Attitudes, Values & Job Satisfaction

1. Attitudes, Values & Job Satisfaction

2. "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

3. 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)

4. 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.

5. TYPES OF VALUES • 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 Terminal Instrumental

7. Types of Values Work Values Ethical Values Intrinsic Work Values Extrinsic Work Values Justice Values Utilitarian Values Moral Rights Values Values in the Workplace

8. 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

9. Ethical principles • One’s personal convictions about what is right and wrong Utilitarian Moral Rights Distributive Justice

10. 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. • GeertHofstede 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. • 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)

11. Values across cultures • Individualism vs Collectivism: Degree to which people in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of a group. • 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. • Uncertainty avoidance: Degree to which people in a country, prefer structured or unstructured situations.; Risk taking. • Long term and short term orientation: Long: look to future and value thrift and persistence Short: Values past and present; emphasis respect for traditions and fulfilling social obligations.

12. High Power Distance High Uncertainty Avoidance Achievement Orientation Long-Term Orientation Individualism Japan Japan China Malaysia USA Japan USA Germany France Germany Japan Australia USA South Korea India USA Netherlands Germany Japan USA Hong Kong Sweden Singapore China Russia Low Uncertainty Avoidance Nurturing Orientation Collectivism Low power Distance Short-Term Orientation

13. The GLOBE Framework • Assertiveness • Future Orientation • Gender Differentiation • Uncertainty Avoidance • Power Distance • Individualism / Collectivism • In-Group Collectivism • Performance Orientation • Humane Orientation

14. 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

15. 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 cognitions • Reduce importance of dissonant cognitions • Change one of the dissonant cognitions

16. 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

17. “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

19. 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.

20. 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)

21. 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 ”

22. 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.

23. Experience with Object Classical Conditioning Mass Communication Attitudes Operant Conditioning Economic Status Neighbourhood Vicarious Learning Family & Peer Groups Formation of Attitudes

24. Attitudes, Indifference, and Ambivalence Attitudes vary in a number of important ways • Valence (positive or negative) • Intensity • Strength • Accessibility • Basis

25. Components of Work Attitudes Affective Component Emotional or feeling Cognitive Component Opinion or belief Work Attitudes Negative / Positive Behavioral Component Intention to behave in a certain way towards someone or something

26. Attitudes and Behavior Attitude: Act Behavior Intent Behavior Subjective Norm Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen)

27. Attitudes and Behavior Behavior beliefs Attitude: Act Evaluation Behavior Intent Behavior Normative beliefs Subjective Norm Motivation to Comply Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen)

28. Attitudes and Behavior Behavior beliefs Attitude: Act Evaluation Behavior Intent Behavior Normative beliefs Subjective Norm Constraints Motivation to Comply Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen)

29. Work Attitudes • Collections of feelings, beliefs, and thoughts about how to behave that people currently hold about their jobs and organizations

30. Outcome Expectations and Work • Comfortable existence • Family security • Sense of accomplishment • Self-respect • Social recognition • Exciting Life

31. Work Moods • How people feel at the time they actually perform their jobs. • More transitory than values and attitudes. • Determining factors: • Personality • Work situation • Circumstances outside of work

32. Positive Excited Enthusiastic Active Strong Peppy Elated Negative Distressed Fearful Scornful Hostile Jittery Nervous Work Moods

33. Emotions • Intense, short-lived feelings that are linked to specific cause or antecedent • Emotions can feed into moods • Emotional labor

34. Emotional Labor Display Rules Feeling Rules Expression Rules

35. Emotions, Attitude & behavior Perceptions Beliefs Attitude Emotional Episodes Feelings Behavioral Intentions Behavior

36. Relationships Between Values, Attitudes, Moods, and Emotions Values (most stable) Attitudes (moderately stable) Moods and Emotions (most changing)

37. Attitudes AT THE WORKPLACE Job related attitudes tap +ve or –ve evaluations that employees hold about aspects of their work environments. 3 major attitudes: • 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. • 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. • Organization commitment: A state in which an employee identifies with a particular orgn and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the orgn.

38. 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 Job Satisfaction(s)

39. Porter (1961): Need Satisfaction Desired-Actual Minnesota Work Adjustment Model 20 “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 Simple Discrepancy Models

40. Objective characteristics Perceived characteristics Needs/ Values Job Satisfaction(s)

41. Objective characteristics Perceived characteristics Frame of Reference Needs/ Values Job Satisfaction(s)

42. Questioning the Situational View • A chink in the armor: are perceptions veridical with objective reality? • Social Information Processing model • Dispositional View

43. 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 Generalized Arousal Event JS Cues

44. 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%)

45. 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?

46. Temperament and Job Satisfaction • Trait NA/PA may be key factor • Some reason to believe that it may have biological basis, and thus inheritable • Those high in NA are more likely to: • Notice negative stimuli • Evaluate stimuli in negative terms • Recall negative stimuli • Create interpersonal conflict  dissatisfaction

47. Primacy of Affect or Judgment Weiss & Cropanzano (1996) Events Affect JS Weiss et al. (1999) Disposition Mood at work JS Brief (1998) Disposition Interpretations JS

48. Primacy of Affect or Judgment Brief & Weiss (2002) Interpretations JS Disposition Mood Fuller et al. (2003) Strain JS Stress events Mood

49. Low Turnover Organisational Factors Job Satisfaction Low Absenteeism Outcomes Expected / Valued Group Factors Outcomes Received High Turnover Individual Factors Job Dissatisfaction High Absenteeism

50. 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.