What is the outcome when employees have positive attitudes towards their jobs?

Corporate Talk: How Values and Attitude Influence Job Satisfaction

by Dr. Ahmad Chaudhry, Ph.D.

 Job satisfaction is one of the most important and much studied attitudes in organizational behavior. One reason for the interest in job satisfaction is that whether a employee is satisfied with his or her job has significant consequences not only for the employee, but also for co-employees, managers and the organization as a whole. Employee’s level or degree of job satisfaction can range from extreme satisfaction to extreme dissatisfaction. Formally defined, job satisfaction is an "affective or emotional response towards various facets of one’s job." Studies show that employees are more satisfied and are less likely to quit when their personal values are consistent with the organization’s values, and when they have positive attitudes about work environment (Hom and Griffeth, 1995). Values are desired ways of behaving or desired end-states. When an employee’s values collide with organizational values, employee may have interpersonal value conflicts, or the individual organizational value conflicts that may affect job satisfaction, turnover, and potentially performance. Attitudes, on the other hand, are defined as a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object. Research shows that overall job attitudes were positively related to performance and negatively associated with indications of withdrawal, tardiness, absenteeism, and turnover (Harrison, Newman, and Roth, 2006).

 Discussion:

What people think and feel about work in general, and about their jobs and organizations in particular, affects not only how they behave at work but also their overall well-being and this in-turn reflects how happy, healthy and prosperous they are. The thoughts and feelings people have about work, their jobs, and their organization, determine how they experience work. Some thoughts and feelings are fundamental and broad; they are concerned not so much with aspects of a particular job or organization, but with the nature of work in general. These thoughts and feelings, called work values, are relatively long lasting. Work values are an employee’s personal convictions about what outcomes one should expect from work and how one should behave at work, Personal values are divided into two categories. Values such as sense of accomplishment, happiness, pleasure, salvation, and wisdom, are desired end-states or life goals. These values represent the things we want to achieve or accomplish in our lives and are called terminal values. The alternative behavior or means by which we achieve our terminal values or desired ends are called instrumental values. These include values such as ambition, honesty, independence, love and obedience. (Rokeach, 1973). For example, an employee who values the instrumental value of honesty is less likely to lie or cheat in order to accomplish a terminal value associated with a sense of task accomplishment than some one who doesn’t value honesty.

Sometimes employees’ personal values may experience sources of conflicts from inside the person, between people, and between the person and the organizations. These value conflicts affect an individual’s attitudes, job satisfaction, turnover, and performance at work. Inner conflicts and resultant stress typically, called interpersonal conflict, and are experienced when employee’s instrumental and terminal values pull him or her in different directions. These kinds of conflicts cause stress. Employees are less happy and more stressed when their personal values conflicts with their superiors at work and such conflicts can negatively affect one’s career. In addition to interpersonal and interpersonal value conflicts, an employee personal value may conflict the cultural value system of an organization. Companies actively seek to embed certain values into their corporate culture. Conflicts can occur when values espoused and enacted by the organization collide with employees’ personal values. Research shows that these three types are directly related to job satisfaction and outcome, commitment, performance, career success, stress and turnover intentions and hence must be aligned for positive outcomes (Elfenbein and O’Reilly, 2007; Ostroff, Shin and Kinicki, 2005). Work attitudes are collections of feelings, beliefs and thoughts about how to behave that people currently hold about their jobs and organizations. Work attitudes are not as long lasting as values, primarily because the way people experience their jobs and organizations often change over time. These changes may be because of change in work conditions, or being given or denied a promotion. While values represent global beliefs that influence behavior across all situations, attitudes relate only to behavior directly towards specific objects, process, or situations and are a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner (Fishbein, 1975).

Work attitudes such as organizational commitment, job involvement and job satisfaction have a dual interest to managers. On one hand, they represent important outcomes that managers may want to enhance. On the other hand, they are symptomatic of other potential problems such as low job satisfaction and employee’s intention to quit. It is thus important for managers to understand the causes and consequences of key work attitudes such as job satisfaction. Job satisfaction essentially reflects the extent to which are individual likes his or her job. Job satisfaction is an affective or emotional response towards various facets of one’s job, which means that a person can be relatively satisfied with one aspect of his or her job and dissatisfied with one or more other aspects. For example, an employee may be satisfied because of aspects like work, co-employee and supervisors but may be dissatisfied because of promotion and pay based on his or her values and attitudes (Skokie and McNally, 1969). It is important to understand these causes in order to find a solution to stop the decline of job satisfaction. Since values and attitudes are directly related to job satisfaction (Hom and Griffeth, 1995), the knowledge about job satisfaction can also assist managers in using a multifaceted approach towards increasing work attitudes. Managers can thus enhance employee satisfaction by structuring the work environment and its associated and recognition to reinforce employee’s values and attitude.

 Conclusion:

Work values are employee’s personal convictions about the outcomes he or she should expect from work and how he or she should behave at work. Attitude, on the other hand, is a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner towards a given subject. Work values and attitudes capture the range of thoughts and feelings that make up the experience of work. Because work values are more stable and long lasting, they can strongly affect work attitudes and hence employee’s level of job satisfaction. In order for the employees to be satisfied with their job, their interpersonal, intra-personal, and individual organization values, all must be aligned to avoid many work related conflicts. Attitudes towards work are not as long lasting values, and hence can be changed by increasing pay, promotion or moving to another position. By aligning employee’s values with that of organizations and by addressing the attitude problems of employees, management can increase the job satisfaction level. Satisfied employees are less likely to quit their job, or be absent from work, have less stress and will perform their job better.

What is the outcome of employees have positive attitudes towards their jobs?

Why is it good to have a positive attitude in the workplace?

What are the effects of employee attitudes?