Job Attitude

11 Key excerpts on "Job Attitude"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Emerald Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  • Robert L. Dipboye(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Fig. 4.1 . A work-related attitude is reflected most obviously in the feelings expressed about the work (e.g., “…a living hell”). They are also expressed in the beliefs about the job (e.g., “The work is physical and demanding”) and the behavioral inclinations of the respondent (e.g., “I’m ready to quit”). An employee holding a positive attitude is more likely to have positive feelings, beliefs, and behavioral inclinations than is an employee with a negative attitude.

  Fig. 4.1.   The Evaluative, Cognitive, and Behavioral Components of Work-Related Attitudes.

  Employees form work-related attitudes that are relatively stable and have important consequences. They influence not only the effectiveness with which employees perform their jobs, but also their health and well-being. I/O psychologists have devoted most of their efforts to studying three work-related attitudes: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement. Of these, job satisfaction and organizational commitment have received the most attention (Judge, Weiss, Kammeyer-Mueller, & Hulin, 2017). Job involvement has received the least attention but the recent popularity of worker engagement has seen the revival of a repackaged construct having involvement as a core component. This chapter reviews the research and theory for three work-related attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. The review of the research is organized around four primary questions: How is the attitude measured, and what are the facets or components of the attitude? What are the correlates? What is the process by which the attitude forms? Do satisfaction, involvement, and commitment reflect the same or different constructs? The chapter concludes with a discussion of practical implications.

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  Essentials of Job Attitudes and Other Workplace Psychological Constructs

  • Valerie I. Sessa, Nathan A. Bowling, Valerie I. Sessa, Nathan A. Bowling(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Table 1.1 ). Although less widely studied than job satisfaction, the remaining Job Attitudes examined in the current book have each been referenced several thousand times. Needless to say, we have a lot of ground to cover. Our goal in this opening chapter is to clear a path for the subsequent chapters. We first define the term “Job Attitude.” We then discuss why Job Attitudes (and the other workplace psychological constructs) are important—what, in other words, are their theoretical and practical significance? Finally, we present an overview of the subsequent chapters.

  Table 1.1 Number of Google Scholar References in Various Job Attitude Constructs

  Job Attitude	Number of Google Scholar References	Chapter
  Organizational Justice	> 91,000	3
  Perceived Organizational Support	~ 58,000	4
  Organizational Identification	> 42,000	5
  Job involvement	> 49,000	6
  Organizational Commitment	~ 476,000	7
  Job Embeddedness	> 10,000	8
  Job Satisfaction	> 1,700,000	9
  Employee Engagement	~ 110,000	10

  Note : These results were based on a Google Scholar search conducted on April 30, 2020.

  Defining Job Attitudes and Other Workplace Psychological Constructs

  In describing the nature of Job Attitudes, I-O psychologists draw heavily from the social psychological definition of the term “attitude.” Social psychologists describe attitudes as representing a person’s evaluative response toward an attitude object (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). As Wagner notes in Chapter 2 , attitudes have valence—a positive or negative direction (e.g., good vs. bad)—and they differ in the intensity associated with that valence (e.g., extremely good vs. moderately bad; Wagner, Chapter 2

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  eBook - ePub

  Handbook of Attitudes, Volume 2: Applications

  2nd Edition

  • Dolores Albarracin, Blair T. Johnson, Dolores Albarracin, Blair T. Johnson(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Figure 7.1 ), and research in this area is growing. Nonetheless, in the top journals (AMJ and JAP), job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement have declined in popularity since their heyday in

  Table 7.5 Summary of Main Points on Job Attitudes

  Four Job Attitudes. "Job Attitudes" include:

  – Job satisfaction

  – Organizational commitment

  – Job involvement

  – Work engagement

  Popularity.

  – Job Attitudes are perhaps the most influential topic in the field of OB/HR, in terms of reputation and number of papers published on the topic.

  – Across the entire field, the number of published papers per year onJob Attitudes is quickly increasing.

  – In the top journals (AMJ and JAP), the total number of papers per year onJob Attitudes has remained fairly stable, but the % of papers onjob satisfaction and organizational commitment has decreased since the 1980s, job involvement research has disappeared, and work engagement research is quickly increasing.

  Definitions.

  – Of the four Job Attitudes, only job satisfaction has been clearly defined as an attitude (overall positive or negative evaluation of one’s job).

  – The other three Job Attitudes (organizational commitment, job involvement, work engagement) seem to be defined as a mixture of attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions.

  Measurement.

  – There is little consensus in the measurement of job satisfaction; researchers currently use more than a half dozen different measures to assess the construct.

  – In contrast, there is good consensus in the measurement of organizational commitment (i.e., 83% of commitment papers use the OCS or the OCQ, which are correlated rc = .88 with each other) and in the measurement of work engagement (i.e., 76% of engagement papers use the UWES).

  – Very few contemporary papers measure job involvement.

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  Britain At Work

  As Depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey

  • Mark Cully, Andrew Oreilly, Gill Dix(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  et al., 1982). This notion of commitment is taken as embracing a wider role for the employee where his or her stake goes beyond income and the satisfaction of personal interests. The concept of job satisfaction is underpinned by a constellation of related attitudes about various aspects of an employee’s job and facets of his or her working life: the challenges presented by work, by learning, and by levels of autonomy and control over job; the sense of achievement from work; the recognition received for work effort and work quality; and also earnings and other rewards obtained (Locke, 1976; Spector, 1997). The two are inter-related but, nonetheless, distinct measures and were measured distinctly in the survey. We begin by looking at job satisfaction, relating it to the other attitudinal items explored in this chapter, then turn to examine employee commitment and the extent to which it is a corollary of job satisfaction. Finally, we then relate employee commitment to ‘high commitment’ management practices and present some initial results on whether it is associated with superior workplace performance.

  Job satisfaction

  As Clark (1996) argues, job satisfaction is of interest for a range of reasons. As a measure of people’s feelings about their working lives, it provides an important indicator of individual well-being. It may also provide insight into employees’ decisions about the extent of their participation in the workplace, how hard they work, and whether or not they stay with their job. Employees were asked how satisfied or dissatisfied they were with four aspects of their working lives:

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  eBook - ePub

  The SAGE Handbook of Industrial, Work & Organizational Psychology

  V2: Organizational Psychology

  • Deniz S Ones, Neil Anderson, Chockalingam Viswesvaran, Handan Kepir Sinangil, Deniz S Ones, Neil Anderson, Chockalingam Viswesvaran, Handan Kepir Sinangil, Author(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  This chapter noted earlier the growing view among some researchers that the Job Attitude literature is either characterized by some level of construct redundancy or that it could be organized into a hierarchical model with a general Job Attitude factor at the apex. A determination of whether this reorganization of the Job Attitude construct space is valid will require much additional evidence in addition to the work that has already been presented. First, we need to determine whether the strong correlations among scores on measures of theoretically different attitudes reflect true redundancy or simply poor measurement approaches. Many attitude measures were not developed with quite the same care as is evident for measures used in high stakes settings (e.g., selection) and it is likely to be valuable to bring the same level of technical scrutiny to the measurement of Job Attitudes. Second, researchers will need to examine the immense literature on the antecedents of discussed Job Attitudes to determine whether or not these three Job Attitudes have distinct antecedents because distinct antecedents would be supportive of the distinction among the constructs. Some theoretical antecedents of some Job Attitudes have already been meta-analytically synthesized but the data is largely incomplete. For example, Judge, Heller, and Mount (2002) reported on the relationship of Big Five personality traits with job satisfaction but the relationship of Big Five traits with either commitment or involvement has to the knowledge of this author not been meta-analytically synthesized.

  CONCLUSION

  Understanding how employees experience both their jobs and the broader context in which these jobs are located is important, irrespective of whether or not Job Attitudes are strongly predictive of workplace behaviors. Work is a central part of life; as important to many people as their roles as spouse, partner, or parent. As such Job Attitudes should be regarded as important outcomes in their own right because they reflect the quality of a central life experience. Industrial and organizational psychologists are therefore correct in having spent so much time and effort in attempting to further our understanding of how Job Attitudes develop, how they can be changed, and how they relate to various workplace behaviors. This chapter has attempted to summarize our current understanding of the field while also drawing attention to the fact that our collective enthusiasm for furthering our understanding of Job Attitudes may have resulted in some degree of over-elaboration that might require some pruning of the construct space in order to balance theoretical richness with parsimony. Finally, this chapter has also discussed the manner in which the growing literature from outside of North America can be used to further our understanding of Job Attitudes and their importance in organizational life.

  REFERENCES

  Abbas , Q.

  , &

  Khanam , S. J.

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  Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  Research and Practice

  • Paul E. Spector(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Job satisfaction has also been found to correlate with personal characteristics, including age, and various per- sonality variables, such as negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and locus of control. Job satisfaction is best understood as the interaction between characteristics of jobs and people. Poor person–job fit is associated with job dissatisfaction. Perceived underem- ployment, a form of person–job fit in which a person is working at a job that is beneath his or her skill level, has been linked to job dissatisfaction, although objective underem- ployment is not. Research has also linked job satisfaction to several employee behaviors. Lack of satis- faction seems to be a cause of employee turnover. It is related modestly to job performance and slightly to absence, although it is not clear that satisfaction is the cause of either. There is evidence that performance may be the cause of satisfaction. Job satisfaction has been linked to employee health and well-being variables, but we will need future research to tell us specifically how Job Attitudes might affect disease. Organizational commitment is another attitudinal variable that has been popular among I-O researchers. Commitment concerns the employee’s attachment to the orga- nization. It correlates strongly with job satisfaction, but it is conceptually different. 222 Chapter 9 Feelings About Work: Job Attitudes and Emotions Three types of commitment have been identified as affective, continuance, and norma- tive. Organizational commitment has many of the same correlates as job satisfaction, including job satisfaction, job performance, turnover, stress, and justice. The experience of positive emotions by employees on the job can have positive effects on employees and organizations, whereas the experience of negative emotions can have the opposite effects.

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  Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  Research and Practice

  • Paul E. Spector(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Poor person–job fit is associated with job dissatisfaction. Underemployment, a form of person–job fit in which a person is working at a job that is beneath his or her skill level, has been linked to job dissatisfaction and other negative consequences. Research has also linked job satisfaction to several employee behaviors. Lack of satisfaction seems to be a cause of employee turnover. It is related modestly to job performance and slightly to absence, although it is not clear that satisfaction is the cause of either. There is evidence that performance may be the cause of satisfaction. Job satisfaction has been linked to employee health‐related variables, but we will need future research to tell us specifically how Job Attitudes might affect disease. Organizational commitment is another attitudinal variable that has been popu- lar among I‐O researchers. Commitment concerns the employee’s attachment to the organization. It correlates strongly with job satisfaction, but it is conceptually different. Three components of commitment have been identified as affective, continuance, and normative. Organizational commitment has many of the same correlates as job satisfaction, including job satisfaction, job performance, turnover, stress, and justice. The experience of positive emotions by employees on the job can have positive effects on employees and organizations, whereas the experience of negative emo- tions can have the opposite effects. The requirement to engage in emotional labor can have positive effects on customers of customer service employees but negative effects on employees, particularly if they fake the emotions (surface acting) and have low control over the service encounter. I‐O Psychology in Practice This case is a job satisfaction project carried out by Dr. Charles E. Michaels. Dr. Michaels received his Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology in 1983 from the Uni- versity of South Florida.

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  Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  Research and Practice

  • Paul E. Spector(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  A 2002 poll suggests that Canadians are even more satisfied than Americans, with 92% of respondents saying they like their jobs (Shields, 2006). One of the major tasks I/O psychologists perform is assessing employee attitudes about their jobs, especially their job satisfaction, and determining ways to improve it. I/O researchers have extensively studied the causes and consequences of job satisfaction since the beginning of the I/O field itself. It is one of the two most studied variables in I/O psychology (the other one is job performance). Much of this popularity, as we will see, derives from the relative ease with which it can be assessed. Another reason for the popularity of the study of job satisfaction is that it is a central variable in many theories that deal with organizational phenomena, such as the nature of work, supervision, and the job environment. Job satisfaction has been posited as a cause of important employee and organizational outcomes ranging from job performance to health and longevity. Job satisfaction, however, is not the only variable that reflects how people feel about work. Organizational commitment is another attitude that concerns people’s feelings of attachment to their jobs and organizations. Feelings also include both positive and negative emotions that are experienced at work, such as anger over unfair treatment and joy over receiving a promotion. In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of job satisfaction, including how it is measured, its potential causes, and its possible consequences. Job satisfaction is often included in studies of all sorts of organizational phenomena. You will see it frequently mentioned throughout most of the remaining chapters of this book. We will also include a discussion of organizational commitment, which relates to many of the same variables as job satisfaction. Finally, we will discuss emotions in the workplace, both their causes and their consequences.

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  Organizational Psychology

  A Scientist-Practitioner Approach

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Traditionally, the characteristics of jobs, and other aspects of the work environment, have explained differences in job satisfaction. In general, job satisfaction tends to be highest when the characteristics of a job match the employees' expectations in areas that are deemed important. In recent years, it has been proposed that job satisfaction is due to cues from the social environment, as well as stable dispositions. In reality, job satisfaction is likely the result of a complex interaction among job characteristics, social cues, and dispositions, in addition to the culture in which employees are raised.

  Research has shown that job satisfaction is consistently related to other measures of positive and negative affect. Evidence suggests, however, that job satisfaction is only a very weak predictor of absenteeism. Job satisfaction has been found to be related to turnover, albeit indirectly and only when employees perceive the existence of alternative employment opportunities. In general, research suggests that the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance is not strong. Under certain conditions, such as when rewards are directly tied to performance, there is evidence that the two may be more strongly related. Evidence also suggests that job satisfaction is a much better predictor of organizational citizenship behavior than it is of in-role performance. It has also been shown that the satisfaction–performance relationship may be stronger at the aggregate rather than the individual level.

  Organizational commitment reflects employees' feelings of loyalty toward the organization and their willingness to maintain membership. Employees may be committed because they have positive feelings toward the organization (affective), because they realize that the costs of leaving outweigh the benefits (continuance), or because they feel morally obligated to stay (normative). Affective and normative commitment can be explained largely on the basis of Equity Theory. Feelings of commitment represent employees' desires to reciprocate what they consider fair and equitable treatment at the hands of the organization. Continuance commitment, on the other hand, is due largely to employees' perceptions of sunk costs

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  Career Development and Job Satisfaction

  • Josiane Fahed-Sreih(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  First, a number of researchers have been curious about the relationships between job satisfaction and job performance. For this question, many people may intui-tively believe that job satisfaction is an important factor to impact job performance. Their presumption is that happy workers are more likely to be productive workers. However, at the early stage, the results indicated that job satisfaction was not mean-ingfully associated with job performance [75]. Till recently, studies showed that job satisfaction was moderately correlated with task performance. In other words, job satisfaction did predict job performance [2]. The satisfied employees who held posi-tive feelings toward their work did a better job to fulfill the duties [76], to increase creativity in job [77], to enhance decision-making and problem-solving ability [78], and furthermore, to strengthen the memory and recall ability [79]. Second, job satisfaction is interrelated to job commitment. Commitment is defined as that an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to remain as a member [3]. Commitment can be divided into three types, i.e., affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative com-mitment, which are emotional-based, cost-based, and obligation-based, respec-tively [2]. Research found that job satisfaction was strongly correlated with affective and normative commitment but not correlated with continuance commitment [80]. Thus, the employees who have positively affective reaction to their jobs will be com-mitted to their job and feel an obligation to remain in the organization [80–84]. Third, job satisfaction is moderately positive related to organizational citizen-ship behavior [2, 85]. OCB has been defined as “individual behavior that is discre-tionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization” ([86, 87], p. 4).

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  Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

  Evidence-based Lessons for Creating Sustainable Organizations

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt, Cynthia A. Thompson, Cynthia A Thompson(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  (2005). The construct of work commit- ment: Testing an integrative framework. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 241–259. Credé, M., Chernyshenko, O. S., Bagraim, J., & Sully, M. (2009). Contextual perfor- mance and the job satisfaction-dissatisfaction distinction: Examining artifacts and utility. Human Performance, 22(3), 246–272. Cropanzano, R., & James, K. (1990). Some methodological considerations for the behavioral genetic analysis of work atti- tudes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 433–439. Crossley, C. D., Bennett, R. J., Jex, S. M., & Burnfield, J. L. (2007). Development of a global measure of job embeddedness and integration into a traditional model of vol- untary turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), 1031–1042. doi:10.1037/ 0021–9010.92.4.1031 Culpepper, R. A. (2011). Three-component commitment and turnover: An examination of temporal aspects. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79(2), 517–527. doi: 10.1016/j. jvb .2011.03.004 Dalal, R. S. (2013). Job Attitudes: Cognition and affect. In I. B. Weiner (Series Ed.) & N. W. Schmitt & S. Highhouse (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Vol. 12. Industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed., pp. 341–366). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Dalege, J., Borsboom, D., van Harreveld, F., van den Berg, H., Conner, M., & van der Maas, H. L. (2016). Toward a formalized account of attitudes: The Causal Attitude Network (CAN) model. Psychological Review, 123, 2–22. doi:10.1037/a0039802 Beliefs, Attitudes, and Perceptions of Work and the Organization 438 Davis-Blake, A., & Pfeffer, J. (1989). Just a mirage: The search for dispositional effects in organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 14, 385–400. Dimotakis, N., Scott, B. A., & Koopman, J. (2011). An experience sampling investiga- tion of workplace interactions, affective states, and employee well-being. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(4), 572–588. Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psy- chology of attitudes.

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