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Early research on attitudes assumed that they were casually related to behavior; that is’ the attitudes that people hold determine what they do. In the late 1960s, this assumed relationship between attitudes and behavior (A-B) was challenged by a review of the research. More recent research demonstrates that attitudes significantly predict future behavior; and this relationship can be enhanced by taking moderating variables into account.

Moderating variables: The most powerful moderators have been found to be the importance of the attitudes, its specificity, its accessibility, whether there exist social pressures, and whether the person has direct experience with the attitudes.

Important attitudes are ones that reflect fundamental values, self interest, identification with individual or groups that a person values.

The more specific the attitudes and the more specific the behavior, the stronger the link between these two.

Attitudes are easily remembered are more likely to predict behavior than attitudes that are not accessible in memory. Interestingly, the more likely to remember the attitudes that are frequently expressed.

Discrepancies between attitudes and behavior are more likely to occur when social pressures to behave in certain ways hold exceptional power. This may explain why tobacco executives, who are not smokers themselves and who tend to believe the research linking smoking and cancer, don’t actively discourage officer from smoking in their offices.

Finally, the attitudes – behavior (A-B) relationship is likely to be much stronger if an attitude refers to something with which the individual has direct personal experience. When few experiences regarding an attitudes issues or given little previous thought to it he will tend to infer his attitudes from his behavior. However, when the attitudes have been established for a while and are well defined, those attitudes are likely to guide the behavior.

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MEASURING JOB SATISFACTION

Job satisfaction can be defined as a collection of feelings that an individual holds towards his or her job. The two most widely used approaches are a single global rating and summation score made up of a number of job facets.

1.     Single global rating: The single global method is nothing more than asking individuals to respond to one question, such as “all things considered, how satisfied are you with the job?” respondent then reply by circling a number from one to five that correspond to answers from highly satisfied to highly dissatisfied. 

2.    Summation score: A summation of job facets is more sophisticated. It identified key elements in a job and asks for the employee’s feelings about each. Typical factors that would be included are the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities and relation with coworkers. These factors are rated on a standardized scale and then added up to create an overall job satisfaction score.

WHAT DETERMINES/DETERMINERS JOB SATISFACTION

1. Mentally challenging work: Employees tend to prefer jobs that give them opportunities to use their skills and abilities and offer a variety of tasks, freedom and feedback on how well they are doing. These characteristics make work mentally challenging.
2. Equitable rewards: Employees want pay systems and promotion policies that they perceive as being just, unambiguous and in line with their expectations. When pay is seen as fair based on job demands, individual skill level and community pay standards, satisfaction is likely to result.
3. Supportive working conditions: Employees are concerned with their work environment for both personal comfort and facilitating doing a good job. Employees prefer physical surroundings that are not dangerous or uncomfortable.
4. Supportive colleagues: People get more out of work than merely money or tangible achievement. For most employees, work also fills the need for social interaction. Having friendly and supportive co-workers leads to increased job satisfaction.

EFFECTS OF JOB SATISFACTION ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

Mangers’ interest in job satisfaction tends to centre on its effect on employee performance.

1. Satisfaction and productivity: Interestingly, if we move from the individual level to that of the organization, there is renewed support for the original satisfaction – performance relationship. When satisfaction and productivity data are gathered for the organization as a whole, rather than at the individual level, we find that the organization with more satisfied employees tends to e more effective than organization with fewer satisfied employees. So it might be true that the happy organizations are more productive.
2. Satisfaction and absenteeism: We find a consistence negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism. Although it certainly makes sense that dissatisfied employees are more likely to miss work, other factors have an impact on the relationship and reduce the correlation coefficient.
3. Satisfaction and turnover: Satisfaction is also negatively related to turnover, but the correlation is stronger than what we found for absenteeism. Evidence indicates that an important moderator of the satisfaction – turnover relationship is the employee’s level of performance. Specially, the level of satisfaction is less important in predicting turnover for superior performance.

JOB SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Employee satisfaction is positively related to customer satisfaction. The evidence indicates that satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. In service organization, customer retention and defection are highly dependent on how frontline employees deal with customers. Satisfied employees are likely to be friendly, upbeat, and responsive – which customers appreciate. As satisfied employees are less prone to turnover, customers are more likely to be encounter familiar faces and received experience service. These qualities build customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Dissatisfied customers can increase employee job dissatisfaction. Employees who have regular contact with customers report that rude, thoughtless or unreasonably demanding customers adversely effect the employees’ job satisfaction.

 DEFINE VALUES AND VALUE SYSTEM

Values

Values represent basic convictions (firm belief) that a specific mode of conduct or end‑state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end‑state of existence. They contain a judgmental element in that they carry an individual's ideas as to what is right, good or desirable. Values have both content and intensity attributes. The content attribute says that a mode of conduct or end-state of existence is important. The intensity attribute specifies how important it is.

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Value system

Value system is a hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual's values in terms of their intensity (honesty, obedience, equality etc.). All of us have a hierarchy of values that form our value system. This system is identified by the relative importance we assign to values such as freedom, pleasure, self-respect, honesty, obedience, and equality.

IMPORTANCE OF VALUES

Values are important to the study of organizational behavior because they lay the foundation or the understanding of attitudes and motivation and because they influence our perceptions. Individual enter into organization with perceived notions of what ‘ought’ and what ‘ought not’ to be. Of course, these notions are not value free. On the contrary, they contain interpretations of right and wrong. Furthermore they imply that certain behaviors or outcomes are preferred over others.

Values generally influence attitudes and behavior.  Suppose, you enter an organization with the view that allocating pay on the basis of performance is right, while allocating pay on the basis of seniority is wrong. How are you going to react if you find that the organization you have just joined rewards seniority not performance? You are likely to be disappointed – and this can lead to job dissatisfaction and the decision not to exert a high level of effort.

TYPES OF VALUES

There are two sets of values. These are as follows:

Terminal values: Terminal values refer to desirable end‑states of existence. These are the goals that a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime (self respect, family security).

Instrumental values: Instrumental values refer to preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving the terminal values. (Honest, responsible).

Example:

Terminal values                                   Instrumental values

Self respect                                                          Honest

Family security                                                       Responsible

A sense of accomplishment                                     Ambitions

Happiness                                                               Independent

VALUES ACROSS CULTURE 

One of the most widely referenced approaches for analyzing variations among cultures has been done by Geert Hofstede. He found that managers & employees vary on five value dimensions of national culture. These are defined as follows

1. Power distance: The degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.

2. Individualism vs. Collectivism: Individualism is the degree to which people in a country prefer to act as Individuals rather than a member of groups. Collectivism is the equivalent of low Individualism.

3. Quantity of life vs. quality of life: Quantity of life is the degree to which values like assertiveness, the acquisition of money and material goods & competition prevail. Quality of life is the degree to which people value relationships and show sensitivity and concern for the welfare of others.

4. Uncertainty avoidance: A national culture attribute describing the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them.

5. Long term orientation vs. short term orientation: People in cultures with long term orientations look to the future and value thrift and persistence. A short term orientation values the post and present, and emphasizes respect for tradition and fulfilling social obligations.

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MEANING OF ATTITUDE

Attitudes are evaluative statements ‑ either favorable or unfavorable ‑concerning objects, people or events. They reflect how one feels about something. On the other hand, attitudes can be defined as the feelings and beliefs that largely determine how employee will perceive their environment, commit them to intended actions, and ultimately behave.

Suppose an employee says, “I like my job.” Here, the employee expressing his attitude about the work.

COMPONENTS OF ATTITUDES

There are three components of attitudes: cognition, affect and behavior. These are discussed in the following:

1. Cognitive component: The belief that “discrimination is wrong” is a value statement. Such an opinion is the cognitive component of an attitude. It is the initial stage of feelings. It sets the stage for the more critical part of the attitude.
2. Affective component: Affect is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude and is reflected in the statement “I don’t like Jon because he discriminate against minorities.”
3. Behavioral component: The behavioral component of an attitude refers to an intention to behave in a certain way towards someone or something. So, to continue our example, I might choose to avoid Jon because of my feelings about him.

TYPES OF ATTITUDES

A person can have thousands of attitudes but OB focuses attitudes on a very limited number of job related attitudes. Most of the research in OB has been concerned with three attitudes

1. Job Satisfaction: The term job satisfaction refers to an individual’s general attitude toward his or her job. A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive attitudes toward the job, while a person who is dissatisfied with his or her job holds negative attitudes about the job.
2. Job Involvement: The term Job involvement is a more recent addition to the OB literature. Job Involvement measures the degree to which a person identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it and considers his or her performance important to self‑worth.
3. Organizational Commitment: Organizational Commitment measures the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goal and wishes to maintain membership in the organization.