Attitudes To Work

Question 2

Attitudes 1

Answer 2

Workplace sabotage (Giacalone and Rosenfeld, 1987)

1. Behaviours that are designed to break the rules and deliberately try to stop work from taking place.
   > These behaviours are most commonly the result of dissatisfaction and powerlessness.
2. In a study by Giacalone and Rosenfeld, unionised workers at a factory were asked to rate a variety of reasons which would justify the use of sabotage in an organisation, as well as the justifiability of four general methods of sabotage.
   A. Participants
   > 38 unionised labourers working in an electrical factory.
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   B. Questionnaire
   > Constructed with the help of an ex-employee (with five years’ service) who listed all the ways that were used by the employees to sabotage the company.
   > This produced a total of 29 general sabotage methods which could be grouped into four general categories:
   » Work slowdowns
   » Destruction of machinery, premises or products
   » Dishonesty
   » Causing chaos
   > A further list was created of all the reasons for sabotage:
   » Self defence
   » Revenge
   » An eye for an eye
   » Protect oneself from boss/company
   » Protect one’s job
   » The foreman/company deserved it
   » The foreman/company hurt me previously
   » No one was hurt by the action
   » Release of frustrations
   » Just for fun
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   C. Procedure
   > Each participant was given the list of sabotage methods and the list of sabotage reasons and asked to rate them individually on a scale of 1 (not at all justifiable) to 7 (totally justifiable).
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   D. Data analysis
   > A median split was performed on the potential reasons for sabotage creating two groups - high-reasons acceptors and low-reason acceptors.
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   E. Results
   > Compared with those who did not accept a wide variety of reasons for sabotage, those who accepted a variety of reasons would more readily justify all forms of sabotage except dishonesty.
   > High-reasons acceptors justified production slowdowns more than low-reason acceptors.
   > High-reasons acceptors justified destruction of machinery, premises or products more than low-reason acceptors.
   > High-reasons acceptors did justify causing chaos more than low-reason acceptors.
   > High-reasons acceptors did not justify dishonesty more than low-reason acceptors.
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   F. Conclusions
   > While acceptance seems to affect justification of sabotage in many forms, this is not the case for dishonesty.
   » This is possibly seen as different from the other forms of sabotage.
   > Work slowdowns, destruction and causing chaos may be aimed at hurting the company, but they do not represent potential monetary gains for the employee.
   » This may make dishonesty a qualitatively different form of sabotage (justified for very different reasons such as poor salaries) and potentially interpreted in very different ways by management.
   > If this type of sabotage was simply interpreted as self-serving, then it has not served the desired demonstrative function.
   > It may also be that dishonesty threatens self-esteem in a way that the other forms of savotage do not.

Question 3

Attitudes 2

Answer 3

Absenteeism (Blau and Boal, 1987)

1. One of the major costs to employees.
2. In the UK, the Confederation of Business and Industry found that workplace stress was one of the major causes of absenteeism.
3. Absenteeism can be voluntary or involuntary.
   A. Voluntary absenteeism
   > The worker has chosen not to attend work and this may well be a measure of dissatisfaction but is a difficult factor to measure.
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   B. Involuntary absenteeism
   > When the worker has no choice but to be absent, usually due to illness.
   > Organisations will expect some illnesses and should have policies in place to deal with this (for example a school may have a regular ‘supply teacher’ to cover for absences or may be able to phone a supply agency).
4. The paper by Blau and Boal uses the concept of job involvement and organisational commitment to predict turnover and absenteeism.
   > Job involvement and organisational commitment can be high or low.
   > This produces 4 possible situations that are predicted to have a different impact on turnover and absenteeism:
   A. High job involvement, high organisational commitment
   > Describes individuals for whom work is important to their self-esteem.
   > These individuals will exert a great deal of time and effort in their jobs.
   > Because they identify strongly with the organisation, it is predicted that they will also become highly involved with group activities that help to maintain the organisation.
   > They can be seen to represent the most valued members of the organisation and are likely to move up through the organisation.
   > It is expected that this group will show the lowest level of turnover and absenteeism although if members of this group were to be absent or leave this would have a greater impact on the organisation as they may be more difficult to replace.
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   B. High job involvement, low organisational commitment
   > Although their work is important to them, they do not identify with the organisation or with its goals.
   > They are likely to show high levels of effort for individual tasks but a low level of effort for group tasks.
   > If the first groups are the ‘stars’ of the organisation, then this group are the ‘lone wolves’.
   > Such people are highly sensitive to factors such as working conditions and pay.
   > If better opportunities were to arise elsewhere, these people would leave.
   > The effect of turnover here would be different from the first group. Despite their high levels of individual effort, they do not integrate themselves within the organisation.
   » This can breed resentment if others then need to pick up their group work tasks, and perceived inequities can damage the cohesiveness of the group.
   > The authors also argue that absenteeism among this group is likely to reflect them taking career enhancing opportunities - and being more willing to violate absenteeism policies if there is a conflict between a work goal and a personal goal.
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   C. Low job involvement, high organisational commitment
   > Their work is not personally important to them but they do identify with the organisation and its goals.
   > They may exert little effort on individual tasks but a great deal on group maintenance tasks.
   > The authors describe these people as the corporate citizens of the organisation.
   > Their absence can have a significant impact on others.
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   D. Low job inolvement, low organisational commitment
   > Work is not viewed as being important to their self-image and so they do not put a great deal of effort into individual tasks and as the organisation is not strongly identified with, they do not contribute to group maintenance.
   > These are the least valuable members of an organisation are described as ‘apathetic employees’.

Question 4

Attitudes 3

Answer 4

Measuring organisational commitment

1. Organisational commitment is the attitude that workers have towards the organisation that they work for.
   > Defined as ‘the relative strength of an individual’s identificarion with and involvement in an organisation’ (Mowday et al., 1979).
2. Some authors discuss organisational commitment as having 3 forms:
   > The desire to remain within the organisation
   > Belief in and acceptance of the organisation’s values
   > Willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organisation
3. Howecer, other authors such as Allen and Meyer identify 3 types of organisational commitment:
   A. Continuance commitment
   > Workers remain in their post (or in the organisation) as the costs and risks of leaving would be too great.
   > This may be financial in the sense that people cannot give up a salary or other benefits but may also reflect the lack of suitable alternatives.
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   B. Affective commitment
   > Concerns an individual’s emotional attachment to the organisation and is where workers remain because they strongly agree with the organisation’s goals and overall beliefs and views.
   > As long as these don’t change, the workers choose to remain with the organisation.
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   C. Normative commitment
   > People stay because of pressure from others or a feeling of obligation.
4. Being able to measure commitment is useful as committed workers are much more likely to stay with an organisation and work for the good of the organisation.
5. The study by Mowday et al. is one of the earliest attempts to develop a method for measuring organisational commitment.
   > This is a 15-items questionnaire called the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire and consists of items such as:
   » I feel very little loyalty to this organisation.
   » I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organisation be successful.
   » I really care about the fate of this organisation.
   > Although this was originally designed as a measure of general organisational commitment, it is now understood to measure affective commitment.
6. Mowday study reports on the process of developing and validating this scale.
   A. Background
   > To do this, the scale was administered to 2563 people working in a large variety of jobs in 9 different organisations in a number of separate studies.
   > The jobs and organisations included public employees such as those working in a range of hospital, social services and health care related jobs and supervisory and administrative personnel, university employees, bank employees, telephone company employees, scientists and engineers and retail management trainees.
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   B. Aim
   > To assess a number of aspects of reliability and validity of the scale as well as the scale’s ability to discriminate.
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   C. Data
   > Mean scores ranged from a low 4 to a high 6.1, suggesting that the scale produces an acceptable level of discrimination.
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   D. Results
   > No items stood out as producing odd results or being less related to the overall score than other items.
   > Test-retest scores were good, suggesting high reliability.
   > To measure validity,
   » The results were compared with a number of other scales which measure similar affective responses.
   »> Correlations were high suggesting good validity.
   » Correlate this with the idividual’s intention to remain with the organisation to determine validity of the scale.
   »> This single item measure was collected in five of the studies and all five revealed significant correlations.
   »> This provides good evidence as clearly a range of other variables, including personal ones, would also impact this relationship.
   » Evidence was also found to support the discriminant validity of the scale.
   » Predictive validity was checked by some studies which looked to see whether scores on the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire would predict how long an employee would stay/how quickly they would leave.
   »> This was supported in that individuals with low scores were more likely to leave the organisation.
   »> Significant relationships were also found between low organisational commitment and absenteeism and to a lesser extent between commitment and performance.
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   E. Evidence
   > This can all be used to support the use of the OCQ although the authors do identify several reasons to be cautious.
   > One of these is that respondents may easily manipulate their answers to this scale as it is relatively easy to determine what is being measured.
   » This is highly likely to happen if people feel that the results of any research may be used against them in some way.
   > They also suggest that the shorter nine-item questionanire may be an acceptable substitute for the 15-item questionnaire.
   > They end by identifying several areas for further research, including the need to consider the relationship between behavioural and attitudinal commitment and some of the other factors (occupation, age, sex, etc) that may influence organisational commitment.

Question 5

Evaluation

Answer 5

1. Giacalone and Rosenfeld conducted a survey on sabotage.
   > Surveys suffer from the same weaknesses as all self-report methods and probably the most important one here is social desirability bias.
   » It may be that respondents were concerned about who would see their answers and this may have had an impact on what they were prepared to say.
   > However, this study was able to use a quasi-experimental approach when comparing the high-reason acceptors with the low-reason acceptors and this has yielded useful results.
   » In particular, the finding that both groups saw ‘dishonesty’ as qualitatively different from all other forms of sabotage is a useful one.
   » This could allow employers to respond to dishonesty in a different way from how they might respond to other acts of sabotage.
   » Someone who commits an act of sabotage may be sending a message to their employers about their working conditions or their quality o work life.
   > This study clearly shows how the workplace environment (situation) can impact on the individual’s behaviour.
2. The study by Blau is useful in bringing together the concepts of job involvement and organisational commitment.
   > In allowing organisations to be able to predict potential staff turnover, they are able to plan for this or put measures in place to reduce this risk.
   > Prediction, even if not 100% correct, is crucial for the effective running of large organisations.
   > In order to be able to preduct, you need to be able to measure, and Mowday’s measurement of organisational commitment has many useful applications to organisations.
3. Clearly, these measures of commitment are self-report - that is the individual reports how committed they are.
   > This obviously makes sense as the person is in the best position to know how they feel about the organisation that they work for.
   > However, we might be biassed or responding to demand characteristics and it could be argued that perhaps others could provide a more objective measure of how committed we appear to be.
   > Interestingly, a study conducted in 2001 by Goffin and Gellatly suggested that self-reported measures of commitment showed only a weak correlation with the reports made by others.