CHapter 3: Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Flashcards
Attitudes
Evaluative statements, favourable or unfavourable, concerning jojects, people, or events
When you say “I like my job,” you are expressing your attitude about work.
3 components of attitude
Cognition
Affect
Behaviour
Cognitive component
A description of or belief in the way things are.
“My pay is low”
Affective component
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude
“I am angry over how little I’m paid.”
Behavioural component
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something
“I’m going to look for another job that pays better.”
What two components are intertwined?
Cognition and affect
Cognitive dissonance
Any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or between behaviour and attitudes.
The desire to reduce dissonance depends on three factors
1) Including the importance of the elements creating it 2) The degree of influence we believe we have over them.
3) The third factor is the rewards of dissonance; high rewards accompanying high dissonance tend to reduce the tension inherent in the dissonance (the dissonance is less distressing if accompanied by something good, such as a higher pay raise than expected).
Important attitudes
Reflect our fundamental values, self-interest, or identification with individuals or groups we value. These attitudes tend to show a strong relationship to our behaviour.
Specific attitudes
Tend to predict specific behaviours, whereas general attitudes tend to predict general behaviours.
Finally, the attitude–behaviour relationship is likely to be much stronger
if an attitude refers to something with which we have direct personal experience.
Job Satisfaction
A positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.
Job Involvement
The degree to which people identify psychologically with their jobs and consider their perceived performance levels important to self-worth.
Psychological empowerment
Employees’ beliefs in the degree to which they influence their work environments, their competencies, the meaningfulness of their jobs, and their perceived autonomy.
Organizational Commitment
The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to remain a member.
Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
The degree to which employees believe the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being.
High POS
Employees with strong POS perceptions have been found more likely to have higher levels of citizenship behaviours, lower levels of tardiness, and better customer service.
Employee Engagement
An individuals involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the work they do
High average levels of engagement
Achieved higher levels of customer satisfaction, were more productive, brought in higher profits, and experienced lower levels of turnover and accidents than other business units.
Two top reasons for job engagement
(1) having a good manager they enjoy working for and (2) feeling appreciated by their supervisor.
Managers tend to identify their employees as belonging to one of four distinct categories:
Enthusiastic stayers, reluctant stayers, enthusiastic leavers (planning to leave), and reluctant leavers (not planning to leave but should leave).
Two approaches measuring Job Satisfaction
Single global rating
Summation of job facets
Single global rating
is a response to one question, such as “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?” Respondents circle a number between 1 and 5 on a scale from “highly satisfied” to “highly dissatisfied.”
Summation of job facets
It identifies key elements in a job such as the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities, and relationships with coworkers. Respondents rate these on a standardized scale, and researchers add the ratings to create an overall job satisfaction score.
