This document defines attitudes and values, and discusses their components and how they can be measured. It provides an overview of: - The three components of attitudes - cognitive, affective, and behavioral - Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory and how individuals seek to reduce inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviors - Major job attitudes like job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and perceived organizational support - Hofstede's framework for assessing cultural values dimensions like power distance, individualism vs collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance - The Rokeach Value Survey's classification of terminal and instrumental values and how values can differ between cultures

1. ATTITUDES &
VALUES
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Defining Attitudes
 Attitude is a hypothetical construct
 Cannot be directly observed – inferred from what
people say and do
 Attitude objects are concrete, abstract, about people,
groups of people and inanimate objects
 Behaviour towards objects is dependent upon attitude
towards objects
 Attitudes tend to persist unless something is done to
change them
 Attitudes can fall anywhere along a continuum from
very favourable to very unfavourable.
 Attitudes are directed towards some object about which
a person has feelings or affect and beliefs

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HOW MUCH DO YOU SEE OF AN ICEBERG?

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ONLY 10% OF
ANY ICEBERG
IS VISIBLE.
THE
REMAINING
90% IS BELOW
SEA LEVEL.

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SEA LEVEL
BEHAVIOR
VALUES – STANDARDS – JUDGMENTS
ATTITUDE
MOTIVES – ETHICS - BELIEFS
KNOWN
TO OTHERS
UNKNOWN
TO OTHERS

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Evaluative statements or
judgments concerning objects,
people, or events.
Three components of an attitude:
The emotionalThe emotional
or feelingor feeling
segment of ansegment of an
attitudeattitude
The opinion orThe opinion or
belief segment ofbelief segment of
an attitudean attitude An intention toAn intention to
behave in a certainbehave in a certain
way toward someoneway toward someone
or somethingor something

7. THREE COMPONENTS OF
ATTITUDES
 Cognitive Component – The opinion
or belief segment of an attitude.
 Affective Component – The
emotional or feeling segment of an
attitude.
 Behavioral Component – An
intention to behave in a certain way
towards someone or something.
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Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance
 Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between
two or more attitudes or between behavior and
attitudes
 People’s attitudes or beliefs can be consonant (in line),
dissonant (at odds), or not related to each other
 If dissonant, we experience psychological discomfort
 Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap, or
dissonance, to reach stability and consistency
 Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes,
modifying the behaviors, or through rationalization
 Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
 Importance of elements
 Degree of individual influence
 Rewards involved in dissonance

9. MODERATING VARIABLES
 The most powerful moderators of the attitude-
behavior relationship are:
 Importance of the attitude
 Correspondence to behavior
 Accessibility
 Existence of social pressures
 Personal and direct experience of the
attitude.
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10. CHANGING ATTITUDES
 Barriers to changing attitudes:
1. Prior commitment
2. Insufficient information
 Methods to overcome barriers and change
attitudes:
1. Providing new information
2. Use of fear
3. Resolving Discrepancies
4. Influence of friends and peers
5. The co-opting approach
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11. WHAT ARE THE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES?
 Job Satisfaction
 A positive feeling about the job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics
 Job Involvement
 Degree of psychological identification with the
job where perceived performance is important to
self-worth
 Psychological Empowerment
 Belief in the degree of influence over the job,
competence, job meaningfulness, and autonomy
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12. ANOTHER MAJOR JOB ATTITUDE
 Organizational Commitment
 Identifying with a particular organization and its
goals, while wishing to maintain membership in
the organization.
 Three dimensions:
 Affective – emotional attachment to
organization
 Continuance Commitment – economic value of
staying
 Normative - moral or ethical obligations
 Has some relation to performance, especially for
new employees.
 Less important now than in past – now perhaps
more of occupational commitment, loyalty to
profession rather than a given employer. 12
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13. AND YET MORE MAJOR JOB ATTITUDES…
 Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
 Degree to which employees believe the organization values
their contribution and cares about their well-being.
 Higher when rewards are fair, employees are involved in
decision-making, and supervisors are seen as supportive.
 High POS is related to higher OCBs and performance.
 Employee Engagement
 The degree of involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the job.
 Engaged employees are passionate about their work and
company.
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14. OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
 Job Performance
 Satisfied workers are more productive AND
more productive workers are more satisfied!
 The causality may run both ways.
 Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
 Satisfaction influences OCB through perceptions
of fairness.
 Customer Satisfaction
 Satisfied frontline employees increase customer
satisfaction and loyalty.
 Absenteeism
 Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to
miss work.
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15. MORE OUTCOMES OF JOB SATISFACTION
 Turnover
 Satisfied employees are less likely to quit.
 Many moderating variables in this relationship.
 Economic environment and tenure
 Organizational actions taken to retain high
performers and to weed out lower performers
 Workplace Deviance
 Dissatisfied workers are more likely to unionize,
abuse substances, steal, be tardy, and withdraw.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact
of job satisfaction on the bottom line, most
managers are either unconcerned about or
overestimate worker satisfaction. 15
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16. VALUES
Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-
state of conduct or end-state of existence is personally
or socially preferable to an opposite or converse
mode of conduct or end-state of existence.
 Attributes of Values:
 Content Attribute – that the mode of conduct or end-
state is important
 Intensity Attribute – just how important that content is.
 Value System
 A person’s values rank ordered by intensity
 Tends to be relatively constant and consistent 16
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17. IMPORTANCE OF VALUES
 Provide understanding of the attitudes, motivation,
and behaviors
 Influence our perception of the world around us
 Represent interpretations of “right” and “wrong”
 Imply that some behaviors or outcomes are preferred
over others
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18. CLASSIFYING VALUES –
ROKEACH VALUE SURVEY
 Terminal Values
 Desirable end-states of existence; the goals that a
person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime
 Instrumental Values
 Preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving
one’s terminal values
 People in same occupations or categories tend to hold
similar values
 But values vary between groups
 Value differences make it difficult for groups to negotiate
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19. VALUES IN THE ROKEACH SURVEY
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20. VALUES
 Values differ across cultures.
 Hofstede’s Framework for assessing
culture – five value dimensions:
 Power Distance
 Individualism vs. Collectivism
 Masculinity vs. Femininity
 Uncertainty Avoidance
 Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation
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21. HOFSTEDE’S FRAMEWORK:
POWER DISTANCE
 The extent to which a society accepts that power in
institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
 Low distance
 Relatively equal power between those with
status/wealth and those without status/wealth
 High distance
 Extremely unequal power distribution between those
with status/wealth and those without status/wealth
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22. HOFSTEDE’S FRAMEWORK:
INDIVIDUALISM
 Individualism
 The degree to which people prefer to act as
individuals rather than a member of groups
 Collectivism
 A tight social framework in which people expect
others in groups of which they are a part to look
after them and protect them
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23. HOFSTEDE’S FRAMEWORK:
MASCULINITY
 Masculinity
 The extent to which the society values work roles
of achievement, power, and control, and where
assertiveness and materialism are also valued
 Femininity
 The extent to which there is little differentiation
between roles for men and women
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24. HOFSTEDE’S FRAMEWORK:
UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE
 The extent to which a society feels threatened by
uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to
avoid them
 High Uncertainty Avoidance:
Society does not like ambiguous situations and tries to avoid
them.
 Low Uncertainty Avoidance:
Society does not mind ambiguous situations and embraces
them.
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25. HOFSTEDE’S FRAMEWORK:
TIME ORIENTATION
 Long-term Orientation
 A national culture attribute that emphasizes the
future, thrift, and persistence
 Short-term Orientation
 A national culture attribute that emphasizes the
present and the here and now
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26. HOFSTEDE’S FRAMEWORK: AN
ASSESSMENT
 There are regional differences within countries
 The original data is old and based on only one
company
 Hofstede had to make many judgment calls while
doing the research
 Some results don’t match what is believed to be true
about given countries
 Despite these problems it remains a very popular
framework
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