2. Organizational behavior (OB)
• The study of human behavior, attitudes, and
performance in organizations.
Attitude = a settled way of thinking or feeling about
something.
Behaviour = the way in which one acts or conducts
oneself, especially towards others.
Performance = the action or process of performing a task
or function.
Definitions
3. Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field
Psychology
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and
sometimes change the behavior of humans and other
animals.
Sociology
The study of people in relation to their fellow human
beings.
Social Psychology
An area within psychology that blends concepts from
psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence
of people on one another.
4. Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field
Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and
their activities.
7. Attitudes
• Evaluative statements or judgments (either
favorable or unfavorable) concerning objects,
people, or events.
• Reflect how one feels about something.
• For instance: “I like my job. I am expressing
my attitude about work.
8. Components of Attitude
Three components of an attitude:
• Affective – The emotional or feeling segment
of an attitude.
• Cognitive – The opinion or belief segment of
an attitude.
• Behavioral – An intention to behave in a
certain way toward someone or something.
10. Example
• My pay is low….??
• I am angry over how little I’m paid…??
• “I’m going to look for another Job..??
11. Does Behavior Always Follow from
Attitudes?
• It assumed that attitudes and behavior are
causally related that people do what they like :
examples—
• People watch TV program which they like.
• Employees avoid assignments they find
distasteful.
12. Does Behavior Always Follow from
Attitudes? (cont’d)
• Leon Festinger – No, the reverse is sometimes
true!
• Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility
between two or more attitudes or between
behavior and attitudes
13. Does Behavior Always Follow from
Attitudes? (cont’d)
• Example: You know texting while walking is
unsafe, but you do it anyway and hope nothing
bad happens.
• Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
• Importance of the elements creating the
dissonance.
• Influence the individual believes he/she has
over the elements.
• Rewards that may be involved in dissonance.
14. Predicting Behavior from Attitudes
• Attitudes based on personal experience are
stronger predictors.
Asking college students with no significant work
experience how they would respond to working for an
authoritarian supervisor is far less likely to predict actual
behavior than asking that same question of employees
who have actually worked for such an individual.
15. Major Job Attitudes
• Job Satisfaction
• A positive feelings that an individual holds
toward his or her job.
• Job Involvement
• Identifying with the job, actively participating
in it, and considering performance important
to self-worth.
16. Major Job Attitudes (cont’d)
• Psychological Empowerment
• Employees’ belief in the degree to which they
affect their work environment, their competence,
the meaningfulness of their job, and their
perceived autonomy in their work.
• Organizational Commitment
• Identifying with a particular organization and its
goals, while wishing to maintain membership in
the organization.
17. Dimensions of Organizational
Commitment
• Three separate dimensions:
• Affective commitment – an emotional attachment
to the organization and a belief in its values.
• Continuance commitment – the perceived economic
value of remaining with an organization compared to
leaving it.
• Normative commitment – an obligation to remain
with the organization for moral or ethical reasons.
• Researchers have confirmed a positive relationship
between OC and Job performance, and inverse
relationships found with slowness, absenteeism and
turnover.
18. Major Job Attitudes (cont’d)
• 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 and in low power distant cultures.
• High POS is related to higher OCBs and performance.
19. Major Job Attitudes (cont’d)
• Employee Engagement
• The degree of involvement, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the job.
• Engaged employees are passionate about their work
and company.
• 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
meaningful?
• Research shows that EE increase because of having a
good manager employee enjoy working for; and
feeling appreciated by their supervisor.
20. An Application: Attitude Surveys
Attitude Surveys
Drawing responses from
employees through
questionnaires about
how they feel about
their jobs, work
groups, supervisors,
and the organization.
Concerning Issues
a) Reliability
b) Validity
22. Job Satisfaction
• A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics or an individual's
emotional response to work or workplace.
• How to measure?
• Single global rating (one question/one answer) –
(All things considered, how satisfied are you with your
job?)
• Summation score (many questions/one average) –
How Satisfied Are People in Their Jobs?
• In general, people are satisfied with their jobs.
• Depends on facets of satisfaction—tend to be less
satisfied with pay and promotion opportunities.
23. Causes of Job Satisfaction
• Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.
• Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily
job satisfaction.
• Personality can influence job satisfaction.
• Negative people are usually not satisfied with
their jobs.
• Those with positive core self-evaluation are more
satisfied with their jobs.
24. Causes of Job Satisfaction (cont’d)
• Job Conditions generally, interesting jobs that
provide training, variety, independence, and control
satisfy most employees.
• Interdependence, feedback, social support, and
interaction with coworkers outside the workplace
are also strongly related to job satisfaction.
25. How Employees CanExpress Dissatisfaction
Exit
Behavior directed toward
leaving the organization.
Voice
Active and constructive
attempts to improve
conditions.
Neglect
Allowing conditions to
worsen.
Loyalty
Passively waiting for
conditions to improve.
Active
Passive
Constructive
Destructive
26. Job Satisfaction and Job Performance
• Satisfied workers are more productive AND more
productive workers are more satisfied!
• The causality may run both ways.
• Worker productivity is higher in organizations
with more satisfied workers.
27. Job Satisfactionand Customer Satisfaction
• Satisfied frontline employees increase
customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Satisfied employees increase customer
satisfaction because:
• They are more friendly, upbeat, and responsive.
• They are less likely to turnover, which helps build
long-term customer relationships.
• They are experienced.
28. Job Satisfaction and 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.
• More recent evidence however, suggests that
satisfaction influences OCB, but through perceptions
of fairness.
• Satisfied employees who feel fairly treated by and are
trusting of the organization are more willing to engage
in behaviors that go beyond the normal expectations
of their job
29. Job Satisfaction and Life Satisfaction
• Research indicates that Job satisfaction is positively
correlated with life satisfaction, and our attitudes
and experiences in life spill over into our job
approaches and experiences.
• Life satisfaction decreases when people become
unemployed, according to research in Germany, and
not just because of the loss of income.
30. Counterproductive Work Behavior
• CWB: Intentional employee behavior that is contrary
to the interests of the organization.
• Substance abuse, stealing at work, undue socializing,
gossiping and absenteeism are examples of
behaviors that are destructive to organizations.
• They are indicators of a broader syndrome called
counterproductive work behavior (CWB; related
terms are deviant behavior in the workplace, or
simply withdrawal behavior)
31. Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism
• Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to
miss work.
• A consistent negative relationship between
satisfaction and absenteeism, but the correlation
is moderate to week.
• Satisfied employees have fewer avoidable
absences.
32. Job Satisfaction and Turnover
• Satisfaction is also negatively related to turnover,
but the correlation is stronger than what we found
for absenteeism.
• Evidence indicates that an important moderator of
the satisfaction-turnover relationship is the
employee’s level of performance.
• Satisfied employees are less likely to quit
• Organizations take actions to retain high performers
and to weed out lower performers.
33. Job Satisfaction and Workplace Deviance
• Job dissatisfaction predicts a lot of specific
behaviors, including unionization attempts,
substance abuse, stealing at work, undue socializing,
and lateness.
• If employers want to control the undesirable
consequences of job dissatisfaction, they had best
attack the source of the problem – dissatisfaction –
rather than trying to control the different responses
.
34. Managerial Implications
• Managers should watch employee attitudes
• They give warnings of potential problems
• They influence behavior
• Managers should try to increase job satisfaction and
generate positive job attitudes
• Reduces costs by lowering turnover, absenteeism,
lateness, and theft, and increasing OCB
• Focus on the intrinsic parts of the job: make work
challenging and interesting
• Pay is not enough
35. Group Activity
• Situation:
• You are an expert who has been asked to provide your
expertise on the following issue. The Residential Life
Department of a large university has been experiencing a
usually high rate of turnover among its Resident Assistants
(RA’s) during the last year. Over 60% of the university’s RA’s
have recently left their positions, and with those that remain,
poor performance is commonplace. This situation is very
troubling, given the costs of training RA’s and of replacing
them when they leave.
• Given what you know about how Organizational Behavioral
Expert help organizations to address the attitudes of their
employees:
• What steps would you undertake to examine the problem?
• What questions would you ask? and
• What recommendations might you make?
3-34
