Chapter 3 Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Page
EXPANDED CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Attitudes
A. Introduction
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
b. Affective component
i. The employee strongly dislikes his supervisor (affective)
c. Behavioral component
C. Attitudes and Behavior
1. Introduction
a. The attitudes people hold determine what they do.
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.
believe the dissonance is due to something they can control.
f. A third factor is the rewards of dissonance; high rewards accompanying high
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
with individuals or groups we value.
b. Specific attitudes tend to predict specific behaviors, whereas general attitudes
tend to best predict general behaviors.
behavior.
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E. Job Attitudes
1. Introduction
a. OB focuses our attention on a very limited number of job-related attitudes. Most
involvement, and organizational commitment.
2. Job Satisfaction and Job Involvement
a. Job satisfaction describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics.
vice versa.
b. 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.
impact their work.
i. Research suggests that psychological empowerment strongly predicts job
attitudes and strain, while it moderately predicts performance behaviors.
3. Organizational Commitment
standard’ for employee commitment.
4. Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when
they see their supervisors as supportive.
distributed equally—is lower.
5. Employee engagement refers to an individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with,
and enthusiasm for the work he or she does.
connection to their company.
b. Disengaged employees have essentially checked out, putting time but not energy
or attention into their work.
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engaged by their work.
d. This concept is relatively new and still generates active debate about its
usefulness.
6. 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. Job satisfaction levels can remain quite consistent over time.
a. For instance, U.S. average job satisfaction levels were consistently high from
1972 to 2006.
b. However, economic conditions tend to influence job satisfaction rates. In late
2007, the economic contraction precipitated a drop-off in job satisfaction; the
lowest point was in 2010, when 42.6 percent of U.S. workers reported satisfaction
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.
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.
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?
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a. Job Conditions
employees.
a. Job conditions—especially the intrinsic nature of the work itself, social
interactions, and supervision—are important predictors of satisfaction and
employee well-being.
D. Personality
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)
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.
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
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,
2. Fairness perceptions help explain the relationship.
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a. Those who believe their coworkers support them are more likely to engage in
engage in OCBs.
C. Customer Satisfaction
1. Evidence indicates that satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
2. Some firms encourage employees to “create fun and a little weirdness” and they give
them unusual discretion in making customers satisfied.
D. Life Satisfaction
become unemployed.
E. The Impact of Job Dissatisfaction
1. Introduction
a. There are a number of ways employees can express dissatisfaction. (Exhibit 3-6)
b. Exit: behavior directed toward leaving the organization, including looking for a
new position as well as resigning.
union activity.
d. Loyalty: 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.”
e. Neglect: passively allowing conditions to worsen, including chronic absenteeism
absenteeism, and turnover.
a. Voice and loyalty are constructive behaviors that allow individuals to tolerate
unpleasant situations or to revive satisfactory working conditions.
b. It helps us to understand situations, such as those sometimes found among
unionized workers, where low job satisfaction is coupled with low turnover.
F. Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
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.
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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.
b. However, some research also suggests that this relationship might be stronger for
equity exchange.
6. As a manager, you can take steps to mitigate CWB. You can poll employee attitudes,
for instance, and identify areas for workplace improvement.
that.
satisfaction and reduce CWB.
9. 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.
G. Absenteeism
H. Turnover
1. Satisfaction is also negatively related to turnover, but the correlation is stronger than
what we found for absenteeism.
2. The satisfaction–turnover relationship also is affected by alternative job prospects.
a. If an employee is presented with an unsolicited job offer, job dissatisfaction is less
job).
b. Job dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into turnover when employment
opportunities are plentiful because employees perceive that it is easy to move.
3. When employees have high “human capital” (high education, high ability), job
dissatisfaction is more likely to translate into turnover because they have, or perceive
they have, many available alternatives.
I. Managers Often “Don’t Get It”
satisfaction can affect the bottom line.
2. Stock prices of companies in the high morale group grew 19.4 percent, compared
with 10 percent for the medium or low morale group.
3. Regular surveys can reduce gaps between what managers think employees feel and
what they really feel.
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IV. Summary and Implications for Managers
way to high customer satisfaction and profits.
C. Some take-away lessons from the study of attitudes include the following:
1. Of the major 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.
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.
4. To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between the employee’s work interests
and on the intrinsic parts of the job; then create work that is challenging and
interesting to the individual.
environment.
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