Management Series: Know Your Attitude

This topic examines attitudes; their link to behavior; and how employees’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their jobs affects the workplace.

VIDEO LESSON: Introduction to Attitude (Duration: 3.43 mins)

 

Attitudes are statements that make an evaluation about objects, people, or events.  They offer a favorable or unfavorable view that reflects how one feels about something. Attitudes are made up of three components.  The cognitive component is composed of the belief in the way things are. The affective component is the more critical part of the attitude as it is called upon the emotions or feelings. The behavioral component describes the intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something. These three components work together to aid in our understanding of the complexity of an attitude.  

Sometimes we observe people who will change what they say so it doesn’t contradict their behavior.  When attitudes and behaviors don’t line up, individuals will experience cognitive dissonance (refers to any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes, or between behavior and attitudes).  This incongruity is uncomfortable, and individuals will seek to reduce the dissonance to find consistency.   

VIDEO LESSON:  The Components of Attitude (Duration: 14.34 mins)

People are willing to live with some discomfort, but the degree to which this is true depends upon the importance of the elements, how much influence the individual has in the situation and the rewards that are available.

Moderating Variables.

Some variables do moderate the relationship between attitude and behavior. The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are:

1. Importance.  Important attitudes reflect fundamental values, self-interest, or identification.  The greater the importance the stronger the link between attitude and behavior becomes.

2. Correspondence to Behavior.  The more closely the attitude and the behavior are matched, the stronger the link between them.

3. Accessibility.  The easier an attitude is to recall, the stronger the link.  The more frequently an attitude is expressed, the more accessible it is and therefore the stronger its link becomes to behavior.

4. Social Pressures.  Exceptional social pressures can override personal attitudes and may have a stronger relation to behavior than do the attitudes.  This subservience of personal attitude to social pressure is often found in organizations.

5. Personal Direct Experience. Predictions of behavior tend to be more accurate when the person whose behavior is being predicted has some experience regarding the situation.

MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES

VIDEO LESSON: Attitude at Workplace (Duration: 9.50 mins)

 

The field of Organizational Behavior focuses on how attitudes will influence the workplace. There are three important attitudes toward work that OB has traditionally studied: job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment.  There are three other work-related attitudes that are attracting attention: perceived organizational support, psychological empowerment, and employee engagement. 

1. Job Satisfaction. A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.

2. Job Involvement. The degree to which people identify psychologically with their jobs and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth.

3. Psychological Empowerment. Employees’ beliefs in the degree to which they influence their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and the perceived autonomy in their work.

4. Organizational Commitment.  A state in which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization.

5. Perceived Organizational Support (POS). The degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.

6. Employee Engagement. An individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the work he or she does.

VIDEO LESSON: Attitude and Job Satisfaction (Duration: 15.16 mins)

VIDEO LESSON: Implication for Managers (Duration: 4.11 mins)

 

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TUTORIAL ACTIVITY   Think of a company/industry that you are familiar with, how can the managers increase job satisfaction? What are the organizational consequences when there are high or low levels of job satisfaction?