Which of the following refers to evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects people or events?

Home

Student Resources

Chapter 3: Attitudes and job satisfaction

Chapter Review

Summary

Attitudes are evaluative statements – either favourable or unfavourable – concerning objects, people, or events. Attitudes have cognitive, affective, and behavioural components. Cognitive components of attitude relate to what a person knows, while the affective components relate to how people feel. Managers tend to be most concerned with behavioural components – how people behave or intend to behave.

Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their behaviour. Cognitive dissonance occurs when an individual has two or more attitudes that are inconsistent, or if one or more attitudes is inconsistent with behaviour. Inconsistency causes discomfort and individuals will seek a stable state in which there is a minimum of dissonance. The desire to reduce dissonance will be determined by the importance of the elements creating the dissonance, the degree of influence the individual believe that she has over the elements, and the rewards that may be involved in the dissonance.

Finally, the text examines the issue of whether attitudes cause behaviour or if behaviour, instead, influences attitude. Research has shown that attitudes influence future behaviour, moderated by a number of variables, including the importance of the attitude, its specificity, its accessibility, whether there are social pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitude.

Three of the more prominent attitudes in organizational behaviour research are job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Job satisfaction can be defined as a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. A related attitude is job involvement, which measures the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with his or her job. The third attitude is organizational commitment, an employee’s desire to maintain continued membership within his or her organization. Organizational commitment, which has affective, continuance, and normative components, has a positive correlation with productivity.

A related job attitude is perceived organizational support, the degree to which employees believe that the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Research show that people perceive their organization as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when their supervisors are seen as supportive.

Employee engagement refers to the extent to which the employee is involved with, and satisfied by, the work that he or she does. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection to their company, while disengaged employees put time, but not energy or attention, into their work.

Job satisfaction is a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. The most widely used approaches to measuring job satisfaction are a single global rating and a summation score made up of a number of job facets. Interestingly, the single global rating is as effective at measuring job satisfaction as the more complex summation score. In the United States and most developed countries, workers are generally satisfied with their jobs, although satisfaction varies among individual facets of jobs.

Although workers generally indicate that they are satisfied with their jobs, job satisfaction levels in the US are dropping. American workers are most satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself, and with their supervisors and coworkers. However, they are less satisfied with their pay and promotion opportunities. Pay appears to have a limited effect on job satisfaction, particularly among higher income employees. Personality also affects job satisfaction. People with positive core self-evaluations are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations.

When employees dislike their jobs, they may exhibit a variety of behaviours. The behaviours may be categorized as constructive or destructive and active or passive. Responses to dissatisfaction include exit (looking for a new position), voice (actively and constructively attempting to improve conditions), loyalty (passively waiting for conditions to improve), or neglect (passively allowing conditions to worsen, to include chronic absenteeism, reduced effort, or apathetic attitude).

The possible outcomes of job satisfaction related to performance, organizational citizenship behaviour, customer satisfaction, absenteeism, turnover, and workplace deviance. The relationship between productivity and job satisfaction is positive, but it is unclear whether satisfaction leads to productivity or if productivity leads to satisfaction. Organizational citizenship behaviour is closely linked to job satisfaction and implies that an employee is willing to go above and beyond job requirements through such actions as talking positively about the organization, helping others, and going beyond the normal expectations of their job. The evidence indicates that satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, particularly in service organizations. There is also a consistently negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism and turnover, although the negative correlation between satisfaction and turnover is more significant. Finally, job dissatisfaction predicts a broad range of behaviours associated with workplace deviance.

Evidence suggests that there may be some cultural differences in job satisfaction. Workers in Western cultures have higher job satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures. There are a number of possible explanations. Among these, Eastern cultures appear to be more accepting of negative emotions than Western cultures.

Managers can positively impact satisfaction levels through providing mentally challenging work, equitable rewards, and through providing supportive working conditions. Although high pay is effective in attracting employees, high pay alone is unlikely to create a satisfying work environment.

What refers to evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects people or events?

Is an evaluative statement either favorable or unfavorable concerning objects people or events?

Is the result of some incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between actions and attitudes?

Which of the following components of attitude is a statement of belief about something?