Attitudes and Job satisfaction
1. Define attitude. What are the different types of job related attitude? In what ways are these attitudes alike? What is the unique about each?
Answer: Attitude is an psychological tendency that is responded by evaluating something positively or negatively towards a certain idea, object, person or situation.
The different types of job related attitude are:
a. Job satisfaction: it is a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics or an individual’s emotional response to work or workplace.
b. Jon involvement: It is a degree to which a individual identifies with a job, actively participates in it and considers performance important to self worth.
c. Psychological empowerment: It is a belief in the degree of influence towards job, competence, job meaningfulness and autonomy.
d. Organizational commitment: It is a degree to which an employee identifies with a organization and its goals and tends to maintain membership in the organization.
e. Perceived organizational support: It is a degree to which employees believe an organization values, their contribution and cares about their well- being.
f. Employee engagement: It is a degree to which an individual involves with satisfaction, enthusiasm for their work/ job.
2. Explain the components of attitudes in brief.
Answer: The components of attitudes are:
i. Cognitive component: It is defined as the beliefs, thoughts and attributes that associate with an object. It is one of the part of attitude which is related in general knowledge, perceptions or beliefs of a person.
ii. Affective component: It is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude. It deals with the feelings or emotions that are brought to the surface about something, such as fear or hate.
iii. Behavioral component: It consists of a person’s tendencies to behave in a particular way toward an object. It is the way the attitude we have influences how we act or behave. This model is known as the ABC model of attitudes.
3. Does behavior always follow from attitudes? Why or why not? Discuss the factors that affect whether behavior follows from attitude.
Answer: We behave the way we feel, we think, we show and perceive. Attitude that one considers is important to show a strong relationship to behavior. The more specific is attitude and the more specific is the behavior, the stronger will be the relationship between the two. So, yes, behavior follows from attitudes.
The most powerful moderating variables of the attitude – behavior relationship that clarifies behavior follows attitudes is given below:
a. Importance of attitude: It reflects the essential values, self interest or identification with individuals or groups which have strong relationship with behavior.
b. Correspondence to behavior: It means the closer the attitude and behavior, stronger will be the relation between two.
c. Accessibility: The more we talk, the more we share, the more we remember and more its effect is seen on our behavior.
d. Existence of social pressure: Attitude facilitates expression and expression facilitates attitudes and thus behavior is seen.
e. Personal and direct experience of the attitude
4. Explain with suitable examples, the cognitive dissonance theory of attitude.
Answer: Cognitive dissonance is a situation which involves conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors along with the feeling of mental discomfort.
Examples: - When people smoke and they know that smoking causes cancer, they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.
- Not studying knowing that you will fail if you won’t study.
- You like junk food, knowing that they are unhealthy to you.
5. How do we measure job satisfaction?
Answer: We can measure job satisfaction by using following approaches:
i. Single Global rating: It is asking individuals to respond to one question such as: all things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?
ii. Summation scores: It identifies key elements in a job and asks for the employee’s feeling about each.
iii. Job descriptive index (JDI): It is based on five facets of job satisfaction which include: work, pay, promotion, supervision and coworkers.
iv. Global job satisfaction: It includes 15 items to determine overall job satisfaction.
v. Job satisfaction relative to expectations: It is the most effective to determine how job stresses role conflicts or role ambiguities can hinder an employee from meeting job expectations.
vi. Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire: It is a long form of altogether 100 questions based on 20 subscales which measures satisfaction with ability, utilization, achievement, activity, advancement, social status, etc.
vii. Job satisfaction survey: It contains 36 items based on nine job facets: pay, promotion, supervision, benefits, contingent, reward operating procedures, co-workers, nature of work and communication.
viii. Job satisfaction index: It consists of 6 items: work, supervision, coworkers, pay, promotion, opportunities and job that for an index to determine overall job satisfaction.
ix. Job diagnostic survey: It is based on 3 dimensions of overall job satisfaction which include general satisfaction, internal work motivation and growth satisfaction.
6. What causes job satisfaction? What are the impacts of satisfied and dissatisfied employees on the work place? What implications does this have for management.
Answer: Salary increment is not a main cause of satisfaction; it can be but for a short term. Below are the causes of job satisfaction are as follows:
a. Interesting and satisfying work
b. Having good workplace environment
c. Rewards and incentives
d. Low stress environment
e. Supportive boss
f. Pleasant management
g. Continuous support and motivation from colleagues and upper management team.
Impacts of satisfied employees on the work place and its implications are:
a. Increases productivity
b. Increases customer satisfaction
c. Employee absenteeism
d. Low turnover
e. Helps in earning higher revenues
f. Satisfied employees tend to handle pressure
g. Reduces the level of unionization
h. Creates better working environment
i. Faster and sustainable growth.
Impacts of dissatisfied employees on the workplace and its implications:
a. Higher employee turnover rates
b. Lack of productivity
c. Customer retention
d. Higher employee absenteeism
e. Increases the level of unionization
f. Decrease the growth of organization