Robbins, Judge, and Vohra

Organizational Behavior
18th Edition
Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

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Chapter Learning Objectives
 After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
– Contrast the three components of an attitude.
– Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior.
– Compare and contrast the major job attitudes.
– Define job satisfaction
– Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
– Identify the outcomes of job satisfaction
– Identify four employee responses to dissatisfaction.

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 Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects,
people, or events
Three components of an attitude:

The emotional or
Affective
Cognitive feeling segment
The opinion or of an attitude
belief segment of Behavioral

an attitude
An intention to behave
in a certain way toward
someone or something
Attitude
See E X H I B I T 3–1

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Relationship Between Attitude and Behavior
 Leon Festinger – No, the reverse is sometimes true!
 Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two
or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes
– Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap, or
dissonance, to reach stability and consistency
– Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes,
modifying the behaviors, or through rationalization
– Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
• Importance of elements
• Degree of individual influence
• Rewards involved in dissonance

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Moderating Variables
 The most powerful moderators of the attitude-
behavior relationship are:
– Importance of the attitude
– Correspondence to behavior
– Accessibility
– Existence of social pressures
– Personal and direct experience of the attitude

Attitudes Predict Behavior

Moderating Variables

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Predicting Behavior from Attitudes

– Important attitudes have a strong relationship to

behavior.
– The closer the match between attitude and
behavior, the stronger the relationship:
• Specific attitudes predict specific behavior
• General attitudes predict general behavior
– The more frequently expressed an attitude, the
better predictor it is.
– High social pressures reduce the relationship and
may cause dissonance.
– Attitudes based on personal experience are
stronger predictors.

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What are the Major Job Attitudes?
 Job Satisfaction
– A positive feeling about the job
resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics
 Job Involvement
– Degree of psychological
identification with the job where
perceived performance is important
to self-worth
 Psychological Empowerment
– Belief in the degree of influence
over the job, competence, job
meaningfulness, and autonomy

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Another Major Job Attitude
 Organizational Commitment
– Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, while
wishing to maintain membership in the organization.
– Three dimensions:
• Affective – emotional attachment to organization
• Continuance Commitment – economic value of staying
• Normative – moral or ethical obligations
– Has some relation to performance, especially for new
employees.
– Less important now than in the past – now perhaps more of
an occupational commitment, loyalty to profession rather
than a given employer.

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And Yet More Major Job Attitudes…
 Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
– Degree to which employees believe the organization values
their contribution and cares about their well-being.
– Higher when rewards are fair, employees are involved in
decision making, and supervisors are seen as supportive.
– High POS is related to higher OCBs and performance.
 Employee Engagement
– The degree of involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the job.
– Engaged employees are passionate about their work and
company.

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 Are These Job Attitudes Really Distinct?

 No: these attitudes are

highly related.
 Variables may be
redundant (measuring
the same thing under a
different name)
 While there is some
distinction, there is also
a lot of overlap.

Be patient, OB researchers are working on it!

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Job Satisfaction
 One of the primary job attitudes measured.
– Broad term involving a complex individual summation of a
number of discrete job elements.
 How to measure?
– Single global rating (one question/one answer)
– Summation score (many questions/one average)
 Are people satisfied in their jobs?
– The highest levels in Mexico and Switzerland.
– The lowest score in the study was for South Korea
– In India, yes. Seventy-one percent of Indian employees
– surveyed are satisfied with their jobs.

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Cultural Differences in Job Satisfaction

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Cultural Differences in Job Satisfaction

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 Causes of Job Satisfaction

Job Conditions (Intrinsic Nature of the Job)

– interesting jobs that provide training, variety,
independence, and control satisfy most
employees. Interdependence, feedback, social
support, and interaction with coworkers outside
the workplace are also strongly related to job
satisfaction.

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Causes of Job Satisfaction

Personality can influence job

satisfaction.
– Negative people are usually not satisfied
with their jobs.
– Those with positive core self-evaluation
are more satisfied with their jobs.

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 Causes of Job Satisfaction
 Pay
– Pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall
happiness for many people, but the effect can be smaller
once an individual reaches a standard level of comfortable
living.
Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.
– Once an individual reaches a comfortable level of living, there
is no relationship between amount of pay and job satisfaction.
– Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily job
satisfaction.
–

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Causes of Job Satisfaction

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 Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
 Job Performance
– Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive workers
are more satisfied!
– The causality may run both ways.
 Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
– Satisfaction influences OCB through perceptions of fairness.
 Customer Satisfaction
– Satisfied frontline employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
 Life Satisfaction
– job satisfaction is positively correlated with life satisfaction, and
your attitudes and experiences in life spill over into your job
approaches and experiences
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Impact of Job Dissatisfaction

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 Counter Productive Work Behavior
Actions that actively damage the organization, including stealing,
behaving aggressively toward coworkers, or being late or absent.

Turnover
– Satisfied employees are less likely to quit.
– Many moderating variables in this relationship.
• Economic environment and tenure
• Organizational actions taken to retain high performers and to weed out
lower performers
 Workplace Deviance
– Dissatisfied workers are more likely to unionize, abuse substances,
steal, be tardy, and withdraw.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact of job satisfaction
on the bottom line, most managers are either unconcerned about or
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overestimate worker satisfaction.
 Global Implications

 Are Employees in Some Cultures More Satisfied With

Their Jobs?
– According to some studies, Western workers appear to be
more satisfied than those in Eastern cultures. This may be
because Westerners emphasize positive emotions and
individual happiness more than do those in Eastern cultures.
– Another study showed that Indian employees rated their
satisfaction higher than other employees in the Asia-Pacific
region.

See E X H I B I T 3–5

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 Summary and Managerial Implications
●● Of the major job attitudes—job satisfaction, job involvement,
organizational commitment, perceived organizational support
(POS), and employee engagement—remember that an employee’s
job satisfaction level is the best single predictor of behavior.
●● Pay attention to your employees’ job satisfaction levels as
determinants of their performance, turnover, absenteeism, and
withdrawal behaviors.
●● Measure employee job attitudes at regular intervals to
determine how employees are reacting to their work.
●● To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between each
employee’s work interests and the intrinsic parts of the job; then
create work that is challenging and interesting to the individual.
●● Consider the fact that high pay alone is unlikely to create a
satisfying work environment.
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Thank you

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