Employee attitude,
satisfaction, emotion
and commitment
Prepared By:
Siti Rokiah Siwok
for UHS 2062 at UTM Skudai Johore.
srsiwwok@gmail.com
Job related attitudes
 Assessing employee attitudes about their jobs is one of
the major tasks of IO psychologist.
 Among the most commonly studied job related
attitudes are job satisfaction and organizational
commitment.
 Although 2 different constructs, j ob satisfaction and
organizational commitment are highly correlated and
result in similar employee behaviours.
Satisfaction & org.
commitment
 Meta analyses show that satisfied employees
tend to be committed employees.
However, the relationship between job
satisfaction and performance are not
consistent across people or jobs.
.
Job satisfaction and
performance
 The relationship between job satisfaction and
performance is not consistent across people
or jobs.
 E.g: For complex jobs, there is a strong
relationship between job satisfaction and
performance, than jobs of low or medium
complexity .
Job satisfaction and
commitment
 Job satisfaction and commitment are
multifaceted.
 Examples of job satisfaction facets are pay,
supervision, coworkers, promotion, work
facility, worksite, work policy etc
 An employee may be satisfied with one facet,
(such as pay) but not another ( such as work
facility).
Organizational commitment
 There are three motivational facets to
organizational commitment ( Meyer and
Allen, 1997):
 Affective commitment
 Continuance commitment
 Normative commitment
 ( Read Aamodt, 2010 for details )
Individual Differences
affecting Job Satisfaction
 See Aamodt 2010 pages 367-367
Approaches to study job
satisfaction
 Global approach
 Facet approach
Assessment of job
satisfaction
 Job satisfaction can be assessed by asking
how employees feel about their job, either by
using questionnaire or interview.
 Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire
 Job descriptive index
What are the antecedents of
Job satisfaction?
What causes employees to be
satisfied with and committed
to their jobs?
Perspectives to the study of
job satisfaction
 Personality perspective
 Environmental perspective
 Interactionist perspective
Genetic Predisposition
 Genetic predisposition (30%), a study by
Arvey et. al.1989, 1994), due to the presence
of inherited personality traits such as
“negative affectivity”.
 Genetic predisposition studies are
controversial and received lots of criticism
 Any takers for further studies?
Personality variables
Results of Judge and Bono’s (2001) ,Meta analysis
Core evaluation
trait
Correlation with
job satisfaction
Correlation with
job performance
Self esteem
.26
.26
Self efficacy
.45
.23
Internal locus of control
.32
.22
Emotional stability
.24
.19
Life satisfaction
 People who are satisfied with other aspects
of life seems to be satisfied with their jobs.,
that is “people who are happy with their jobs
are happy with their life and vice versa”
 Fancy using “John Travolta method”?
Others: Culture and
intelligence
 Culture plays great role
 …and if you are too “ smart”, you won’t be
hired.
Commitment
 Affective commitment:
 the extent to which an employee wants
to remain with the organization , cares
about the organization and willing to
exert effort on its behalf.
Commitment
 Continuance commitment:
 The extent an employee believes that
s/he must remain with the organization
due to the time , efforts and expense
that s/he has invested.
Commitment
 Normative commitment:
 The extent the employee feel
obliged to the organization, and
thus feels that s/he must remain
with the organization.
Consequences of
Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction
and Negative Work Attitude
 Job performance
 Turnover
 Absenteeism
References
 Aamodt, M.G (2007). Industrial and
organizational psychology. An applied
approach. Belmont, CA: Thomson