Job attitude

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A job attitude is a set of evaluations of one's job that constitute one's feelings toward, beliefs about, and attachment to one's job. [1] Overall job attitude can be conceptualized in two ways. Either as affective job satisfaction that constitutes a general or global subjective feeling about a job, [2] or as a composite of objective cognitive assessments of specific job facets, such as pay, conditions, opportunities and other aspects of a particular job. [3] Employees evaluate their advancement opportunities by observing their job, their occupation, and their employer. [1]

Contents

Defining

Research demonstrates that interrelationships and complexities underlie what would seem to be the simply defined term job attitudes. The long history of research into job attitudes suggests there is no commonly agreed upon definition. [1] There are both cognitive and affective aspects, which need not be in correspondence with each other. [4] Job attitude should also not be confused with the broader term attitude, because attitude is defined as a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor, whereas job attitude is a particular instance as an entity. [1] In the definition above, the term "job" involves one's current position, one's work or one's occupation, and one's employer as its entity. However, one's attitude towards his/her work does not necessarily have to be equal with one's attitudes towards his/her employer, and these two factors often diverge. [4]

Types

Global

Global job attitudes are attitudes developed towards a job through the organization, working environment, affective disposition, aggregate measures of job characteristics and the social environment. They depend on the broad totality of work conditions. In fact, job attitudes are also closely associated with more global measures of life satisfaction. Scales such as "Faces" enable researchers to interpret overall satisfaction with work. The Job in General scale focuses on the cognitive perspective (rather than applied) of the effects of job attitudes. A variety of job attributes are associated with different levels of satisfaction within global job attitudes. [1]

Other types

  1. Job Involvement: Identifying with one's job and actively participating in it, and considering performance important to self-worth. [5]
  2. Organizational Commitment: Identifying with a particular organization and its goals, and wishing to maintain membership in the organization. [5]
  3. Perceived Organizational Support (POS): The degree to which employees feel the organization cares about their well-being. And also the organisation is paying him well salary if he leaves the company his family should be affected. [5]
  4. Employee Engagement: An individual's involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the organization. [5]

Affective

Affective job satisfaction is a singular construct comprising an overall emotional feeling about a job as a whole or in general. [6] [7] Affective job satisfaction is measured with items addressing the extent to which individuals subjectively and emotively like their job overall, [8] not a composite of how individuals cognitively assess two or more specific aspects of their job.[ citation needed ] The 4-item Brief Index of Affective Job Satisfaction has been developed to produce a purely affective as opposed to cognitive measure of overall affective job satisfaction. [2]

Job facet satisfaction

Job facet satisfaction refers to feelings about specific job aspects, such as salary, benefits, and relationships with co-workers. [9]

Influencing factors

Emotional exhaustion

Interpersonal conflict affects job attitudes: cut-throat competition resulted in a bitter relationship with co-workers. The exacerbated stress leads to emotional exhaustion, and this negatively affects job attitude. [13]

Personality

Subordinates' job attitude, such as job satisfaction and turnover intention, does not influence "satisfaction with the supervisor". The supervisor's personality strongly influences the subordinate's "satisfaction with the supervisor". Personality traits of the supervisor, in particular agreeableness, extroversion and emotional stability, are positively related to subordinate attitude and have a greater effect on subordinate satisfaction with supervision than do more general work-related attitudes. [14] Supervisor agreeableness and emotional stability were positively related with employee satisfaction with the supervisor, and supervisor extroversion was negatively correlated with turnover intentions. [14]

Resulting behaviors

Cyber-loafing

Employees who have lower job involvement and intrinsic involvement are more likely to be involved in cyber loafing behavior. [15] Employees who perceive the work environment as supportive and motivating are less likely to engage in cyber loafing; conversely, groups within the company who engage in social loafing using the internet create a norm of such behavior. [15] However, there was only a limited relationship between non-internet loafing behavior and cyber loafing. Chit-chat between co-workers can be a sign of productivity as well as a sign of wasting time. [15]

Task performance

Companies whose workers have positive attitudes are more effective than whose workers do not. [5] Job attitude influences performance, and not performance that influences attitude. [16]

Withdrawal vs. counterproductivity

Human relation variables and group norms are variables of job attitude that are directly related to turnover. Identification with the organization was directly related to turnover, whereas group norms had an indirect relationship with turnover. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

Industrial and organizational psychology Branch of psychology

Industrial and organizational psychology, an applied discipline within psychology, is the science of human behavior in the workplace. Depending on the country or region of the world, I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organizational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational psychology (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.

Remote work Work arrangement

Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or retail store.

Organizational commitment

In organizational behavior and industrial and organizational psychology, organizational commitment is an individual's psychological attachment to the organization. Organizational scientists have also developed many nuanced definitions of organizational commitment, and numerous scales to measure them. Exemplary of this work is Meyer and Allen's model of commitment, which was developed to integrate numerous definitions of commitment that had been proliferated in the literature. Meyer and Allen's model has also been critiqued because the model is not consistent with empirical findings. It may also not be fully applicable in domains such as customer behavior. There has also been debate surrounding what Meyers and Allen's model was trying to achieve.

Job satisfaction Attitude of a person towards work

Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentedness with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.

Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers and managers. This includes analysis and decision making in terms of the expression of emotion, whether actually felt or not, as well as its opposite: the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed. This is done so as to produce a certain feeling in the customer or client that will allow the company or organization to succeed.

The leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is a relationship-based approach to leadership that focuses on the two-way (dyadic) relationship between leaders and followers.

Affective events theory Psychological model

Affective events theory (AET) is a model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.

Greenberg (1987) introduced the concept of organizational justice with regard to how an employee judges the behavior of the organization and the employee's resulting attitude and behaviour. For example, if a firm makes redundant half of the workers, an employee may feel a sense of injustice with a resulting change in attitude and a drop in productivity.

Emotional exhaustion Chronic state of physical and emotional depletion

Emotional exhaustion is a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive job, personal demands, and/or continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one's work. It is manifested by both physical fatigue and a sense of feeling psychologically and emotionally "drained".

Organizational identification (OI) is a term used in management studies and organizational psychology. The term refers to the propensity of a member of an organization to identify with that organization. OI has been distinguished from "affective organizational commitment". Measures of an individual's OI have been developed, based on questionnaires.

Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.

Workplace aggression is a specific type of aggression which occurs in the workplace. Workplace aggression can include a wide range of behaviors, ranging from verbal acts to physical attacks. Workplace aggression can decrease the ability of a person to do their job well, lead to physical declines in health and mental health problems, and can also change the way a person behaves at their home and in public. If someone is experiencing aggression at work, it may result in an increase in missed days and some may decide to leave their positions.

Emotions in the workplace play a large role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world. "Events at work have real emotional impact on participants. The consequences of emotional states in the workplace, both behaviors and attitudes, have substantial significance for individuals, groups, and society". "Positive emotions in the workplace help employees obtain favorable outcomes including achievement, job enrichment and higher quality social context". "Negative emotions, such as fear, anger, stress, hostility, sadness, and guilt, however increase the predictability of workplace deviance,", and how the outside world views the organization.

Despite a large body of positive psychological research into the relationship between happiness and productivity, happiness at work has traditionally been seen as a potential by-product of positive outcomes at work, rather than a pathway to business success. Happiness in the workplace is usually dependent on the work environment. During the past two decades, maintaining a level of happiness at work has become more significant and relevant due to the intensification of work caused by economic uncertainty and increase in competition. Nowadays, happiness is viewed by a growing number of scholars and senior executives as one of the major sources of positive outcomes in the workplace. In fact, companies with higher than average employee happiness exhibit better financial performance and customer satisfaction. It is thus beneficial for companies to create and maintain positive work environments and leadership that will contribute to the happiness of their employees.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. These behaviors can harm organizations or people in organizations including employees and clients, customers, or patients. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction(the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.

Social undermining is the expression of negative emotions directed towards a particular person or negative evaluations of the person as a way to prevent the person from achieving their goals.

Workplace incivility has been defined as low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others. The authors hypothesize there is an "incivility spiral" in the workplace made worse by "asymmetric global interaction".

Positive psychology is defined as a method of building on what is good and what is already working instead of attempting to stimulate improvement by focusing on the weak links in an individual, a group, or in this case, a company. Implementing positive psychology in the workplace means creating an environment that is more enjoyable, productive, and values individual employees. This also means creating a work schedule that does not lead to emotional and physical distress.

Abusive supervision is most commonly studied in the context of the workplace, although it can arise in other areas such as in the household and at school. "Abusive supervision has been investigated as an antecedent to negative subordinate workplace outcome." "Workplace violence has combination of situational and personal factors". The study that was conducted looked at the link between abusive supervision and different workplace events.

Machiavellianism in the workplace is a concept studied by many organizational psychologists. Conceptualized originally by Richard Christie and Florence Geis, Machiavellianism refers to a psychological trait concept where individuals behave in a cold and duplicitous manner. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers and academics.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Judge, Timothy A.; Kammeyer-Mueller, John D. (2012). "Job Attitudes". Annual Review of Psychology. 63 (1): 341–67. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100511. PMID   22129457.
  2. 1 2 Thompson, Edmund R.; Phua, Florence T. T. (2012). "A Brief Index of Affective Job Satisfaction". Group & Organization Management. 37 (3): 275–307. doi:10.1177/1059601111434201. S2CID   145122368.
  3. ↑ Harrison, David A.; Newman, Daniel A.; Roth, Philip L. (2006). "How Important Are Job Attitudes? Meta-Analytic Comparisons of Integrative Behavioral Outcomes and Time Sequences". Academy of Management Journal. 49 (2): 305–25. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.468.2994 . doi:10.5465/AMJ.2006.20786077. JSTOR   20159765.
  4. 1 2 Schleicher, Deidra J.; Watt, John D.; Greguras, Gary J. (2004). "Reexamining the Job Satisfaction-Performance Relationship: The Complexity of Attitudes". Journal of Applied Psychology. 89 (1): 165–77. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.1.165. PMID   14769129.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Steers, Richard M.; Porter, Lyman W. (1991). Motivation and work behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN   978-0-07-060956-3.[ page needed ]
  6. ↑ Kalleberg, Arne L. (1977). "Work Values and Job Rewards: A Theory of Job Satisfaction". American Sociological Review. 42 (1): 124–43. doi:10.2307/2117735. JSTOR   2117735.
  7. ↑ Moorman, Robert H. (1993). "The Influence of Cognitive and Affective Based Job Satisfaction Measures on the Relationship Between Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behavior". Human Relations. 46 (6): 759–76. doi:10.1177/001872679304600604. S2CID   146393339.
  8. ↑ Spector, Paul E. (1997). Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Causes, and Consequences. Advanced Topics in Organizational Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN   978-0-7619-8923-3.[ page needed ]
  9. 1 2 Redmond, Brian Francis; Bredemeier, Jennifer Lynne (March 30, 2012). "Job Satisfaction". Penn State . Retrieved July 25, 2012.[ unreliable source? ]
  10. ↑ Adjabeng, Senyo M. (2012). "EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES!! Leadership, supervision, and discipline". Corporate Aims Services. Archived from the original on October 29, 2015. Retrieved July 25, 2012.[ unreliable source? ]
  11. ↑ Beehr, Terry A. (1981). "Work-Role Stress and Attitudes Toward Co-Workers". Group & Organization Management. 6 (2): 201–10. doi:10.1177/105960118100600206. S2CID   145421742.
  12. ↑ Tosi, Henry L.; Mero, Neal P. (2003). The fundamentals of organizational behavior : what managers need to know. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 50. ISBN   978-1-4051-0074-8.
  13. ↑ Jaramillo, Fernando; Mulki, Jay Prakash; Boles, James S. (2011). "Workplace Stressors, Job Attitude, and Job Behaviors: Is Interpersonal Conflict the Missing Link?" (PDF). Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. 31 (3): 339–56. doi:10.2753/PSS0885-3134310310. S2CID   143710914.
  14. 1 2 Smith, Mark Alan; Canger, Jonathan M. (2003). "Effects of Supervisor 'Big Five' Personality on Subordinate Attitudes". Journal of Business and Psychology. 18 (4): 465–81. doi:10.1023/B:JOBU.0000028447.00089.12. JSTOR   25092875. S2CID   144852258.
  15. 1 2 3 Liberman, Benjamín; Seidman, Gwendolyn; McKenna, Katelyn Y.A.; Buffardi, Laura E. (2011). "Employee job attitudes and organizational characteristics as predictors of cyberloafing". Computers in Human Behavior. 27 (6): 2192–9. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.06.015.
  16. ↑ Riketta, Michael (2008). "The causal relation between job attitudes and performance: A meta-analysis of panel studies". Journal of Applied Psychology. 93 (2): 472–81. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.472. PMID   18361647.
  17. ↑ Furukawa, Hisataka (1976). "Predicting Turnover of Employees by Job Attitude: Combined Use of Hierarchical Cluster and Path Analysis". The Japanese Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 16 (1): 8–16. doi: 10.2130/jjesp.16.8 .
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