OB - Job Satisfaction

Organizational Behavior
[3] Attitudes & Job Satisfaction

• Attitudes are evaluative statements—either
favorable or unfavorable—about objects,
people, or events. They reflect how we feel
about something.
• When I say “I like my job,” I am expressing my
attitude about work.
3-4
• Festinger proposed that cases of attitude
following behavior illustrate the effects of
cognitive dissonance.
• Cognitive dissonance is a theory in social
psychology. It refers to the mental conflict
that occurs when a person's behaviors and
beliefs do not align. It may also happen
when a person holds two beliefs that
contradict one another.
• That feeling of mental discomfort
about using plastic bags is an
example of cognitive dissonance.
• This is because your beliefs are
clashing with your actions or
behavior. You believe that humans
need to protect the environment,
but you still use plastic bags. The
internal conflict that this causes
makes you feel bad.
Causes of cognitive dissonance
include:
• Forced compliance behavior.
Forced compliance is a situation in
which a person is forced to
perform an action that is
inconsistent with their beliefs. ...
• Decision making. ...
• Effort.
How do people react to cognitive
dissonance?
• Cognitive dissonance refers to a
situation involving conflicting
attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.
This produces a feeling of mental
discomfort leading to an
alteration in one of the attitudes,
beliefs or behaviors to reduce the
discomfort and restore balance
Is cognitive dissonance a bad thing?
• Cognitive dissonance isn't
necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it
can prompt you to make positive
changes when you realize your
beliefs and actions are at odds. It
can be problematic if it leads you
to justify or rationalize behaviors
that could be harmful
• Festinger argued that any form of inconsistency
is uncomfortable and that individuals will
therefore attempt to reduce it. They will seek a
stable state, which is a minimum of dissonance.
• Research has generally concluded that people
do seek consistency among their attitudes and
between their attitudes and their behavior.
They either alter the attitudes or the behavior,
or they develop a rationalization for the
discrepancy.
• Most of the research in OB has looked at
three attitudes:
1. job satisfaction,
2. job involvement, and
3. organizational commitment.
• Job Satisfaction: When people speak of
employee attitudes, they usually mean job
satisfaction , which describes a positive feeling
about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.
• Job Involvement: It means the degree to
which people identify psychologically with
their job and consider their perceived
performance level important to self-worth.
– Another closely related concept is psychological
empowerment , employees’ beliefs in the degree
to which they influence their work environment,
their competence, the meaningfulness of their
job, and their perceived autonomy.
• Organizational Commitment: In organizational
commitment , an employee identifies with a
particular organization and its goals and wishes
to remain a member.
– Research indicates that employees who feel their
employers fail to keep promises to them feel less
committed, and these reductions in commitment,
in turn, lead to lower levels of creative
performance.
• Employee Engagement: is a new concept that
means an individual’s involvement with,
satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the
work she does.
• Evidence suggests these attitudes are highly
related, perhaps to a troubling degree.
• There is some distinctiveness among them,
but they overlap greatly.
• One theoretical model—the exit–voice–
loyalty–neglect framework—is helpful in
understanding the consequences of
dissatisfaction.
• This framework identifies four responses,
which differ along two dimensions:
constructive/destructive and active/passive.
• One theoretical model—the exit–voice–
loyalty–neglect framework—is helpful in
understanding the consequences of
dissatisfaction.
• This framework identifies four responses,
which differ along two dimensions:
constructive/destructive and active/passive.
• Job Satisfaction and Job Performance –
• Job Satisfaction and OCB* –
• Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction –
• Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism –
• Job Satisfaction and Turnover –
• Job Satisfaction and Workplace Deviance –
Arrows show the correlation is positive, moderate or negative
• OCB stands for Organizational Citizenship Behavior, such as; helping
coworkers, volunteering for additional tasks, showing initiative,
providing feedback and suggestions for improvement, supporting
organizational goals,
The most powerful moderators of the attitude-
behavior relationships are:
 Importance
 Correspondence to behavior
 Accessibility
 Social pressures
 Direct personal experience
Knowing attitudes helps predict behavior

3-6
Average Job Satisfaction by Facets
Single global rating
method
Only a few general
questions
 Remarkably accurate
Summation score
method
Identifies key
elements in the job
and asks for specific 3-8
feeling about them
 Is job satisfaction a U.S. concept?
Cross-cultural differences do exist but job satisfaction
seems to be a global concern
 Are employees in Western cultures more satisfied with

their jobs?
Yes, but that may be due to the greater value Westerners put on
positive emotions and happiness
3-9
 The Work Itself – the strongest correlation
with overall satisfaction
 Social Component – there is a strong
correlation with how people view the social
context of their work
Pay – not correlated after
individual reaches a level of
comfortable living
• Advancement
• Supervision
• Coworkers 3-10
 Better job and organizational performance
 Better organizational citizenship behaiors
(OCB – Discretionary behaviors that contribute
to organizational effectiveness but are not part of
employees’ formal job description)
 Greater levels of customer satisfaction
 Generally lower absenteeism and turnover
 Decreased instances of workplace deviance
3-12
 Employee attitudes give warnings of potential
problems and influence behavior
 Satisfied and committed employees exhibit
behaviors that increase organizational outcomes
 Managers must measure job attitudes in order to
improve them
 Most important elements a manager can focus on
are the intrinsic parts of the job: making the work
challenging and interesting
 High pay is not enough to create satisfaction 3-13
 Individuals have many kinds of attitudes
about their job
 Most employees are satisfied with their jobs,
but when they are not, a host of actions in
response to the satisfaction might be expected
 Job satisfaction is related to organizational
effectiveness
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Organizational Behavior

[3] Attitudes & Job Satisfaction

Knowing attitudes helps predict behavior

 Are employees in Western cultures more satisfied with

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