Transcript Organizational Psychology

Organizational Psychology:
A Scientist-Practitioner Approach
Jex, S. M., & Britt, T. W. (2014)
Prepared by:
Christopher J. L. Cunningham, PhD
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Kelsey-Jo Ritter
Bowling Green State University
Kristen S. Jennings
Clemson University
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Chapter 8: Beliefs and Attitudes
About Work and the Organization
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Job Satisfaction
• An overall evaluation of a job, including
components that are:
–Affective
–Behavioral
–Cognitive
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Measurement of Job Satisfaction
• Critical issue given the widespread interest
in this topic
• As with all measures, validity is important
• With job satisfaction measures, construct
validity is especially important
–Convergent versus discriminant forms
–Nomological networks
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Common Measures
• Faces Scale (Figure 8.2)
• Job Descriptive Index (Table 8.1 and
Comment 8.2)
• Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire
(Table 8.2)
• Michigan Organizational Assessment
Questionnaire
• Job Satisfaction Survey (Table 8.3)
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Predictors of Job Satisfaction
• Three main approaches:
–Job characteristics
–Social information processing
–Personal dispositions
• Some combination of these factors is likely
the root cause
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Job Satisfaction Across Cultures
• New area of investigation, influenced by
differences in cultural values (Hofstede)
– Individualism/collectivism
– Masculinity
– Power distance
– Uncertainty avoidance
• Across cultures there may be differences in
employee wants, but also social information
processing and actual job conditions
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Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
• Attitudinal variables (commitment, job
involvement, positive mood, frustration)
– Strongest correlation with satisfaction when
measured as an attitude
– Unclear why and how these variables are associated
• Absenteeism
– Indicator of employee withdrawal
– Theory of Planned Behavior may explain the typically
weak relationship with satisfaction
– Low base rate information limits this research
– More recent longitudinal research is more supportive146
Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
(Cont.)
• Employee turnover (see Mobley’s process
model, Figure 8.3)
– Important issue for organizations (cost and image)
– Importance of job and organizational conditions
• Job performance
– Happy worker effect and its moderators (rewards,
affective-cognitive consistency of job satisfaction,
job complexity)
– Unclear causal relationship
– Relationship with contextual performance
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Organizational Commitment
• Represents feelings and behavioral
tendencies of employees toward their
organization
• Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three-component
model presented (Figure 8.4):
– Affective
– Continuance (sacrifices involved in leaving
the job or lack of perceived alternatives)
– Normative
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Measurement of Organizational
Commitment
• Prominence of self-report scales
–Organizational Commitment
Questionnaire (OCQ)
–Allen and Meyer, 1990; Becker, 1992
• Recent trend in commitment profiles
• Need to consider multiple dimensions and
foci (targets) of commitment
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Development and Predictors of
Organizational Commitment
• Challenging area for research given the
complexity of the commitment construct
• Tendency is to address Meyer and Allen’s
three dimensions separately
• Relationships with rewards, work culture,
work characteristics, employee needs, and
psychological contracts
• Recent attention is on commitment across
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different cultures
Consequences of Organizational
Commitment
• Attitudinal
– Affective commitment is most strongly
associated with other attitudes
– Less research on continuance and normative
• Absenteeism
– Little consistent evidence for a strong
relationship between any dimension of
organizational commitment and absenteeism
(perhaps affective commitment plays a role)
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Consequences of Organizational
Commitment (Cont.)
• Turnover
– All forms of commitment are negatively
associated with turnover
– Different components of commitment may
predict turnover at different time points
– Is this always good for the organization?
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Consequences of Organizational
Commitment (Cont.)
• Job performance
– Affective commitment linked to
performance, perhaps in terms of
improved employee effort
–Stronger relationships with OCB instead
of task performance are common
– Influence of unit-level commitment as a
predictor of job performance
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Predicting Performance With
Commitment and Satisfaction
• May be value in considering satisfaction
and commitment together as a sort of
“overall job attitude” variable
• Initial research shows a strong
relationship between this general attitude
and general indicators of performance
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Practical Applications
• To improve employee commitment:
–Realistic information to applicants
–Proper socialization (i.e., investiture)
–Internal promotion
–Compensation and benefits
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Perceived Organizational Support
• Employees’ beliefs concerning the extent
to which the organization values their
contributions and cares about their wellbeing
• Influenced by stress, justice perceptions,
autonomy, rewards, and personality
• Relationships with outcomes such as
health, well-being, and performance
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Organizational Identification
• The degree of oneness an employee feels
toward an organization
• Distinguished from commitment
• Primary motives for identification
– To reduce social uncertainty
– To boost self-esteem
• Related to increased commitment, job
satisfaction, job involvement, and OCB157
Job Embeddedness
• Factors that link employees to their
current job as well as to the community in
which they live
• Developed to predict why employees stay
in current job
• Overall embeddedness and specific
organization (on-the-job) and community
(off-the-job) measures
• Predictive of turnover
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Organizational Justice
• People’s perceptions of fairness in
organizations
• Three primary forms
– Distributive
– Procedural
– Interactional
• Related to job attitudes, task performance,
contextual performance, and CWB
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