Importance of Studying Employee Attitude

- Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment – the most commonly studied work related trait
- It is important because satisfied and committed employees tend to:
o Attend work
o Stay with an organization
o Arrive at work on time
o Perform well
o Engage in behaviours helpful to the organization
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ATTITUDE
: the way you feel and think about something or someone
: a feeling or way of thinking that affects a person’s
behaviour

Dissatisfied Employee  Negative Attitude toward work

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  JOB SATISFACTION
: attitude an employee has toward her job
 ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
: the extent to which an employee identifies with and is involved with
an organization.

= attend work, stay with the organization, perform well & engage in
behaviours helpful to the organization

≠ Dissatisfaction: desire to quit, miss work & reduce effort

JOB SATISFACTION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT:

- If successfully fulfilled employees will attend work, stay with organization, perform well and engage in behaviours helpful to the organization
- If not fulfilled will lead to dissatisfied employee hence, will have the desire to quit, miss work and reduce effort

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 3 Motivational Factors
 Affective Commitment
: employee wants
 Continuance Commitment
: employee believes
 Normative Commitment
: employee feels

Ways to increase employee satisfaction and commitment

- We need first to understand the factors that motivates or influence an employee
3 Motivational Factors:
- Affective Commitment
o An employee wants to remain with the organization, cares about the organization and is willing to exert effort on its behalf.
o These are common to employees who share same belief and attitude with the organization.
- Continuance Commitment
o An employee believes that he/she must remain with the organization due to the time, expense and effort that she has already put into it or the
difficulty that he/she would have in finding another job.
- Normative Commitment
o An employee feels obligated to the organization and as a result of this obligation must remain with the organization.
o An employee may feel obligated to stay in a job he/she hated because of the “investment” the company invested on him or her.

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  Individual Differences: individual’s personal tendency across
situations to enjoy one does
 Genetic Predisposition
 Core Self – Evaluations : emotional stability, self-esteem, self-efficacy,
external locus of control:
 Culture
 Intelligence

 Life Satisfaction – “John Travolta Method”

 Discrepancy Theory
 Between needs, values, expectations and reality
 “Psychological contracts” – promises and obligations
 “fit” – vocation, job, organization, co-workers, and supervisors and
schedule

Cause of Job Satisfaction (Theories)

- Individual Differences – Personal preference of an employee could affect the variability in job satisfaction
o Genetic Predisposition – theory that certain personality traits can be inherited
o Core Self –evaluations: Emotional Stability, Self-esteem, Self- Efficacy, External Locus of Control
 People who are satisfied in their job have a high self –esteem and a feeling of being competent, are emotionally stable and believe they
have control over their lives.
o Culture – people from different culture have different levels of job satisfaction, for example an American employee, whose culture are more of a
risk taker, will not be satisfied with a desk job.
o Intelligence – bright people or more intelligent people are easily bored to non complex job, hence has low job satisfaction
- Life Satisfaction – “John Travolta Method” – Life satisfaction can influence job satisfaction; employee’s needs can be met in a variety of non-work
activities (extracurricular activities, hobbies).
- Discrepancy Theory: discrepancy between needs, values and expectations versus the reality of the job, employees could be dissatisfied and less
motivated.
o Especially when “psychological contracts” are breach or not fulfilled (promises and obligations of the organization to the employee).
o “Fit” or “Good fit” – if employee’s values, interest, personality, lifestyle and skills match their vocation, this also includes relationship with the
organization itself, between the co-workers and supervisors and the employee’s personal schedule.

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  Intrinsic Satisfaction & Job Characteristic Theory –
“Interesting tasks”
 Maslow’s Social Level Facet Theory
 Social Learning Theory - vicarious learning, model, social
environment,
 Equity Theory – how fairly we believe we are treated -
rewards
 Distributive Justice – actual decisions made in an organization
(perception)
 Procedural Justice – methods use to arrived to the decision
 Interactional Justice – interpersonal treatment

- Intrinsic Satisfaction & Job Characteristic Theory – interesting jobs could elevate job satisfaction, therefore it is important to INNOVATE.
- Maslow’s Social Level Facet Theory – if the need of belongingness fulfilled
- Social Learning Theory – thru models or influence of social environment – For an instance a new employee is influence by the old employee’s negative
opinion about the company (stories, rants, etc) could affect the new employee’s perspective and may judge the company with the same belief with the
old employee.
- Equity Theory – the belief of an employee of he/ she is treated (fairly or unfairly towards the rewards like promotion) in comparison with others and
seek justice in 3 ways:
o Distributive Justice – is the perceived fairness of the actual decisions made
o Procedural Justice – is the perceived fairness of the methods use to arrive at the decision
o Interactional Justice – is the perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment employees receive.

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  Maslow’s Self Actualize Level – need for growth and
challenge
 Job Rotation: same number of tasks, but changes time to
time
 Job Enlargement:
 Knowledge – make more complex decisions
 Task Performance - more tasks to do at one time, same
difficulty level
 Job Enrichment: authority to make decisions about one’s
own work
 Decision Making Responsibilities
 Meaning and worth
 Self – directed teams or quality circles

- Maslow’s Self Actualize Level: the need for growth and challenge, could be achieved into 3 ways:
o Job Rotation: employee is given with same number of tasks to do at one time but changes from time to time
o Job Enlargement: can through knowledge and task performance
 Knowledge Enlargement – employees are allowed to make complex decisions
 Task Enlargement – employees are given more tasks of the same difficulty level
o Job Enrichment: employee is given the authority to make decision about one’s own work
3 Methods
1. Give workers more responsibility over their job – make their own judgment about own work
2. Explain the job’s meaning and that they are meeting worthwhile goal through their work (the importance of their work or job to other
people, how their work could be helpful to other people)
3. Use of Self-directed teams or quality circles – allowing employees to participate in making decisions.

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  Face Scale

 Job Descriptive Index – series of job – related adjectives

 Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire

 Nagy Job Satisfaction Scale: importance

MEASUREMENT – to help the organization measure employee satisfaction and to prevent consequences
SATISFACTION
- Face Scale – easy to use but no longer use because it lacks sufficient detail, lacks construct validity and that it’s so simple its demeaning
- Job Description Index – consists of a series of job-related adjectives and statements that are rated by employees
- Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire – 100 items, useful when an organization wants to measure the overall level of job satisfaction
- Nagby Satisfaction Questionnaire – criticized many of the standard test – that it only measure employee’s satisfaction on a certain aspect of the job but
not how important that aspect of job to them.

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  Allen and Meyer Survey – 3 motivational factors
 Organizational Commitment Questionnaire
: Acceptance of organization’s values and goals,
willingness to help and desire to remain
 Organizational Commitment Scale
: identification , exchange and affiliation

Custom- designed Inventories

-questions that are specific to the organization

COMMITMENT
- Allen and Meyer Survey – has 24 items and focus on the 3 motivational factors: Affective, Continuance and Normative
o Affective commitment
“I would be very happy to spend the rest 7 of my career in this organization.” “I really feel as if this organization’s problems are my own.”
o Continuance commitment
“It would be very hard for me to leave my organization right now, even if I wanted to.”
o Normative commitment
“I would feel guilty if I left my organization now.” “This organization deserves my loyalty.”
- Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ)
o Focus on acceptance of the organization’s values and goals, willingness to work to help the organization, and a desire to remain with the
organization.
- Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS)
o Focus on identification, exchange, and affiliation
- Custom Designed Inventories
o The organization may need to hire a consultant that will make a custom survey with questions that are specific to the need of organization.

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  Absenteeism
 Attendance to Consequences – importance
 Rewards for Attending:
 Financial Incentives
 Time-off (Paid)
 Recognition Programs
 Discipline – warning, less popular work assignment, firing
 Clear policies and better record keeping (Frequency vs. Instances)
 Reducing Employee Stress
 Reducing Illness
 Not Hiring “Absence-Prone” Employees
 Caused by Unique Events

CONSEQUENCES
- ABSENTEEISM: if an employee contemplated that attendance and the consequence is not of priority and decided to absent
Ways to Reduced or Prevent:
o Rewards for Attending – could be through financial incentives, time-off and recognition programs
o Discipline – to giving warning, to punishment (like giving less popular work assignment) and firing
o Clear Policies and better record keeping – instead of how frequent, record the number of instances and make a policy about it. For example, 3
consecutive days or missing one day is considered 1 count of absenteeism and could be subjective to corrective action
o Reducing Employee Stress – determine what causes your employee’s stress (personal problem and lessen it thru engaging the in variety of programs
and Employee Assistance Program (EOP) or seek counselors’ help
o Reducing Illness – consider employees’ health provide wellness program, on-site fitness programs and vaccinations, health screening, etc.
o Not Hiring “Absent-Prone” Employees – Controversial, the theory state that there are certain personality traits that could imply of a worker who will
most likely to miss work. For example, an employee with personality trait of conscientiousness and low in extraversion were least likely to absent.
o Caused by Unique Events –like Bad weather, accessibility of the work site – organizations moved to a place that it accessible for their employees or
can provide shuttle services or living perks

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  Turnover
 Unavoidable Reason
 Advancement
 Unmet Needs
 Escape
 Unmet Expectations
 Counterproductive Behaviours – “get back”
 Aimed at individuals
 Aimed at the organizations

 Lack of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

 “go the extra mile”

- TURNOVER – the employee resigns from his/her job

o Replacing the employee is more costly than providing a one person salary, because company will spend more for replacement thru ads, benefits and
more.
5 Reasons:
o Unavoidable Reason – these are personal reason that the organization cannot do anything to prevent it, this includes family issues, illness, etc.
o Advancement – they pursue promotions or better pay
o Unmet Needs - “person/ organizational fit” – it should be congruent
o Escape – they try to escape the stress caused by people, working condition and stress
o Unmet Expectations – conduct a realistic job previews
- COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOUR – trying to “get back” or give revenge, it could be in two ways:
o Aimed at individuals - include gossip, playing negative politics, harassment, incivility, workplace violence, harassment, and bullying
o Aimed at the organization – include theft and sabotage, they blame the organization for their unhappiness and seek revenge, and fid ways on how
to ”hurt them”
- LACK OF ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHOP BEHAVIOUR – the willingness to go the extra mile, without asking for any form of compensation.
Reference: Aamodt, M., Industrial Organizational Psychology 6th Edition

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