Lecture 1

Question 1

What is attitude?

Answer 1

• Attitudes are evaluative statements, either favorable or unfavorable, about objects, people, situations, and events.
  Our attitudes reflect how we feel about, and how we respond towards the object, situation, etc..

Question 2

Three components of attitudes

Answer 2

Affective = feeling “I do not like my supervisor”

Behavioral = intention to action. “I will look for other job”

Cognitive = evaluation “He get easily angry”

Question 3

Attitude-Behavior relationship

Answer 3

Attitude-behavior relationship is stronger when:

• Attitude is personally important.
• Attitude corresponds to a specific behavior.
• Attitude is regularly accessible (in memory)
• We have direct experience with the topic.
• There are not competing social pressures.

Question 4

What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Answer 4

An inconsistency between two or more attitudes or behaviors.

Is uncomfortable; people seek to minimize dissonance by:

• changing an attitude or behavior.
• or rationalizing the inconsistency.

Question 5

Job satisfaction

Answer 5

• An important workplace attitude.
• Positve feelings about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.
• Job satisfaction is about “Happy worker”

Question 6

What are the two approaches to measure job satisfaction?

Answer 6

• The single global rating: All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job? scale between Low-High satisfied.
• The summation of job facets: (ask yourself) How satisfied am I with this aspect of my job? eg. job security, payment, routine, etc..

Question 7

Job satisfaction and its outcomes

Answer 7

• greater job performance
• Less absenteesim
• Less turnover
• Less workplace deviance (eg. gossiping)

Question 8

Response to job dissatisfaction

Answer 8

Exit: Leaving the organization (Active, Destructive)

Voice: Contacting officials, collective action (Active, Constructive)

Neglect: Abstenteeism, reduced effort, increasing error rate (Passive, Destructive)

Loyalty: Trusting/ Defending the organization, believing problems will be solved.(Passive, Constructive)

Question 9

Criticisms of Job Satisfaction - Work Behavior relationship

Answer 9

Have always assumed job satisfaction ̶ >work
performance

But cognitive dissonance suggests the relationship may go in the opposite direction, (i.e., employees who work hard may adjust their job-related attitudes upwards)

Question 10

Pay-Job Satisfaction Relationship

Answer 10

• Insufficient pay can make us unhappy and dissatisfied,
so need to pay employees enough.

• But after a certain threshold, more pay doesn’t
necessarily make us more happy

Question 11

Adaptation level theory

Answer 11

Big event like winning the lottery changes our
happiness for a short period of time, but then
we adjust and are back to pre-winning levels of
happiness in a year

Question 12

Job attitudes

Answer 12

• Job involvement: degree of psychological identification with the job.
• Organizational commitment: Identifying with the organization and its goals and wishing to maintain membership in the organization.
• Employee engagement: The degree of involvement, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the job and organization.

These attitudes are highly related.

Question 13

Affect: Emotions and Moods

Answer 13

Affect: A broad range of feelings that people experience.

• > Emotions: Intense feelings that are directed to someone or something.
• > Moods: Less intense feelings that cause is general and unclear.

Question 14

Why were Emotions and Moods ignored in OB research?

Answer 14

“Myth of rationality”

• Emotions were seen as irrational
• Managers worked to make emotion-free environment

Emotions are regarded as disruptive

• Only negative emotions were observed
• Emotions interfered with productivity.

Question 15

Function of Emotions

Answer 15

Emotions are not always irrational. They can aid in our decision-making process. Emotions are sometimes necessary for rational decisions.

Question 16

Sources of emotions

Answer 16

• Personality
• Day and time of the week
• weather, stress, social activities, sleep, exercise
• Age, gender

Question 17

Emotional labor

Answer 17

• Emotional dissonance: Inconsistency between desired emotions (required in the workplace) and felt emotions (the actual one).

Surface acting: displaying appropriately but not feeling those emotions internally.

Deep acting: changing internal feelings to match display rules. Very stressful.

-> Emotional labor can be very damaging, stressful and lead to burnout.

Question 18

Affective Events Theory (AET)

Answer 18

An emotional episode is actually the result of a series of emotional experiences triggered by a single event. (such as job tasks, co-workers actions, management style, etc).

Current and past emotions affect job satisfaction.

Emotional fluctuations over time create variations in job performance.

Emotion-driven behaviors are typically brief and variable.

Question 19

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Answer 19

The ability to:

• Perceive emotions
• Understand the meaning of emotions
• Regulate emotions

Question 20

Controversy over EI

Answer 20

EI is controversial and not wholly accepted:

• For EI: Intuitive appeal; predicts criteria that matter; is biologically based.
• Against EI: Too vague concept; cannot be measured; its validity is suspect.