Fluent Essays

Read and reflect on the assigned readings for the week. Then post what you thought was the most important concept(s), method(s), term(s), and/or any other thing that you felt was worthy of your understanding in each assigned textbook chapter.Your initial post should be based upon the assigned reading for the week, so the textbook should be a source listed in your reference section and cited within the body of the text. Other sources are not required but feel free to use them if they aid in your discussion.Also, provide a graduate-level response to each of the following questions: Elisa is upset with her supervisor because she was denied her requested vacation days, which were given to another worker. She is experiencing a very low level of job satisfaction, but cannot afford to quit her job. Describe three negative, passive responses that Elisa might take due to her dissatisfaction. Imagine that her manager actively catches her in a manifestation of workplace deviance. Predict the outcome of Elisa's behavior. [Your post must be substantive and demonstrate insight gained from the course material. Postings must be in the student's own words - do not provide quotes!] [Your initial post should be at least 450+ words and in APA format (including Times New Roman with font size 12 and double spaced). Post the actual body of your paper in the discussion thread then attach a Word version of the paper for APA review] S o u rc e : Ti m W a gn e r/ Z U M A P R E S S /N e w sc o m Attitudes and Job Satisfaction3 110 PATCHING TOGETHER A CAREER In today’s temp economy, there are self-employed, part-time, contract, micro-entrepreneur, temporary, and freelance workers. One example is Brad Stone of Bloomberg Businessweek, pictured here, who worked as a micro- entrepreneur through task-brokerage firms TaskRabbit, Postmates, and Cherry. These may seem like dream jobs–quick paychecks, work-when-you-want-to hours, and ultra-flexibility. But how satis- fied with their jobs are people who have these arrangements? It depends on your expectations, it seems. Recent research in Canada studied the concept of work congruence, or the match between the number of hours a person wants to work and the number of hours the person is offered work. The study found that as work congruence increased, especially when the number of hours increased for individuals who wanted more hours, job satisfaction increased. Finding a job where the hours fit your wishes seems like an obvious key to a satisfying job, but it’s not the whole story. For one thing, some contingent workers get enough hours, but in the form of unpaid overtime—meaning extra time they put into the job, but for which they receive no pay. Unpaid overtime is common in many countries. According to a study of 4,530 workers in 735 workplaces in Britain, part-timers—who were 27 percent of the workforce—worked almost 10 unpaid overtime hours per week, particularly in professional/ managerial jobs. The study also found that part-timers who worked unpaid overtime were more likely to lose their job satisfaction, be absent, and quit than full-time workers who worked extra hours without additional pay. 3-1 Contrast the three components of an attitude. 3-2 Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior. 3-3 Compare the major job attitudes. 3-4 Define job satisfaction. 3-5 Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction. 3-6 Identify three outcomes of job satisfaction. 3-7 Identify four employee responses to job dissatisfaction. Mana ementMyMyManagementManagement If your professor has chosen to assign this, go to the Assignments section of mymanagementlab.com to complete the chapter warm up. LE ARNING OBJEC T IVES After studying this chapter, you should be able to: 112 PART 2 The Individual In the United States, where contingent workers make up 20 percent of the workforce, job satisfaction suffers from a lack of paid hours. Many contingent workers say they cannot reliably find enough paid hours to support themselves and they feel insecure as a result. Professor Arne Kallenberg acknowledged, “Work has become much more insecure, much more precarious.” One large study in China found that job insecurity is strongly negatively related to job satisfaction, meaning the more insecure you are about your work situation, the less satisfied in your job you are likely to be. As a help, the U.S. Affordable Care Act has provided a measure of security for millions of people not covered by an employer’s medical insurance plan, and some workforce brokerage-type firms like TaskRabbit are offering their “micro-en- trepreneurs” benefits such as a guaranteed hourly wage. “If we want people to feel comfortable moving from job to job in a very flexible, decentralized economy, they need to have some basic protections that allow them to do that,” said Jacob Hacker, a Yale political scientist. While benefits are helpful, some scholars argue that for millions of con- tingent workers, security, and thus job satisfaction, will come only from work congruency—the availability of jobs and schedules that provide enough paid hours to meet workers’ needs. Stone agrees. “My three-day haul won’t feed my family,” he observed in counting his roughly $67/day earnings as a micro-entrepreneur. Freelance worker Heather Burdette, who has been piec- ing together a career since 2008, had to declare bankruptcy in 2005. “I’m actually more secure right now,” she said, “because I understand that the bottom can fall out at any time.” Sources: N. Conway and J. Sturges, “Investigating Unpaid Overtime Working among the Part- Time Workforce,” British Journal of Management 25 (2014): 755–71; B. Y. Lee, J. Wang, and J. Weststar, “Work Hour Congruence: The Effect on Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism,” Inter- national Journal of Human Resource Management 26, no. 5 (2015): 657–75; B. Stone, “My Life as a Task Rabbit,” Bloomberg Businessweek (September 13, 2012), www.businessweek .com/articles/2012-09-13/my-life-as-a-taskrabbit#p1; L. Weber, “For Digital Temps, a Safety Net Emerges,” The Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2014, B7; and I. U. Zeytinoglu, M. Denton, S. Davies, A. Baumann, J. Blythe, and L. Boos, “Retaining Nurses in their Employing Hospitals and in the Profession: Effects of Job Preference, Unpaid Overtime, Importance of Earnings and Stress,” Health Policy 79, no. 1 (2006): 57–72. It’s almost a truism to say that a job that fits you is one that satisfies you. As the vignette shows, however, what makes a satisfying job is a bit more complex. What factors besides work schedule compatibility and job security affect job attitudes?1 Does having a satisfying job really matter? Before we tackle these important questions, it’s important to define what we mean by attitudes gener- ally, and job attitudes in particular. Attitudes and Job Satisfaction CHAPTER 3 113 Attitudes Attitudes are evaluative statements—either favorable or unfavorable—about ob- jects, people, or events. They reflect how we feel about something. When you say “I like my job,” you are expressing your attitude about your work. Attitudes are complex. If you ask people about their attitude toward religion, Lady Gaga, or an organization, you may get a simple response, but the underly- ing reasons are probably complicated. To fully understand attitudes, we must consider their fundamental properties or components. Typically, researchers assume attitudes have three components: cognition, affect, and behavior.2 The statement “My pay is low” is a 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 emo- tional or feeling segment of an attitude reflected in the statement, “I am angry over how little I’m paid.” Affect can lead to behavioral outcomes. The behavioral component of an attitude describes an intention to behave a certain way toward someone or something—as in, “I’m going to look for another job that pays better.” Viewing attitudes as having three components—cognition, affect, and behavior—helps understand their complexity and the potential relationship between attitudes and behavior. For example, imagine you realized that someone treated you unfairly. Aren’t you likely to have feelings about that, occurring virtually instantaneously with the realization? Thus, cognition and affect are intertwined. Exhibit 3-1 illustrates how the three components of an attitude are related. In this example, an employee didn’t get a promotion he thought he deserved. 3-1 Contrast the three components of an attitude. attitudes Evaluative statements or judg- ments concerning objects, people, or events. affective component The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude. WATCH IT! If your professor has assigned this, go to the Assignments section of mymanagementlab.com to complete the video exercise titled Gawker Media: Attitudes and Job Satisfaction. The Components of an AttitudeExhibit 3-1 Negative attitude toward supervisor Cognitive = evaluation My supervisor gave a promotion to a coworker who deserved it less than I did. My supervisor is unfair. Affective = feeling I dislike my supervisor! C o g n it io n , a ff e ct , a n d b e h a v io r a re c lo se ly r e la te d . Behavioral = action I’m looking for other work; I’ve complained about my supervisor to anyone who would listen. behavioral component An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something. cognitive component The opinion or belief segment of an attitude. 114 PART 2 The Individual His  attitude toward his supervisor is illustrated as follows: The employee thought he deserved the promotion (cognition), he strongly dislikes his super- visor (affect), and he has complained and taken action (behavior). Although we often think cognition causes affect, which then causes behavior, in reality these components are difficult to separate. In organizations, attitudes are important for their behavioral component. If workers believe, for example, that managers, auditors, and engineers are in a conspiracy to make employees work harder for less money, we should try to understand how this attitude formed, how it impacts job behavior, and how it might be changed. Attitudes and Behavior Early research on attitudes assumed they were causally related to behavior—that is, the attitudes people hold determine what they do. However, one researcher— Leon Festinger—argued that attitudes follow behavior. Other researchers have agreed that attitudes predict future behavior.3 Did you ever notice how people change what they say so it doesn’t contradict what they do? Perhaps a friend of yours consistently argued that her apartment complex was better than yours until another friend in your complex asked her to move in with him; once she moved to your complex, you noticed her attitude toward her former apartment became more critical. Cases of attitude following behavior illustrate the effects of cognitive dissonance,4 contradictions individu- als might perceive between their attitudes and their behavior. People seek consistency among their attitudes, and between their attitudes and their behavior.5 Any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable, and individu- als will therefore attempt to reduce it. People seek a stable state, which is a minimum of dissonance. When there is a dissonance, people will alter either the attitudes or the behavior, or they will develop a rationalization for the dis- crepancy. Recent research found, for instance, that the attitudes of employees who had emotionally challenging work events improved after they talked about their experiences with coworkers. Social sharing helped these workers adjust their attitudes to behavioral expectations.6 No individual can avoid dissonance. You know texting while walking is unsafe, but you do it anyway and hope nothing bad happens. Or you give someone advice you have trouble following yourself. The desire to reduce dissonance depends on three factors, including the importance of the elements creating dissonance and the degree of influence we believe we have over the elements. The third factor is the rewards of dissonance; high rewards accompanying high dissonance tend to reduce tension inherent in the dissonance (dissonance is less distressing if accom- panied by something good, such as a higher pay raise than expected). Individuals are more motivated to reduce dissonance when the attitudes are important or when they believe the dissonance is due to something they can control. The most powerful moderators of the attitudes relationship are the impor- tance of the attitude, its correspondence to behavior, its accessibility, the presence of social pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitude.7 Important attitudes reflect our fundamental values, self-interest, or identifica- tion with individuals or groups we value. These attitudes tend to show a strong relationship to our behavior. However, discrepancies between attitudes and behaviors tend to occur when social pressures to behave in certain ways hold exceptional power, as in most organizations. You’re more likely to remember attitudes you frequently express, and attitudes that our memories can easily access are more likely to predict our behavior. The attitude–behavior relation- ship is also likely to be much stronger if an attitude refers to something with which we have direct personal experience. 3-2 Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior. cognitive dissonance Any incompatibil- ity between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes. Attitudes and Job Satisfaction CHAPTER 3 115 Westin Hotels strives for consistency between employee attitudes and behavior through a global wellness program to help employees improve their health. Shown here is Westin’s executive chef, Frank Tujague, whose cooking demonstrations give employees direct experience with healthy ingredients and cooking techniques. Source: Diane Bondareff/AP Images Y ou are peacefully at work in your cu- bicle when your coworker invades your space, sitting on your desk and nearly overturning your coffee. As she talks about the morning meeting, do you: a) stop what you’re doing and listen; or b) explain that you’re in the middle of a project and ask to talk some other time? Your answer may reflect your at- titude toward office talk, but it should be guided by whether your participation is ethical. Sometimes, office conversa- tions can help employees to process information and find solutions to prob- lems. Other times, office talk can be damaging to everyone. Consider the scenario from two perspectives: over- sharing and venting. More than 60 percent of 514 profes- sional employees recently surveyed in- dicated they encounter individuals who frequently share too much about them- selves. Some are self-centered, narcis- sistic, and “think you want to know all the details of their lives,” according to psychologist Alan Hilfer. Despite the drawbacks, oversharers can be strong contributors. Billy Bauer, director of marketing for manufacturer Royce Leather, is an oversharer who boasts about his latest sales—which may push other employees to work harder. Oversharers can also contribute to teamwork when they share personal stories related to organizational goals, according to a Harvard Business Re- view article. Now let’s look at this the other way. According to Yale Professor Amy Wrzesniewski, organization-lovers are often “the first people to become of- fended” when they think the organiza- tion is making wrong decisions. They can become emotional, challenging, and outspoken about their views. If they are not heard, they can increase their venting or withdraw. Yet organization-lovers can be top- performing employees: they are often highly engaged, inspiring, and strong team players who are more likely to work harder than others. Venting their frustrations helps restore a positive at- titude to keep them high performing. Research indicates that venting to co- workers can also build camaraderie. Since guidelines for acceptable office conversation are almost non- existent in the contemporary age of openness, personalization, and trans- parency, you must decide what kinds of office talk are ethical and productive. Knowing who is approaching you for conversation, why they are approaching you, what they may talk about, and how you may keep the discussion produc- tive and ethical can help you choose whether to engage or excuse yourself. Sources: S. Shellenbarger, “Office Over- sharers: Don’t Tell Us about Last Night,” The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2014, D2; A. S. McCance, C. D. Nye, L. Wang, K. S. Jones, and C. Chiu, “Alleviating the Bur- den of Emotional Labor: The Role of Social Sharing,” Journal of Management (February 2013): 392–415; and S. Shellenbarger, “When It Comes to Work, Can You Care too Much?” The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2014, D3. Office Talk An Ethical Choice 116 PART 2 The Individual Job Attitudes We have thousands of attitudes, but OB focuses on a very limited number that form positive or negative evaluations employees hold about their work environ- ments. Much of the research has looked at three attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment.8 Other important attitudes in- clude perceived organizational support and employee engagement. Job Satisfaction and Job Involvement When people speak of employee attitudes, they usually mean job satisfaction, a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its character- istics. A person with high job satisfaction holds positive feelings about the work, while a person with low satisfaction holds negative feelings. Because OB researchers give job satisfaction high importance, we’ll review this attitude in detail later. Related to job satisfaction is job involvement, the degree to which people identify psychologically with their jobs and consider their perceived perfor- mance levels important to their self-worth.9 Employees with high job involve- ment strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do. Another closely related concept is psychological empowerment, or employ- ees’ beliefs in: the degree to which they influence their work environment, their competencies, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy.10 Research suggests that empowerment initiatives need to be tailored to desired behavioral outcomes. Research in Singapore found that good leaders empower their employees by fostering their self-perception of competence— through involving them in decisions, making them feel their work is important, and giving them discretion to “do their own thing.”11 Organizational Commitment An employee with organizational commitment identifies with a particular orga- nization and its goals and wishes to remain a member. Emotional attachment to an organization and belief in its values is the “gold standard” for employee commitment.12 Employees who are committed will be less likely to engage in work with- drawal even if they are dissatisfied because they have a sense of organizational loyalty or attachment.13 Even if employees are not currently happy with their work, they are willing to make sacrifices for the organization if they are commit- ted enough. Perceived Organizational Support Perceived organizational support (POS) is the degree to which employees believe the organization values their contributions and cares about their well- being. An excellent example is R&D engineer John Greene, whose POS is sky- high because when he was diagnosed with leukemia, CEO Marc Benioff and 350 fellow Salesforce.com employees covered all his medical expenses and stayed in touch with him throughout his recovery. No doubt stories like this are part of the reason Salesforce.com was number 8 of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2015.14 People perceive their organizations as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when they see 3-3 Compare the major job attitudes. job satisfaction A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. job involvement The degree to which a person identifies with a job, actively participates in it, and considers performance important to self-worth. psychological empowerment Employees’ belief in the degree to which they affect their work environment, their compe- tence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy in their work. organizational commitment The degree to which an employee identifies with a par- ticular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. perceived organizational support (POS) The degree to which employees be- lieve an organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Attitudes and Job Satisfaction CHAPTER 3 117 their supervisors as supportive.15 POS is a predictor, but there are some cul- tural influences. POS is important in countries where the power distance, the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally, is lower. In low power-distance coun- tries like the United States, people are more likely to view work as an exchange than as a moral obligation, so employees look for reasons to feel supported by their organizations. In high power-distance countries like China, employee POS perceptions are not as deeply based on demonstrations of fairness, sup- port, and encouragement. Employee Engagement Employee engagement is an individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the work he or she does. To evaluate engagement, we might ask employees whether they have access to resources and opportunities to learn new skills, whether they feel their work is important and meaning- ful, and whether interactions with coworkers and supervisors are rewarding.16 Highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep con- nection to their companies; disengaged employees have essentially checked out, putting time but not energy or attention into their work. Engagement becomes a real concern for most organizations because surveys indicate that few employees—between 17 percent and 29 percent—are highly engaged by their work. Engagement levels determine many measurable outcomes. A study of nearly 8,000 business units in 36 companies found that units whose employees reported high-average levels of engagement achieved higher levels of customer satisfaction, were more productive, brought in higher profits, and experienced lower levels of turnover and accidents than at other business units.17 Molson Coors, for example, found engaged employees were five times less likely to have safety incidents, and when an accident did occur it was much less serious and less costly for the engaged employee than for a disengaged one ($63 per power distance The degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally. employee engagement An individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthu- siasm for the work he or she does. Employees waving to guests at Hong Kong Disneyland are committed to the company and its goal of giving visitors a magical and memorable experience. Through careful hiring and extensive training, Disney ensures that employees identify with its priority of pleasing customers by serving them as special guests. Source: Matt Stroshane/UPPA/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom 118 PART 2 The Individual incident versus $392). Caterpillar set out to increase employee engagement and recorded a resulting 80 percent drop in grievances and a 34 percent increase in highly satisfied customers.18 Such promising findings have earned employee engagement a following in many business organizations and management consulting firms. However, the concept generates active debate about its usefulness, partly because of the dif- ficulty of identifying what creates job engagement. The two top reasons for job engagement that participants in one study gave recently were (1) having a good manager they enjoy working for and (2) feeling appreciated by their supervisor. However, most of their other reasons didn’t relate to the job engagement con- struct.19 Another study in Australia found that emotional intelligence is linked to employee engagement.20 Other research suggested that engagement fluctu- ates partially due to daily challenges and demands.21 One review of the job engagement literature concluded, “The meaning of employee engagement is ambiguous among both academic researchers and among practitioners who use it in conversations with clients.” Another reviewer called engagement “an umbrella term for whatever one wants it to be.”22 Research has set out to identify the dimensions of employee engagement, but the debate is far from settled. For now, we can see that job engagement, in its various incarnations, yields important organizational outcomes. Are These Job Attitudes Really All That Distinct? You might wonder whether job attitudes are really distinct. If people feel deeply engaged by their jobs (high job involvement), isn’t it probable they like it, too (high job satisfaction)? Won’t people who think their organization is supportive (high perceived organizational support) also feel committed to it (strong orga- nizational commitment)? Evidence suggests these attitudes are highly related, perhaps to a confusing degree. There is some distinctiveness among attitudes, but they overlap greatly for various reasons, including the employee’s personality. Generally, if you know someone’s level of job satisfaction, you know most of what you need to know about how that person sees the organization. Next, we will consider the implica- tions of job satisfaction and then job dissatisfaction. Job Satisfaction We have already discussed job satisfaction briefly. Now let’s dissect the concept more carefully. How do we measure job satisfaction? What causes an employee to have a high level of job satisfaction? How do satisfied employees affect an or- ganization? Before you answer, a look at the list of worst jobs for job satisfaction (Exhibit 3-2) may give you some indications. You may be surprised that they are not all low-paid jobs. Measuring Job Satisfaction Our definition of job satisfaction—a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics—is broad. Yet that breadth is appropriate. A job is more than just shuffling papers, writing programming code, waiting on customers, or driving a truck. Jobs require interacting with coworkers and bosses, following organizational rules and policies, determining the power structure, meeting performance standards, living with less-than-ideal working conditions, adapting to new technology, and so forth. An employee’s assessment 3-4 Define job satisfaction. Attitudes and Job Satisfaction CHAPTER 3 119 of satisfaction with the job is thus a complex summation of many discrete ele- ments. How, then, do we measure it? Two approaches are popular. 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, is more sophisticated. It identifies key elements in a job such as the type of work, skills needed, supervision, present pay, promotion opportuni- ties, culture, and relationships with coworkers. Respondents rate these on a standardized scale, and researchers add the ratings to create an overall job satisfaction score. Is one of these approaches superior? Intuitively, summing up responses to a number of job factors seems likely to achieve a more accurate evaluation of job satisfaction. Research, however, doesn’t support the intuition.23 This is one of those rare instances in which simplicity seems to work as well as complexity, making one method essentially as valid as the other. Both methods can be help- ful. The single global rating method isn’t very time consuming, while the sum- mation of job facets helps managers zero in on problems and deal with them faster and more accurately. How Satisfied Are People in Their Jobs? Are most people satisfied with their jobs? You may want to consider the OB Poll before you answer. Job satisfaction levels can remain quite consistent over time. For instance, U.S. average job satisfaction levels were consistently high from 1972 to 2006.24 However, economic conditions tend to influence job satisfac- tion rates. In late 2007, the economic contraction precipitated a drop-off in job satisfaction; the lowest point was in 2010, when 42.6 percent of U.S. workers re- ported satisfaction with their jobs.25 Approximately 47.7 percent of U.S. workers reported satisfaction with their jobs in 2014,26 but the rebound was still far off Full-year income $39,000 $45,000 $23,000 $37,000 $42,000 $55,000 $23,000 $29,000 $37,000 $24,300 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 Corrections officer Firefighter Garbage collector Flight attendant Head cook Broadcaster Taxi driver Enlisted military Newspaper reporter Lumberjack Worst Jobs of 2013 for Job Satisfaction*Exhibit 3-2 *Based on physical demands, work environment, income, stress, and hiring outlook. Source: CareerCast.com (2014), http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/worst-jobs-2014. 120 PART 2 The Individual the 1987 level of 61.1 percent.27 Job satisfaction rates tend to vary in different cultures worldwide, and of course there are always competing measurements that offer alternative viewpoints. The facets of job satisfaction levels can vary widely. As shown in Exhibit 3-3, people have typically been more satisfied with their jobs overall, the work itself, and their supervisors and coworkers than they have been with their pay and promotion opportunities. Average Job …