases
Case Incident 1: The Pursuit of Happiness: Flexibility
Case Incident 2: Job Crafting
Instructor’s Choice
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student’s textbook. Instructor’s Choice
reinforces the text’s emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor’s Choice activities are
centered on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be
used in class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student’s part.
The course instructor may choose to use these at any time throughout the class—some may be
more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered
in the chapter.
Web Exercises
At the end of each chapter of this Instructor’s Manual, you will find suggested exercises and
ideas for researching OB topics on the Internet. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the
Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to your class, and
make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity
or as lab activities with your class.
Summary and Implications for Managers
Managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes because attitudes give warnings of
potential problems and influence behavior.
Creating a satisfied workforce is hardly a guarantee of successful organizational performance,
but evidence strongly suggests that whatever managers can do to improve employee attitudes
will likely result in heightened organizational effectiveness.
Some take-away lessons from the study of attitudes include the following:
Of the major job attitudes – job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational
commitment, perceived organizational support (POS), and employee engagement –
remember that an employee’s job satisfaction level is the best single predictor of
behavior.
Pay attention to your employees’ job satisfaction levels as determinants of their
performance, turnover, absenteeism, and withdrawal behaviors.
Measure employee job attitudes objectively and at regular intervals in order to determine
how employees are reacting to their work.
To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between the employee’s work interests and
on the intrinsic parts of his/her job to create work that is challenging and interesting to the
individual.
Consider the fact that high pay alone is unlikely to create a satisfying work environment.
The chapter opens by profiling a new type of worker – the contingent worker. It’s almost a truism to say that a job
that fits you is one that satisfies you. As the vignette shows, however, what makes for a satisfying job is a bit more
complex. What factors besides work schedule compatibility and job security affect job attitudes? Does having a
satisfying job really matter? Before we tackle these important questions, it’s important to define what we mean by
attitudes generally, and job attitudes in particular.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Attitudes
A. Introduction
1. Attitudes are evaluative statements that are either favorable or unfavorable
concerning objects, people, or events.
a. They reflect how we feel about something.
B. What Are the Main Components of Attitudes?
1. Three components of an attitude: (Exhibit 3-1)
a. Cognitive component
b. Affective component
c. Behavioral component
II. Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?
A. Introduction
1. The attitudes people hold determine what they do.
2. Festinger proposed that cases of attitude following behavior illustrate the effects of
cognitive dissonance, any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two
or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
3. Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their attitudes
and between their attitudes and their behavior.
B. Moderating Variables
1. Importance of the attitude
2. Its correspondence to behavior
3. Its accessibility
4. The presence of social pressure
5. Whether or not a person has had direct experience with the behavior
a. The attitude–behavior relationship is likely to be much stronger if an attitude
refers to something with which we have direct personal experience.
III. What Are the Major Job Attitudes?
A. Introduction
1. OB focuses our attention on a very limited number of job-related attitudes. Most of
the research in OB has been concerned with three attitudes: job satisfaction, job
involvement, and organizational commitment.
B. Job Satisfaction
1. Definition: refers to a collection of feelings that an individual holds toward his or her
job.
2. A high level of job satisfaction equals positive attitudes toward the job and vice versa.
C. Job Involvement
1. Definition: the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with his/her job
and considers his/her perceived performance level important to self-worth.
2. Psychological empowerment: employees’ beliefs in the degree to which they
influence their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job,
and their perceived autonomy.
D. Organizational Commitment
1. Definition: a state in which an employee identifies with a particular organization and
its goals.
2. Emotional attachment to an organization and belief in its values is the ‘gold standard’
for employee commitment.
3. Employees who are committed will be less likely to engage in work withdrawal even
if they are dissatisfied, because they have a sense of organizational loyalty.
E. Perceived organizational support (POS)
1. Perceived organizational support (POS) refers to the degree to which employees
believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
2. Research shows that people perceive their organization as supportive when rewards
are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when they see their
supervisors as supportive.
3. POS is important in countries where the power distance is lower.
F. Employee engagement
1. Employee engagement refers to an individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with,
and enthusiasm for the work he or she does.
2. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection
to their company; disengaged employees have essentially checked out, putting time
but not energy or attention into their work.
G. Are These Job Attitudes Really All That Distinct?
1. If you as a manager know someone’s level of job satisfaction, you know most of what
you need to know about how that person sees the organization.
IV. Job Satisfaction (Exhibit 3-2)
A. Measuring Job Satisfaction
1. The definition of job satisfaction—a positive feeling about a job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics—is broad.
2. Two approaches for measuring job satisfaction are popular:
a. The single global rating
b. The summation of job facets
B. How Satisfied Are People in Their Jobs?
1. Most people are satisfied with their jobs in the developed countries surveyed.
2. Research shows that over the past 30 years, the majority of U.S. workers have been
satisfied with their jobs, but recent data show a dramatic drop-off in average job
satisfaction levels during the economic contraction that started in late 2007, so much
so that only about half of workers report being satisfied with their jobs now.
3. People have typically been more satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself,
and with their supervisors and coworkers than they have been with their pay and with
promotion opportunities. (Exhibit 3-3)
4. Evidence suggests employees in Western cultures have higher levels of job
satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures. (Exhibit 3-4)
III. What Causes Job Satisfaction?
A. Job Conditions
1. Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control satisfy most
employees.
2. Managers also play a role in employees’ job satisfaction.
3. There is also a strong correspondence between how well people enjoy the social
context of their workplace and how satisfied they are overall.
4. Personality
a. Research has shown that people who have positive core self-evaluations (CSEs)
are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations.
b. Those with negative core self-evaluations set less ambitious goals and are more
likely to give up when confronting difficulties.
B. Pay
1. Pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall happiness for many people, but
the effect can be smaller once an individual reaches a standard level of comfortable
living. (Exhibit 3-5)
C. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
1. An organization’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), or its
self-regulated actions to benefit society or the environment beyond what is required
by law, increasingly affects employee job satisfaction. Organizations practice CR in a
number of ways, including environmental sustainability initiatives, nonprofit work,
and charitable giving.
2. The relationship between CSR and job satisfaction is particularly strong for
Millennials.
3. Although the link between CSR and job satisfaction is strengthening, not all
employees find value in CSR. Therefore, organizations need to address a few issues
in order to be most effective.
a. First, not all projects are equally meaningful for every person’s job satisfaction,
yet participation for all employees is sometimes expected.
b. Second, some organizations require employees to contribute in a prescribed
manner.
c. Third, CSR measures can seem disconnected from the employee’s actual work,
providing no increase to job satisfaction.
IV. Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
A. Job Performance
1. Happy workers are more likely to be productive workers—the evidence suggests that
productivity is likely to lead to satisfaction.
B. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)
1. It seems logical to assume job satisfaction should be a major determinant of an
employee’s organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).
2. Finally, research shows that when people are more satisfied with their jobs, they are
more likely to engage in OCBs.
C. Customer Satisfaction
1. Evidence indicates that satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
D. Life Satisfaction
1. Research in Europe indicated that job satisfaction is positively correlated with life
satisfaction, and your attitudes and experiences in life spill over in to your job
approaches and experiences. Furthermore, life satisfaction decreases when people
become unemployed.
V. The Impact of Job Dissatisfaction
A. What happens when employees dislike their jobs? One theoretical model—the
exit–voice–loyalty–neglect framework—is helpful for understanding the consequences of
dissatisfaction.
B. Exhibit 3-6 illustrates employees’ four responses to job dissatisfaction, which differ along
two dimensions: constructive/destructive and active/passive.
C. The responses are as follows:
1. Exit. The exit response directs behavior toward leaving the organization, including
looking for a new position or resigning.
2. Voice. The voice response includes actively and constructively attempting to improve
conditions, including suggesting improvements, discussing problems with superiors,
and undertaking 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.
D. Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
1. Substance abuse, stealing at work, undue socializing, gossiping, absenteeism, and
tardiness are examples of behaviors that are destructive to organizations.
2. They are indicators of a broader syndrome called counterproductive work behavior
(CWB), also termed deviant behavior in the workplace, or simply employee
withdrawal (see Chapter 1).
3. Like other behaviors we have discussed, CWB doesn’t just happen – the behaviors
often follow negative and sometimes longstanding attitudes.
4. Therefore, if we can identify the predictors of CWB, we may lessen the probability of
its effects.
5. Generally, job dissatisfaction predicts CWB.
a. People who are not satisfied with their work become frustrated, which lowers
their performance and makes them more likely to commit CWB.
6. Other research suggests that, in addition to vocational misfit (being in the wrong line
of work), lack of fit with the organization (working in the wrong kind of
organizational culture) also predicts CWBs.
a. According to U.K. research, sometimes CWB is an emotional reaction to
perceived unfairness, a way to try to restore an employee’s sense of equity
exchange.
7. As a manager, you can take steps to mitigate CWB. You can poll employee attitudes,
for instance, and identify areas for workplace improvement.
8. If there is no vocational fit, the employee will not be fulfilled, so you can screen for
that.
9. Tailoring tasks so a person’s abilities and values can be exercised should increase job
satisfaction and reduce CWB.
10. Furthermore, creating strong teams, integrating supervisors with them, providing
formalized team policies, and introducing team-based incentives may help lower the
CWB “contagion” that lowers the standards of the group.
11. Absenteeism
a. We find a consistent negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism.
The more satisfied you are, the less likely you are to miss work.
12. Turnover
a. Satisfaction is also negatively related to turnover, but the correlation is stronger
than what we found for absenteeism.
13. Workplace Deviance
a. Job dissatisfaction predicts unionization, stealing, undue socializing, and
tardiness.
b. If employees don’t like their work environment, they will respond somehow.
E. Managers Often “Don’t Get It”
1. Given the evidence we’ve just reviewed, it should come as no surprise that job
satisfaction can affect the bottom line.
2. Regular surveys can reduce gaps between what managers think employees feel and
what they really feel.
VI. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. Managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes because attitudes give
warnings of potential problems and influence behavior.
B. Creating a satisfied workforce is hardly a guarantee of successful organizational
performance, but evidence strongly suggests that whatever managers can do to improve
employee attitudes will likely result in heightened organizational effectiveness.
C. Some take-away lessons from the study of attitudes include the following:
1. Of the major job attitudes—job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational
commitment, perceived organizational support (POS), and employee engagement—
remember that an employee’s job satisfaction level is the best single predictor of
behavior.
2. Pay attention to your employees’ job satisfaction levels as determinants of their
performance, turnover, absenteeism, and withdrawal behaviors.
3. Measure employee job attitudes objectively and at regular intervals in order to
determine how employees are reacting to their work.
4. To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between the employee’s work interests
and on the intrinsic parts of his/her job to create work that is challenging and
interesting to the individual.
5. Consider the fact that high pay alone is unlikely to create a satisfying work
environment.
EXPANDED CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Attitudes
A. Introduction
1. Attitudes are evaluative statements that are either favorable or unfavorable
concerning objects, people, or events.
2. They reflect how you feel about something.
B. What Are the Main Components of Attitudes?
1. Three components of an attitude (Exhibit 3-1)
a. Cognitive component
i. The employee thought he deserved the promotion (cognitive)
b. Affective component
i. The employee strongly dislikes his supervisor (affective)
c. Behavioral component
i. The employee is looking for another job (behavioral)
ii. In organizations, attitudes are important because of the behavioral component
C. Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?
1. Introduction
a. The attitudes people hold determine what they do.
b. Festinger proposed that cases of attitude following behavior illustrate the effects
of cognitive dissonance – any incompatibility an individual might perceive
between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
c. Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their
attitudes and between their attitudes and their behavior.
d. They either alter the attitudes or the behavior, or they develop a rationalization for
the discrepancy.
e. Festinger proposed that the desire to reduce dissonance depends on moderating
factors, including the importance of the elements creating it and the degree of
influence we believe we have over them. Individuals will be more motivated to
reduce dissonance when the attitudes or behavior are important or when they
believe the dissonance is due to something they can control.
f. A third factor is the rewards of dissonance; high rewards accompanying high
dissonance tend to reduce the tension inherent in the dissonance.
D. Moderating Variables
1. The most powerful moderators of the attitudes relationship are the importance of the
attitude, its correspondence to behavior, its accessibility, the presence of social
pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitude.
a. Important attitudes reflect our fundamental values, self-interest, or identification
with individuals or groups we value.
b. Specific attitudes tend to predict specific behaviors, whereas general attitudes
tend to best predict general behaviors.
c. Attitudes that our memories can easily access are more likely to predict our
behavior.
d. The attitude–behavior relationship is likely to be much stronger if an attitude
refers to something with which we have direct personal experience.
E. What Are the Major Job Attitudes?
1. Introduction
a. OB focuses our attention on a very limited number of job-related attitudes. Most
of the research in OB has been concerned with three attitudes: job satisfaction, job
involvement, and organizational commitment.
2. Job Satisfaction
a. Job satisfaction describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics.
b. A high level of job satisfaction equals positive attitudes toward the job and vice
versa.
3. Job Involvement
a. Job involvement refers to the measure of the degree to which a person identifies
psychologically with his/her job and considers his/her perceived performance
level important to self-worth.
b. Employees with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with and really
care about the kind of work they do.
c. Psychological empowerment – employees’ beliefs in the degree to which they
impact their work.
d. High levels of both job involvement and psychological empowerment are
positively related to organizational citizenship and job performance.
4. Organizational Commitment
a. Organizational commitment refers to a state in which an employee identifies
with a particular organization and its goals.
b. Emotional attachment to an organization and belief in its values is the ‘gold
standard’ for employee commitment.
c. As with job involvement, the research evidence demonstrates negative
relationships between organizational commitment and both absenteeism and
turnover.
d. Employees who are committed will be less likely to engage in work withdrawal
even if they are dissatisfied, because they have a sense of organizational loyalty.
5. Perceived organizational support (POS)
a. Perceived organizational support is the degree to which employees believe the
organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
b. Research shows that people perceive their organization as supportive when
rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when
they see their supervisors as supportive.
c. POS is important in countries where the power distance—the degree to which
people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is
distributed equally—is lower.
6. Employee engagement – individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the work he or she does.
a. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep
connection to their company.
b. Disengaged employees have essentially checked out, putting time but not energy
or attention into their work.
c. Engagement becomes a real concern for most organizations because surveys
indicate that few employees—between 17 percent and 29 percent—are highly
engaged by their work.
d. This concept is relatively new and still generates active debate about its
usefulness.
7. Are These Job Attitudes Really All That Distinct?
a. Attitudes are highly related.
i. If you as a manager know someone’s level of job satisfaction, you know most
of what you need to know about how that person sees the organization.
II. Job Satisfaction (Exhibit 3-2)
A. Measuring Job Satisfaction
1. Our definition of job satisfaction—a positive feeling about a job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics—is clearly broad.
2. Jobs require interacting with coworkers and bosses, following organizational rules
and policies, meeting performance standards, living with less than ideal working
conditions, and the like.
3. Two approaches for measuring job satisfaction are popular:
a. The single global rating is a 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.”
b. The second method, the summation of job facets, is more sophisticated. It
identifies key elements in a job such as the nature of the work, supervision,
present pay, promotion opportunities, and relations with coworkers.
B. How Satisfied Are People in Their Jobs?
1. Most people are satisfied with their jobs in the developed countries surveyed.
2. Research shows that over the past 30 years, the majority of U.S. workers have been
satisfied with their jobs.
3. As shown in Exhibit 3-3, people have typically been more satisfied with their jobs
overall, with the work itself, and with their supervisors and coworkers than they have
been with their pay and promotion opportunities.
4. Although job satisfaction appears relevant across cultures, that doesn’t mean there are
no cultural differences in job satisfaction.
a. Evidence suggests employees in Western cultures have higher levels of job
satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures.
b. Exhibit 3-4 provides the results of a global study of job satisfaction levels of
workers in 15 countries.
C. What Causes Job Satisfaction?
1. Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, and control satisfy most
employees.
2. There is also a strong correspondence between how well people enjoy the social
context of their workplace and how satisfied they are overall.
a. Interdependence, feedback, social support, and interaction with coworkers outside
the workplace are strongly related to job satisfaction even after accounting for
characteristics of the work itself.
D. Personality
1. Research shows that people who have positive core self-evaluations (CSEs) —who
believe in their inner worth and basic competence—are more satisfied with their jobs
than those with negative core self-evaluations.
E. Pay
1. Pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall happiness for many people, but
the effect can be smaller once an individual reaches a standard level of comfortable
living. (Exhibit 3-5)
F. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
1. An organization’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR)—its
self-regulated actions to benefit society or the environment beyond what is required
by law—increasingly affects employee job satisfaction. Organizations practice CR in
a number of ways, including environmental sustainability initiatives, nonprofit work,
and charitable giving.
2. The relationship between CSR and job satisfaction is particularly strong for
Millennials.
3. Although the link between CSR and job satisfaction is strengthening, not all
employees find value in CSR. Therefore, organizations need to address a few issues
in order to be most effective.
a. First, not all projects are equally meaningful for every person’s job satisfaction,
yet participation for all employees is sometimes expected.
b. Second, some organizations require employees to contribute in a prescribed
manner.
c. Third, CSR measures can seem disconnected from the employee’s actual work,
providing no increase to job satisfaction.
III. Outcomes of job Satisfaction
A. Job Performance
1. Happy workers are more likely to be productive workers.
2. At the organization level, there is renewed support for the original
satisfaction-performance relationship. It seems organizations with more satisfied
workers as a whole are more productive organizations.
B. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)
1. It seems logical to assume job satisfaction should be a major determinant of an
employee’s organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).
a. Satisfied employees would seem more likely to talk positively about the
organization, help others, and go beyond the normal expectations in their job,
perhaps because they want to reciprocate their positive experiences.
b. Evidence suggests job satisfaction is moderately correlated with OCBs; people
who are more satisfied with their jobs are more likely to engage in OCBs.
2. Fairness perceptions help explain the relationship.