1. Attitude  Attitude is a psychological tendency which is expressed through evaluative statements or judgments regarding people, objects or events.  Attitude is a evaluative statement that represents an individual’s likes or dislikes.  Attitude leads to formation of perceptions of favor or disfavor hence is important to study.  It is a collection of feelings, thoughts and beliefs about one’s external environment.  It is a tendency to feel and accordingly behave in a particular way towards an object or person.  Attitudes tend to persist if something is not done to change them.  Attitudes can range between extremely favorable to extremely unfavorable.  Attitude is directed towards some object, person or event.

2. Attitudes Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events. Three components of an attitude:Attitude Behavioral Cognitive Affective The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude The opinion or belief segment of an attitude An intention to behave in a certain way towards someone or something See E X H I B I T 3–1 3-1 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

3. Components of Attitude  Attitude can be broken down into 3 basic components- The ABC model. Affective, Behavioral and Cognitive.  Sequentially the order is Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral.  Cognitive- This is the informational component of attitude and is the initiating point of formation of attitude. It relates to functioning of human mind which provides us the facts and statistics on the basis of which we form our attitude. Sets the stage for the effective component.  Affective- This is the emotional or the feeling component of attitude. This component determines our feelings towards people, objects and our environment.  Behavioral- Person’s tendency to behave in a particular manner. It is the last and the resultant component of attitude. Behavioral outcomes.  Organizational implications. Attitude is directly related to behavior.

4. Attitude and Behavior  Are attitudes consistent with behavior? Eg- If workers have a negative feeling for Management  Attitude drives behavior.  People generally seek consistency between attitude and behavior.  Reconcile divergent attitude and behavior and align their attitudes and behavior to bring about compatibility and so that they appear rational and consistent.  When there is an inconsistency forces are initiated to return the individual to an equilibrium state.  Either change behavior or attitude by developing some rationalization for the discripancy.  Theory related to the relation between attitude and behavior was given by Leon Festinger in 1957.  Theory of Cognitive Dissonance- Many cognitions are unrelated but some are related  Based on unlimited cognitions of human mind.

5. Cognitive Dissonance  Is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.  These ideas are known as cognitions. Some cognitions are related while others are unrelated.  Theory of Cognitive Dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitude, belief and behavior or by rationalizing and justifying the same.  Dissonance occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency among his cognitions.  Individuals seek a stable state in which there is minimum of dissonance.  Cognitive dissonance results in anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, stress and other negative emotional states.  These negative emotional states come with a feeling that one had made a bad decision.  When ideas are in consistence with each other people are in a state of harmony and consonance.

6. Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?  Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility that an individual might perceive. between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes  People have a fundamental cognitive drive to reduce this dissonance. –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 –Just because individuals experience dissonance they will not necessarily move towards reducing it. Eg- Release of sewage in local river –Desire to reduce dissonance depends on: Importance of elements Degree of individual influence Rewards involved in dissonance 3-5 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

7. Moderating Variables  The most powerful moderators of the attitude-behavior relationship are: – Importance of the variable – Specificity of the variable – Accessibility – Existence of social pressures – Personal and direct experience of the attitude. BehaviorPredictAttitudes Moderating Variables 3-6 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

8. Moderating variables or predicting behavior from attitude.  Importance of the attitude- Greater the importance of the attitude greater are the chances that the individual will behave in the direction. Important attitudes reflect fundamental values and self-interest.  Specificity of attitude- Higher the specificity of the attitude stronger will be the relation with behavior.  Accessibility- The more an attitude is remembered the more effect it has on the behavior. Frequent exposure to a particular attitude has stronger relation with behavior.  Existence of strict social pressures- Discrepancies between attitude and behavior occur in situations where strict social pressures exist.  Direct personal experience- Direct experience with an event relating to the attitude makes the behavior more predictable and hence a stronger relationship with behavior.

9. Implications for managers  Employees often face situations where their attitude conflict with their behavior. Employees who depict a sudden change in behavior may be experiencing dissonance.  Helps to reduce sudden turnovers and retain employees.  Managerial dilemma.  Creation of cognitive dissonance can encourage a change in thoughts, attitudes and actions.  Important implications while recruiting and performance oriented culture.

10. Major work related Attitudes  Job Satisfaction –A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. –A worker’s sense of achievement and success and is directly linked to productivity. –To the worker job satisfaction brings a pleasurable emotional state that often leads to a positive work attitude. –If an employee holds positive feelings for his job he is satisfied and vice versa. –It is a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job 3-9 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

11. Creating job satisfaction  Job design through job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment.  Putting systems in place and making sure that employees are challenged and they are suitably rewarded. Eg- Setting up of stretch goals.  Flexible work arrangements and time schedules. Eg- HP was the first company to institute flextime in 1973.  Training and professional growth opportunities.  Concepts like telecommuting.  Opportunities to use talents and be creative.  Self direction and assuming responsibility.  Cohesive group and timely feedback.  Competitive salaries and opportunities for promotion. But research indicates a modest relation between salary and job satisfaction after a particular level.

12. FIGURE 6-3Job Characteristics Model

13. Job Involvement  Related concept of job satisfaction.  Measures the degree to which people identify psychologically with their jobs.  In this process their perceived performance level becomes very important to their self worth.  Strongly care about the work that they do.  Extreme job involvement results in workaholism.  High level of job involvement is related to job performance.  High job involvement is also related to lower absenteeism and low turnover rates. Also related to Organizational citizenship.  Job involvement is the result of job satisfaction.

14. Organizational Commitment  Organizational Commitment –Job involvement means identifying with job but Organizational commitment means identifying with the organization. –Organizational commitment have a modest relation with job satisfaction. –Three dimensions: Affective – emotional attachment to organization and a belief in its values. Eg- An employee at PETCO. Continuance Commitment – economic value of staying compared to leaving. Normative - moral or ethical obligations. Eg- A project leader Out of all affective commitment has the strongest relation with performance. –Has modest relation to productivity but negative relation with turnover. –Less important now than in past – now perhaps more of occupational commitment, loyalty to profession rather than a given employer. –Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, while wishing to maintain membership in the organization. 3-13 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

15. And Yet More Major Job Attitudes…  Perceived Organizational Support (POS)- Research in 1990s. –Degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being and provides them with socio emotional resources. –Belief that the organization will be counted for help when needed. –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. Level of commitment and involvement. Conceptualized by Kahn. –Engaged employees are passionate about their work and company. –Employee engagement is antecedent to job involvement. –A result that is achieved by stimulating employee enthusiasm for his work and directing it towards organizational success. –Job involvement is more important to one’s self worth and identity. –Employee engagement refers to how the individual employees himself at his work physically, emotionally and cognitively. 3-14 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

16. 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! 3-15 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

17. Outcomes of Job Satisfaction  Job Performance –Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive workers are more satisfied! –Research has shown a strong relationship.  Organizational Citizenship Behaviors –Satisfaction influences OCB through perceptions of fairness. Satisfied employees talk positively about the organization. They go beyond the call of their duty. But the controlling factor is perceived fairness.  Customer Satisfaction –Satisfied frontline employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and are likely to be approachable and friendly. Relation is also reverse. Eg- Southwest, Fedex  Absenteeism –Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to miss work. 3-16 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.

18. More Outcomes of Job Satisfaction  Turnover – Satisfied employees are less likely to quit. – Many moderating variables in this relationship. Tenure Level of performance- 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 overestimate worker satisfaction. 3-17 © 2009 Prentice-Hall Inc. All rights reserved.