OB Exam 1 (Chapter 3)

Job Satisfaction Across Cultures

Although job satisfaction appears relevant across cultures, that doesn't mean there are no cultural differences in job satisfaction. Evidence suggests employees in Western cultures have higher levels of job satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures. Denmark, Switzerland, USA, Norway and Sweden are the top 5

Job Satisfaction

Describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive feelings about his or her job, while a person with a low level holds negative feelings.

Discrepancies between attitudes and Behavior

Discrepancies between attitudes and behavior tend to occur when social pressures to behave in certain ways hold exceptional power, as in most organizations. This may explain why an employee who holds strong anti-union attitudes attends pro-union organizing meetings, or why tobacco executives, who are not smokers themselves and who tend to believe the research linking smoking and cancer, don't actively discourage others from smoking.

Psychological Empowerment

Employees' beliefs in the degree to which they influence their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy.

Attitudes

Evaluative statements—either favorable or unfavorable—about objects, people, or events. They reflect how we feel about something.

Attitude follows behavior

Festinger proposed that cases of attitude following behavior illustrate the effects of cognitive dissonance,3 any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes. Festinger argued that any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable and that individuals will therefore attempt to reduce it. They will seek a stable state, which is a minimum of dissonance.

Moderating attitudes

Festinger proposed that the desire to reduce dissonance depends on moderating factors, including the importance of the elements creating it and the degree of influence we believe we have over them. The most powerful moderators of the attitudes relationship are the importance of the attitude, its correspondence to behavior, its accessibility, the presence of social pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitude.

Job satisfaction affect customer satisfaction

For frontline employees who have regular customer contact, the answer is "yes." Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Pay as a Cause of Job Satisfaction

For people who are poor or who live in poor countries, pay does correlate with job satisfaction and overall happiness. But once an individual reaches a level of comfortable living (in the United States, that occurs at about $40,000 a year, depending on the region and family size), the relationship between pay and job satisfaction virtually disappears. People who earn $80,000 are, on average, no happier with their jobs than those who earn closer to $40,000.

Job Satisfaction affect Job Performance

Happy workers are more likely to be productive workers.

Attitudes Lead to Behaviors

In organizations, attitudes are important for their behavioral component. If workers believe, for example, that supervisors, auditors, bosses, and time-and-motion engineers are all in conspiracy to make employees work harder for the same or less money, it makes sense to try to understand how these attitudes formed, how they relate to actual job behavior, and how they might be changed.

Are People Satisfied in Their Jobs

Independent studies conducted among U.S. workers over the past 30 years generally indicate more workers are satisfied with their jobs than not. But a caution is in order. Recent data show a dramatic drop-off in average job satisfaction levels during the economic contraction that started in late 2007, with only about half of workers report being satisfied with their jobs now. 34 Research also shows satisfaction levels vary, with people typically being more satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself, and with their supervisors and co-workers than with their pay and with promotion opportunities.

Job satisfaction affect workplace deviance

Job dissatisfaction and antagonistic relationships with co-workers predict a variety of behaviors that organizations find undesirable, including unionization attempts, substance abuse, stealing at work, undue socializing, and tardiness. Researchers argue these behaviors are indicators of a broader syndrome called deviant behavior in the workplace (or counterproductive behavior or employee withdrawal).

Relationships Among Attitudinal Components

Keep in mind that the three components of attitudes—cognition, affect, and behavior—are closely related, and cognition and affect in particular are inseparable in many ways. For example, imagine you realized that someone has just treated you unfairly. Aren't you likely to have feelings about that, occurring virtually instantaneously with the realization? Thus, cognition and affect are intertwined.

Job Involvement

Measures the degree to which people identify psychologically with their job and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth. Employees with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do.

Money Vs. Happiness

Money does motivate people. But what motivates us is not necessarily the same as what makes us happy. A recent poll by UCLA and the American Council on Education found that entering college freshmen rated becoming "very well off financially" first on a list of 19 goals, ahead of choices such as helping others, raising a family, or becoming proficient in an academic pursuit. Maybe your goal isn't to be happy. But if it is, money's probably not going to do much to get you there.

How do people respond to job dissatisfaction?

One theoretical model, the exit-voice-loyalty-neglect framework, illustrated in the following figure, is helpful in understanding the consequences of dissatisfaction.

People seek consistency

Research has generally concluded that people seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their behavior.4 They alter either the attitudes or the behavior, or they develop a rationalization for the discrepancy.

Personality as a Predictor of Job Satisfaction

Research has shown that people who have positive core self-evaluations —who believe in their inner worth and basic competence—are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations. Not only do they see their work as more fulfilling and challenging, they are more likely to gravitate toward challenging jobs in the first place.

Job Satisfaction affect organizational citizenship behavior

Satisfied employees would seem more likely to talk positively about the organization, help others, and go beyond the normal expectations in their job, perhaps because they want to reciprocate their positive experiences. Consistent with this thinking, evidence suggests job satisfaction is moderately correlated with OCBs; people who are more satisfied with their jobs are more likely to engage in OCBs.

Perceived Organizational Support

The degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Research shows that people perceive their organization as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when they see their supervisors as supportive. Employees with strong POS perceptions have been found more likely to have higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors, lower levels of tardiness, and better customer service.

Job satisfaction affect job turnover

The satisfaction-turnover relationship also is affected by alternative job prospects. If an employee is presented with an unsolicited job offer, job dissatisfaction is less predictive of turnover because the employee is more likely leaving in response to "pull" (the lure of the other job) than "push" (the unattractiveness of the current job).

Measuring Job Satisfaction

The single global rating is a response to one question, such as "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?" Respondents circle a number between 1 and 5 on a scale from "highly satisfied" to "highly dissatisfied." The second method, the summation of job facets, identifies key elements in a job such as the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities, and relationships with co-workers.32 Respondents rate these on a standardized scale, and researchers add the ratings to create an overall job satisfaction score.

Job satisfaction affect employee absenteeism

We find a consistent negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism, but it is moderate to weak. While it certainly makes sense that dissatisfied employees are more likely to miss work, other factors affect the relationship.

Organizational Commitment

an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to remain a member. Most research has focused on emotional attachment to an organization. Full belief in an organization's values is taken to be the "gold standard" for employee commitment.

Employee Engagement

an individual's involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the work he or she does. We might ask employees whether they have access to resources and the opportunities to learn new skills, whether they feel their work is important and meaningful, and whether their interactions with co-workers and supervisors are rewarding. Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection to their company; disengaged employees have essentially checked out—putting time but not energy or attention into their work.

What Are the Main Components of an Attitude?

cognitive component of an attitude— a description of or belief in the way things are. It sets the stage for the more critical part of an attitude—its affective component. Affect is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude and is reflected in the statement "I am angry over how little I'm paid." Finally, affect can lead to behavioral outcomes. The behavioral component of an attitude describes an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something—to continue the example, "I'm going to look for another job that pays better.