Transcript Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

Dr. Fred Mugambi Mwirigi
JKUAT
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Attitudes
Attitudes are evaluative statements or judgments
concerning objects, people, or events. They emanate
from belief systems.
Attitudes have the following components:
1.
Cognitive Component- The opinion or belief segment
of an attitude
2.
Affective Component- The emotional or feeling
segment of an attitude
3.
Behavioural Component- An intention to behave in a
certain way toward someone or something
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Attitudes contd.
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Attitudes are complex. If you ask people their
attitudes towards something like, soccer, you may
get a simple response but the reasons underlying
the response are probably complex.
The components of attitudes are closely related
and the cognition and affective components are
inseparable. E.g. if an employee didn’t get a
promotion that she thought she deserved
(cognition), the employee strongly dislikes her
supervisor (affective), and the employee seriously
looks for another job (behaviour).
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Attitudes contd.
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Attitudes change as a function of experience
Attitudes form directly as a result of experience.
They may emerge due to direct personal
experience, or they may result from observation.
Social roles and social norms can have a strong
influence on attitudes.
Social roles relate to how people are expected to
behave in a particular role or context.
Social norms involve society's rules for what
behaviors are considered appropriate.
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The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
and its influence on behavior
 Theory by Leon Festinger
 Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or
between behaviour and attitudes.
 People seek consistency among their attitudes, and
between their attitudes and behaviour. They seek to
reduce this gap, or ‘dissonance’.
Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
• Importance of elements creating dissonance
• Degree of individual influence over elements
• Rewards involved in dissonance
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Cognitive Dissonance Contd.
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When there is an inconsistency (cognitive
dissonance) forces are initiated to return the
individual to equilibrium where attitudes and
behaviour are again consistent.
 If the elements creating dissonance are relatively
unimportant the pressure to correct the
imbalance will be low.
 When the elements are important dissonance
can be reduced through a change in behaviour,
or attitude.
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Cognitive Dissonance Contd.
 The degree of influence that individuals believe that
they have over the elements will impact how they
react to the dissonance. If they perceive no control,
they are less likely to be receptive to attitude
change.
 High rewards accompanying high dissonance tend
to reduce the tension inherent in the dissonance.
 In an organisation the theory can help to predict the
propensity to engage in attitude and behavioural
change.
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Attitude Vs Behavior
 Recent research has demonstrated that attitudes
significantly predict future behaviour
 Important attitudes reflect fundamental values,
self-interest, or identification with individuals or
groups that a person values.
 The more specific the attitude the more specific
the behaviour.
 Attitudes that are easily remembered are more
likely to predict behaviour.
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Contd.
 Discrepancies between attitudes and
behaviour are more likely to occur when social
pressures to behave in certain ways hold
exceptional power.
 The attitude-behaviour relationship is likely to
be much stronger if an attitude refers to
something with which the individual has direct
personal experience.
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Attitudes vs. Job Satisfaction
 Job satisfaction is an individual’s general
attitude toward his/her job
 A high level of job satisfaction equals positive
attitudes toward the job and vice versa
 Attitudes have a direct effect on job
satisfaction.
 Negative attitudes tend to reduce job
satisfaction while positive attitudes tend to
raise the levels of job satisfaction
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Average Job Satisfaction Levels by
Facet
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How Employees Express
Dissatisfaction
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How Employees Express
Dissatisfaction
Destructive
constructive
Active
Passive
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The Effect of Job Satisfaction on
Employee Performance
 Satisfaction and Productivity
Satisfied workers are more productive
and more productive workers are more
satisfied!
 Worker productivity is higher in
organisations with more satisfied
workers.
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 Satisfaction and Absenteeism
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Satisfied employees have fewer
avoidable absences.
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Effect of Job Satisfaction on
Employee Performance Contd.
 Satisfaction and Turnover
Satisfied employees are less likely to quit.
 Organisations take actions to retain high
performers and to weed out lower
performers.
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Job Satisfaction vs. Customer
Satisfaction
 Satisfied workers provide better customer service.
 Satisfied employees increase customer
satisfaction because:
 They are more friendly, upbeat, and responsive.
 They are less likely to turnover, which helps build
long-term customer relationships.
 They are experienced.
 Dissatisfied customers increase employee job
dissatisfaction.
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Job involvement
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Job involvement measures the degree to which a person
identifies psychologically with his/her job and considers
his/her perceived performance level important to self-worth.
A related concept is psychological empowerment which is
the employees’ belief in the degree to which they impact
their work environment, their competence, the
meaningfulness of their job, and the perceived autonomy of
their work.
High levels of job involvement and psychological
empowerment are positively related to organisational
citizenship and job performance.
High job involvement is found to be related to fewer
absences and lower resignations rates.
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Organisational commitment
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A state in which an employee identifies with a particular
organisation and its goals, and wishes to maintain
membership in the organisation.
 There are three separate dimensions to organisation
commitment:
1.
Affective commitment – an emotional attachment to
the organisation
2.
Continuance commitment – perceived economic
value of remaining with the organisation
3.
Normative commitment – an obligation to remain
because of ethical or moral reasons
 There is a positive relationship between organisational
commitment and job productivity
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Measuring Employee Attitudes
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The most popular method for measuring attitudes,
because of its ease of implementation and speed
of results, is through the use of attitude surveys.
Attitude surveys elicit responses from employees
through questionnaires on how they feel about
their jobs, work groups, supervisors, and the
organisation.
The typical attitude survey presents the employee
with a set of statements or questions with a rating
scale indicating the degree of agreement.
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Attitude Surveys Contd.
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An individual’s attitude score is achieved by summing up
responses to the questionnaire items, the scores can be
averaged for work groups, teams, departments, divisions
or the organisation as a whole.
Results from attitude surveys can frequently surprise
management.
A complicating factor is that attitude surveys can be
viewed sceptically or suspiciously by many employees
concerned about confidentiality. Using an outside body to
conduct and analyse the data can help to reduce
concerns.
Using attitude surveys regularly provides managers with
valuable feedback on the perception of employees
towards working conditions.
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Measuring Job Satisfaction
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Jobs require interaction with co-workers and
bosses, following organisational rules and
policies, meeting performance standards, living
with working conditions that are often less than
ideal, and the like.
 This means that an employee’s assessment of
how satisfied or dissatisfied he or she is with
his/her job is a complex summation of a number
of discrete job elements.
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Ways of Measuring Job
Satisfaction
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The single global rating method- asking
individuals to respond to one question, such as “All
things considered, how satisfied are you with your
job?”
A summation of job facets:
 It identifies key elements in a job and asks for
the employee’s feelings about each one
ranked on a standardised scale.
 Typical factors that would be included are the
nature of the work, supervision, present pay,
promotion opportunities, and relations with coworkers.
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Conclusion
 The level of employee satisfaction has a direct and
cyclic relationship with the level of customer
satisfaction.
 If customers are dissatisfied employees tend to
get even more dissatisfied.
 The nature of retaliatory response elicited by
employees can help a manager understand the
level and nature of dissatisfaction.
 Money is not the ultimate satisfier of either the
employee or the customer.
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End
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