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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
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
MyLab Management
oPersonal Inventory Assessment: Core Self Evaluation (CSE) Scale
oTry It!: Attitudes & Job Satisfaction
oWatch It! Gawker Media: Attitudes and Job Satisfaction
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Point/Counterpoint: Employer-Employee Loyalty Is an Outdated Concept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: Job Situational Interview
Ethical Dilemma: Tell-All Websites
Text Cases
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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
Case Incident 1: Self-Service Kiosks: From People to Robots
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
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 influence behavior
and indicate potential problems.
Creating a satisfied workforce is hardly a guarantee of successful organizational performance,
but evidence strongly suggests that managers’ efforts to improve employee attitudes will likely
result in positive outcomes, including greater organizational effectiveness, higher customer
satisfaction, and increased profits.
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 at regular intervals to determine how employees are
reacting to their work.
To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between each employee’s work interests
and on the intrinsic parts of the 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.
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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
The chapter opens by profiling Starbucks’ approach to promoting positive employee attitudes. It’s a truism to say
that a happy worker is a productive worker. As the chapter- opening vignette shows, however, what contributes to
the development of job attitudes varies and may change over time. What factors besides organizational culture,
leadership, and infrastructure 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 by 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. Attitudes and Behavior
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.
believe we have over the elements.
b. The third factor is the rewards of dissonance; high rewards accompanying high
dissonance tend to reduce tension inherent in the dissonance (dissonance is less
expected).
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. Job Attitudes
A. Introduction
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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
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 and Job Involvement
1. Job satisfaction 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.
3. Job involvement is the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with
his/her job and considers his/her perceived performance level important to self-worth.
4. 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.
C. 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.
D. 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.
E. Employee engagement
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
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?
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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
a. For instance, U.S. average job satisfaction levels were consistently high from
1972 to 2006.
with their jobs.
c. Approximately 47.7 percent of U.S. workers reported satisfaction with their jobs
in 2014, but the rebound was still far off the 1987 level of 61.1 percent.
2. Job satisfaction rates tend to vary in different cultures worldwide, and, of course, there
are always competing measurements that offer alternative viewpoints.
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
employees.
2. Managers also play a role in employees’ job satisfaction.
3. Thus, job conditions—especially the intrinsic nature of the work itself, social
interactions, and supervision—are important predictors of satisfaction and employee
well-being.
4. Personality
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)
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.
manner.
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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
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
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
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
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.
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.”
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).
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4. Therefore, if we can identify the predictors of CWB, we may lessen the probability of
its effects.
5. Generally, job dissatisfaction predicts CWB.
6. One worker might quit. Another might use work time to surf the Internet or take work
supplies home for personal use.
work supplies home for personal use.
b. In short, workers who don’t like their jobs “get even” in various ways.
8. You can poll employee attitudes, for instance, identify areas for workplace
of the group.
9. 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.
10. Turnover
than what we found for absenteeism.
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
influence behavior and indicate potential problems.
B. Creating a satisfied workforce is hardly a guarantee of successful organizational
performance, but evidence strongly suggests that managers’ efforts to improve
employee attitudes will likely result in positive outcomes, including greater
organizational effectiveness, higher customer satisfaction, and increased profits.
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 to determine how
employees are reacting to their work.
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Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
interesting to the individual.
5. Consider the fact that high pay alone is unlikely to create a satisfying work
environment.
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