ATTITUDES, VALUES & JOB

SATISFACTION

"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering”.

-- St. Augustine

VALUES

The Nature of Values

One’s personal convictions about what one should strive for in life and how one should behave

“A specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence” (Rokeach, 1973)

VALUES All of us have a hierarchy of values that forms our

value system. This system is identified by the relative importance we assign to such values as freedom, pleasure, self-respect, honesty, obedience and equality.

Values tend to be relatively stable and enduring.

A significant portion of our values is established in our early years

The process of questioning our values may result in a change. Values are important in OB because they lay the foundation for the understanding of attitudes and motivation and because they influence our perceptions

Values can cloud objectivity and rationality.

TYPES OF VALUES

Terminal Instrumental

Desirable end-states of existence

Goals a person would like to achieve during lifetime

Success

Preferable modes of behavior

Means of achieving terminal values

Ambitious, Hardworking

Levels of Values

Personal ValuesPast experience & interactions with

others

Cultural ValuesDominant beliefs held by collective

society

Organisational ValuesHeart of

Organisational Culture

VALUES IN THE WORKPLACE

Types of Values

Work Values Ethical Values

Intrinsic Work

Values

Extrinsic Work

ValuesJusticeValues

UtilitarianValues

Moral RightsValues

A COMPARISON OF INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC WORK VALUES

Intrinsic Values

Interesting work Challenging work Learning new things Making important

contributions Responsibility and

autonomy Being creative

Extrinsic Values

High pay Job security Job benefits Status in wider community Social contacts Time with family Time for hobbies

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES One’s personal convictions about what

is right and wrong

Utilitarian

Moral Rights Distributive Justice

VALUES ACROSS CULTURES• Managers must become capable of working with people

across different cultures.

• Because values differ across cultures, an understanding of these differences should be helpful in explaining and predicting behaviour of employees from different countries.

• Geert Hofstede surveyed 1,16,000 IBM employees in 40 countries in their work related values – found managers and employees vary on 5 value dimensions of national culture.

1. Power Distance: The degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally/ relatively equal (low power distance) to extremely unequal (high power distance)

VALUES ACROSS CULTURES2. Individualism vs Collectivism: Degree to

which people in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of a group.

3. Quantity of life vs Quality of life: Quantity: degree to which values such as assertiveness, the acquisition of money and material goods and competition prevails.Quality: The degree with which we value relationships, show sensitivity and concern for the welfare of others.

4. Uncertainty avoidance: Degree to which people in a country, prefer structured or unstructured situations.; Risk taking.

5. Long term and short term orientation: Long: look to future and value thrift and persistenceShort: Values past and present; emphasis respect for traditions and fulfilling social obligations.

Collectivism

Low power Distance

Low Uncertainty Avoidance

Nurturing Orientation

Short-Term Orientation

Individualism High Power Distance

High Uncertainty Avoidance

Achievement Orientation

Long-Term Orientation

USA

Germany

Japan

Hong KongChina

USA

USA

USA

USAGermany

GermanyJapan

JapanJapan

Japan

ChinaMalaysia

France

India

Singapore

AustraliaSout

h Korea

Sweden

Netherlands

Russia

THE GLOBE FRAMEWORK Assertiveness Future Orientation Gender Differentiation Uncertainty Avoidance Power Distance Individualism / Collectivism In-Group Collectivism Performance Orientation Humane Orientation

CODE OF ETHICS Set of formal rules and standards, based

on ethical values and beliefs about what is right and wrong, that employees can use to make appropriate decisions when the interests of other individuals or groups are at stake

Whistleblowers

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE MODEL

A motivational state arising from holding logically inconsistent cognitions

Incompatibility between two or more attitudes, or between attitudes and behavior

Ways to eliminate dissonance:Add consonant cognitionsReduce importance of dissonant cognitionsChange one of the dissonant cognitions

FESTINGER & CARLSMITH (1959) Engage in boring

peg-turning task Paid $1 or $20 to lie

to next participant about the experiment, or no lie control group

Afterwards asked whether they liked the task

“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearances, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company, a church or a home.”

-- Charles Swindoll

ATTITUDE

There are so many things in life you have little control over, such as the political environment, the weather, the job market, the economy. But there is one aspect of your life that you do have the power to control, and that’s your attitude.

Each and every moment of every day you decide what your attitude will be --- about yourself, your job, your family and friends, change, responsibilities, etc.

WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE? “An organized predisposition to respond in a

favorable or unfavorable manner toward a specified class of objects” (Shaver, 1977)

Position on a bipolar affective or evaluative dimension (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)

Networks of interrelated beliefs that reside in long-term memory and are activated when the attitude object or issue is encountered (Tourangeau & Rasinksi, 1988)

“Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people or events (Robbins, 2007)

DEFINITIONS

“A general and enduring positive or negative feeling toward some person, object, or issue”

“An association between an object and an evaluation in memory”

“ Attitude is a learned internal response to a given stimulus, resulting in observable behavior ”

ATTITUDE An attitude is defined as a learned predisposition

to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a given object.

While Values represent global beliefs that influence behaviour, across all situations, attitudes relate only to behaviour directed towards specific objects, persons or situations.

Values and attitudes generally, but not always, are in harmony.

Study: Job attitudes of middle aged male employees stable over a time frame of 5 years – even those who changed jobs / occupation.

Attitudes are translated into behaviour through behavioural intentions.

An individual’s intentions to engage in a given behaviour is the best predictor of that behaviour.

Attitudes

Experience with Object

Economic Status

Operant Conditionin

g

Family & Peer

Groups

Mass Communicatio

n

Classical Conditioning

Vicarious Learning

Neighbourhood

Formation of Attitudes

ATTITUDES, INDIFFERENCE, AND AMBIVALENCE

Attitudes vary in a number of important ways Valence (positive or

negative) Intensity Strength Accessibility Basis

COMPONENTS OF WORK ATTITUDES

Affective ComponentEmotional or feeling

Behavioral ComponentIntention to behave

in a certain way towards someone or something

Cognitive ComponentOpinion or belief

Work AttitudesNegative / Positive

SubjectiveNorm

Attitude:Act

BehaviorIntent Behavior

Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen)

Attitudes and Behavior

Evaluation

Behaviorbeliefs

Normativebeliefs

Motivation to Comply

SubjectiveNorm

Attitude:Act

BehaviorIntent Behavior

Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen)

Attitudes and Behavior

Evaluation

Behaviorbeliefs

Normativebeliefs

Motivation to Comply

SubjectiveNorm

Attitude:Act

BehaviorIntent Behavior

Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen)

Constraints

Attitudes and Behavior

WORK ATTITUDES Collections of feelings, beliefs, and

thoughts about how to behave that people currently hold about their jobs and organizations

OUTCOME EXPECTATIONS AND WORK Comfortable existence Family security Sense of accomplishment Self-respect Social recognition Exciting Life

WORK MOODS How people feel at the time they actually

perform their jobs.

More transitory than values and attitudes.

Determining factors:PersonalityWork situationCircumstances outside of work

WORK MOODS

Positive Excited Enthusiastic Active Strong Peppy Elated

Negative Distressed Fearful Scornful Hostile Jittery Nervous

EMOTIONS

Intense, short-lived feelings that are linked to specific cause or antecedent

Emotions can feed into moods

Emotional labor

EMOTIONAL LABOR

Display Rules

Feeling Rules Expression Rules

EMOTIONS, ATTITUDE & BEHAVIOR

Perceptions

Beliefs

Feelings

Behavioral Intentions

Behavior

Attitude Emotional Episodes

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN VALUES, ATTITUDES, MOODS, AND EMOTIONS

Values(most stable)

Attitudes(moderately stable)

Moodsand Emotions

(most changing)

ATTITUDES AT THE WORKPLACE

Job related attitudes tap +ve or –ve evaluations that employees hold about aspects of their work environments. 3 major attitudes:

1. Job Satisfaction: an individual’s general attitude towards his/her job. A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds +ve attitudes toward the job.

2. Job Involvement: measures degree to which a person identifies psychologically with his/her job & considers his/her perceived performance level important to self worth. People with high job involvement strongly identifies with and really care about the kind of work they do.

3. Organization commitment: A state in which an employee identifies with a particular orgn and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the orgn.

WHAT IS JOB SATISFACTION? Spector:

“the degree to which people like their jobs”

“How people feel about their jobs and different aspects of their jobs”

Locke:“ A pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences”

Work characteristics

JobSatisfaction(s)

SIMPLE DISCREPANCY MODELS

Porter (1961): Need SatisfactionDesired-Actual

Minnesota Work Adjustment Model20 “reinforcers” (based on Murray’s 12

needs)

Locke (1976): Values“Job satisfaction results from appraisal of

one’s job as attaining…one’s important job values”

Provided these values are congruent with basic needs

Perceived characteristics

JobSatisfaction(s)

Objective characteristics

Needs/Values

Perceived characteristics

JobSatisfaction(s)

Objective characteristics

Needs/Values

Frame of Reference

QUESTIONING THE SITUATIONAL VIEW

A chink in the armor: are perceptions veridical with objective reality?

Social Information Processing model

Dispositional View

ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF JS: SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL

Social construction of attitudes vs objective characteristics) Salancik & Pfeffer (1978) Roots in Schachter & Singer (1962)

Attitude statements based on: Perception of affective components Social context cues Self-attributions about behavior

Event Generalized Arousal

Cues

JS

ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF JS: DISPOSITIONAL APPROACH

Staw & Ross (1985)Surprising stability over time/situations

Staw, Bell & Clausen (1986)Childhood temperament predicts adult JS

Arvey et al. (1989) JS has hereditary component (30%)

CAVEATS : DISPOSITIONAL APPROACH

General questions about behavioral genetics

Gerhart (1987): Situation AND Disposition

Compared effects on current satisfaction of prior satisfaction, pay, job complexity

Job complexity had strongest effect

Why isn’t extrinsic satisfaction heritable?

Why is JS heritable? A JS gene?

TEMPERAMENT AND JOB SATISFACTION

Trait NA/PA may be key factorSome reason to believe that it may have

biological basis, and thus inheritable

Those high in NA are more likely to:Notice negative stimuliEvaluate stimuli in negative termsRecall negative stimuliCreate interpersonal conflict dissatisfaction

PRIMACY OF AFFECT OR JUDGMENT

Events Affect JS

Weiss & Cropanzano (1996)

Disposition Mood at work JS

Weiss et al. (1999)

Disposition Interpretations JS

Brief (1998)

PRIMACY OF AFFECT OR JUDGMENT

DispositionInterpretations

JS

Brief & Weiss (2002)

Mood

Stress events

Strain

JS

Fuller et al. (2003)

Mood

Organisational Factors

Group Factors

Individual Factors

Outcomes Expected

/ Valued

Outcomes Received

Job Satisfaction

Job Dissatisfacti

on

Low Turnove

r

Low Absenteeis

m

High Turnover

High Absenteeis

m

JOB SATISFACTION A person’s job is more than the obvious activities of

shuffling papers, waiting on customers, or driving a truck. Jobs require interaction with co-workers & bosses, following orgn rules and policies, meeting performance standards, living with working conditions which often are less than ideal, etc.

Happy workers are not necessarily productive workers. However, productive workers are normally happy workers.

Orgns with more satisfied workers tend to be more effective than with less satisfied workers.

Generally dissatisfied workers absent themselves more. Liberal sick benefits also contribute. Also if you have interesting side activities.

Satisfaction is negatively related to turnover. Other factors include the labour market, expectations about other job opportunities, etc.

DETERMINANTS OF JOB SATISFACTION_1

Personality

Extroverts tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction than introverts

Values

Those with strong intrinsic work values is more likely than one with weak intrinsic work values to be satisfied with a job that is meaningful but requires long hours and offer poor pay

DETERMINANTS OF JOB SATISFACTION_2

Work Situation

tasks a person performs people a jobholder interacts with surroundings in which a person works the way the organization treats the

jobholder

DETERMINANTS OF JOB SATISFACTION_3

Social Influence: influence that individuals or groups have on a person’s attitudes and behavior

CoworkersFamilyOther reference groups (unions, religious

groups, friends)Culture

INFLUENCES OF JS Work Itself

Pay

Promotion

Supervision

Co-Workers

Working Conditions

CONSEQUENCES OF JOB SATISFACTION

OrganizationalCitizenship

Behavior (OCB)

EmployeeWell-Being

Job Involvement

Organisational Commitment

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT Feelings and beliefs about the

employing organization as a wholeAffective commitmentContinuance commitment

Affective commitment is more positive for organizations than continuance commitment

CONSEQUENCES OF JOB (DIS)SATISFACTION

Performance

Absenteeism Turnover

OCB Customer Satisfaction

Workplace Deviance

JS & CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

JS & WORKPLACE DEVIANCE

DETERMINANTS OF ABSENCE FROM WORK

Motivation to attend work is affected by Job satisfactionOrganization’s

absence policyOther factors

Ability to attend work is affected by Illness and

accidentsTransportation

problemsFamily

responsibilities

MOBLEY’S MODEL OF THE TURNOVER PROCESS

JOB SATISFACTION & OCB

Job Satisfactio

n

Fairness

TrustOCB

EXPRESSING DISSATISFACTION

Active

Passive

Destructive Constructive

EXIT VOICE

NEGLECT LOYALTY

Employee dissatisfaction can be expressed in a number of ways. Rather than quit, employees can complain, insubordinate, steal orgn property, etc.

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