Employee Attitudes

1
Employee Attitudes

• Job Satisfaction
• The degree of pleasure an employee derives from
  his or her job.
• What determines job satisfaction?
• Individual differences.
• Characteristics of the job.
• Mostly the fit between the above.
• Example, Bob is looking for an easy job that does
  not involve a great deal of stress. Bob will
  probably experience low job satisfaction on a
  challenging and difficult job.
• How do we measure Job Satisfaction.
• Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
• Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)

2
Employee Attitudes

• Job Satisfaction (cont.)
• General job satisfaction global job
  satisfaction
• Satisfaction with particular parts of the job
  (e.g., supervisor, co-workers, etc) job facet
  satisfaction
• How does job satisfaction relate to
• Job performance (.17)
• Turnover (-.40)
• Absence (-.25).
• Influenced by persons dispositional
  characteristics (positive affect), objective job
  characteristics, interpretive process of how one
  feels about the job.
• Weve just started to look at emotion and mood in
  the workplace, somewhat related to attitudes

3
Employee Attitudes

• Job Involvement
• Refers to the degree to which a person identifies
  psychologically with his or her work and the
  importance of work to ones self-image. Can
  affect other areas of life.
• In other words, how central is your work in your
  life.
• Sample questions
• I consider my job to be very critical to my
  existence.
• Most of my personal life goals are job-oriented.
• How does involvement relate to
• Overall job satisfaction (.45)
• Performance (.09)
• Turnover (-.13)
• Conscientiousness (.53)

4
Employee Attitudes

• Organizational Commitment
• Refers to the extent to which an employee feels a
  sense of allegiance to his or her employer.
  Committed more likely to remain.
• Three components
• Affective emotional attachment to the
  organization (liking).
• Continuance based on the costs that the employee
  associates with leaving the organization (no
  better alternative).
• Normative Feelings of obligation to remain with
  the organization (loyalty).
• Sample items
• I really feel as if this organizations problems
  are my own.
• Too much in my life would be disrupted if I
  decided I wanted to leave my organization now.
• I was taught to believe in the value of remaining
  loyal to one organization.

5
Employee Attitudes

• Occupational commitment emotional connection to
  occupation. Can have high occupational
  commitment, low organizational commitment.
• Org. commitment relates to
• Overall job satisfaction (.53)
• Performance (.11)
• Turnover (-.28)
• Conscientiousness (.67)
• Conclusions?
• Attitudes linked strongly to one another.
• Attitudes barely related to performance.
• Attitudes minimally related to turnover.
• Why?
• There are many other things that determine
  performance and turnover that are beyond
  employees control (e.g., job market).

6
Organizational Justice

• Organizational justice is concerned with the fair
  treatment of people in organizations (Greenberg)
• Also called fairness.
• Why do we care about organizational justice?
• Can influence employee attitudes.
• For example, employees who think they are being
  treated fairly are more likely to be committed to
  the organization.
• Can influence employee behaviors.
• For example, employees who think they were
  treated unfairly in a downsizing may be more
  likely to sue.
• Three types of organizational justice
• Distributive, procedural,interactional (includes
  interpersonal informational).

7
Organizational Justice

• Distributive justice
• Fairness of outcomes or results. (who is/is not
  selected, promoted, fired, etc.), values are
  important and no method/right or wrong
• Three rules for determining distributive justice.
• 1. Equity Outcomes should be based on an
  individuals contributions. Inputs and outputs
  should be proportional.
• Example, if I work longer on a project than my
  other team members I expect to get more money and
  recognition than others.
• 2. Equality Outcomes should be distributed
  equally.
• Example, regardless of how much time each team
  member puts in on the project everybody should be
  paid the same amount.
• 3. Need Outcomes should be distributed
  according to need.
• Example, one team member recently got in a car
  accident and now needs to buy a new car, so we
  give him the most money.

8
Organizational Justice

• Procedural Justice
• Fairness of procedures. What method did we use to
  get to our results? Perception of
  policies/procedures
• Important principles of procedural justice
• Voice do employees get to have a say in the
  process. For example, do employees get to tell
  their side of the story if they get a poor
  performance appraisal rating. Higher levels of
  participation, higher levels of perceived
  procedural fairness.
• Consistency are the procedures implemented the
  same across all employees.
• Lack of bias is there bias involved in the
  procedure.
• What is fair? Consistent, bias free, accurate,
  correctable in case of error, representative,
  based on prevailing ethical standards.

9
Organizational Justice

• Comparing Distributive and Procedural Justice
• Distributive asks Did I get what I deserved?
  Was the outcome fair?
• Procedural asks Was the decision process fair?
  Was the process used to determine my outcome fair
  and just?
• Major implication Distributive and procedural
  justice highly related. Generally, if a person
  doesnt think they got what they deserved,
  theyre not likely to think the decision process
  was fair. This is why we are concerned with
  application reactions in selection.
• In other words, the outcomes one receives tend to
  drive the process. If the outcomes are good,
  they usually dont care much about how they got
  them.

10
Organizational Justice

• Interactional Justice consists of interpersonal
  and informational justice.
• Interpersonal Justice
• Deals with the social aspects of distributive
  justice.
• How is the employee treated by his or her
  supervisor?
• For example, in a performance appraisal meeting
  does the supervisor use rude and inappropriate
  language, or does he or she present the feedback
  in a dignified and respectful manner.
• Informational Justice
• Deals with knowledge of how and why things are
  done?
• Are employees told how the promotion system
  works?
• Are employees informed about how their
  performance ratings are determined?
• Do employees know why it was necessary to reduce
  the workforce?

11
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCBs)

• Contextual performance, prosocial behavior,
  extra-role behaviors. good soldier, go beyond
  the duties proscribed by job. Not expected or
  required
• Five dimensions
• Altruism helping individuals with a task or
  problem relevant to the organization.
• Conscientiousness following rules, regulations,
  and procedures.
• Courtesy being respectful of rights of others.
• Sportsmanship avoiding socially negative
  behaviors (e.g., gossiping, complaining, etc).
• Civic Virtue participating in organizational
  politics.
• Are these behaviors truly altruistic or are they
  part of the job?

12
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCBs)

• Highly valued by managers
• Perhaps they see strategic value, prosocial
  behavior declines when used as a method to attain
  a goal once goal is attained.
• Are these inherent in our personality or can
  organizations foster them?
• Some support for personality (agreeableness and
  conscientiousness)
• Situational antecedents based or org. justice.
  If employees think they are treated fairly, will
  hold positive attitudes and be more inclined to
  perform OCBs, social exchange theory holds.

13
Psychological Contract

• Unstated agreement/relationship between the
  employee and the organization. Not formal or
  written, implicit.
• Each employee has beliefs about their rights and
  responsibilities in relation to the organization.
• Example Gina has worked for the local telephone
  company for the past 10 years. Due to her loyal
  service, she believes the company has obligations
  to her, including continued employment and
  regular pay increases provided she continues to
  perform well.
• Psychological contract much different today than
  it was 30, 40, 50 years ago.