Chapter 4
Attitudes In Organizations
Attitudes – a person’s complexes of beliefs and feelings about specific ideas, situations, or other people.
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are formed by a variety of forces, including our personal values, our experiences, and our
personalities.
Are our beliefs and feelings about things.
Generally formed around a sequence of cognition, affect, and behavioral intention. That is, we
come to know something that we believe to be true (cognition). This knowledge triggers a feeling
(affect). Cognition and affect then together influence how we intend to behave in the future.
Attitudes contain three components: cognition, affect, and intention.
Cognition - the knowledge a person presumes to have about something.
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based on perceptions of truth and reality, and, as we note later, perceptions agree with reality to
varying degrees.
Affect – a person’s feelings toward something.
Intention - component of an attitude that guides a person’s behavior.
Affect, cognition, and behavioral intention are the primary components of an attitude. For instance, you
may like a particular professor (affect), believe that she or he is a great instructor (cognition), and plan to
take another class from the professor next semester (behavioral intention). However, if the class ends up
scheduled at 8:00 a.m. you may reconsider if you have an early morning job or just like to sleep late!
Cognitive Dissonance - an incompatibility or conflict between behavior and an attitude or between two
different attitudes.
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plays an important role in how attitudes affect our behavior.
an incompatibility or conflict between behavior and an attitude or between two different attitudes.
When people experience dissonance, they often use one of four approaches to cope with it. Using the
scenario mentioned earlier, these would include:
1. You can change your behavior and reduce the company’s carbon emissions.
2. You can reduce the felt dissonance by reasoning that pollution is not so important when
compared to the goal of running a profitable company.
3. You can change your attitude toward pollution to decrease your belief that pollution is bad.
4. You can seek additional information to better reason that the benefits to society of manufacturing
the products outweigh the societal costs of polluting.
Interestingly, though, sometimes people are aware of their dissonance but make a conscious decision to
not reduce it. This decision would be influenced by the following three things:
1. Your perception of the importance of the elements that are creating the dissonance: Given your
strong belief in the importance of environmental responsibility, it will be more difficult for you to
ignore the dissonance. If the elements involved in the dissonance are less important to you, it is
easier to ignore it.
2. The amount of influence you feel you have over these elements: If you are being prevented by
the board of directors from investing in pollution-reducing technology, it would be easier to
rationalize the dissonance and not take action. If you are making the decision alone, however,
then you are more likely to address the dissonance in a more active way.
3. The rewards involved in the dissonance: Rewards for dissonance tend to decrease our reactions
to it. If your sizeable annual bonus is based on the firm’s financial performance, for example, and
not its environmental record, then you would likely be less inclined to take action to address the
dissonance.
Attitudes - not as stable as personality attributes.
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Play an important role in organizations, especially attitudes like job satisfaction,
organizational commitment, and employee engagement,
Job Satisfaction
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One of the most commonly studied organizational outcomes in the field of organizational
behavior.
Reflects our attitudes and feelings about our job.
one of the most important job-related attitudes in organizations. It reflects both our attitudes and
our feelings about our job.
Strongly influenced by our personality, values, other attitudes, and the work itself.
influenced by our attitudes and values about work.
Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment reflects the degree to which an employee identifies with the organization
and its goals and wants to stay with the organization.
There are three ways we can feel committed to an employer:
1. Affective commitment: positive emotional attachment to the organization and strong identification
with its values and goals. Employees of a children’s hospital may be affectively committed to the
organization because of its goal of providing top-quality healthcare to kids. Affective commitment
leads to and is related to higher performance.
2. Normative commitment: feeling obliged to stay with an organization for moral or ethical reasons.
An employee who has just finished an MBA paid by a firm’s tuition reimbursement program might
feel a moral obligation to stay with the employer for at least a few years to repay the debt.
Normative commitment is related to higher performance is related to higher performance and
leads employees to stay with an organization because they feel they should.
3. Continuance commitment: staying with an organization because of perceived high economic
and/or social costs involved in leaving. Continuance commitment leads employees to stay with an
organization because they feel that they have to do.
These three types of organizational commitment are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to be committed
to an organization in affective, normative, and continuance ways at the same time, at varying levels of
intensity.
At any point in time, an employee has a “commitment profile” that reflects high or low levels of all three
types of organizational commitment. Different profiles have different effects on workplace behavior such
as job performance, absenteeism, and the chance that the organization member will quit.
Employee Engagement
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Heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job,
organization, manager, or coworker, in turn, influences him/her to apply additional discretionary
effort to his/her work.
Engaged employees – give their full effort to their jobs, often going beyond what is required because
they are passionate about the firm and about their job.
Disengaged employees – do not perform close to their potential capability, lacking the emotional and
motivational connections to their employer that drive discretionary effort. Rather than wanting to do
the work and wanting to do their best, disengaged workers feel they have to do the work they have to
do as a result.
Engagement is enhanced when employees:
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Have clear goals.
Have the resources needed to do a good job.
Get meaningful feedback on their performance.
Are able to use their talents.
Are recognized for doing a good job.
Have positive relationships with coworkers.
Have opportunities to learn and grow.
Have supportive leadership.
Values - ways of behaving of behaving or end-states that are desirable to a person to a group.
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Can be conscious or unconscious.
Work values influence important individual and organizational outcomes including performance and
retention and are often considered important work outcomes in themselves.
Personal values – influence ethical choices.
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Combine with organizational influences to generate decisions that can be significantly different
from those made based solely on our personal values.
Values can be described as terminal or instrumental and as intrinsic or extrinsic.
Types of Values
Terminal and Instrumental Values
One noted researcher has identified two types of values: terminal and instrumental.
Terminal values - reflect our long-term life goals and may include prosperity, happiness, a secure family,
and a sense of accomplishment.
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can change over time depending on our experiences and accomplishments.
Instrumental values - are our preferred means of achieving our terminal values or our preferred ways of
behaving.
Terminal values influence what we want to accomplish; instrumental values influence how we get
there.
Honesty, ambition, and independence are examples of instrumental values that guide our behavior in
pursuit of our terminal goals.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Work Values
Intrinsic work values relate to the work itself.
Extrinsic work values are related to the outcomes of doing work.
Conflicts among Values
Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and individual–organization value conflicts all influence employee attitudes,
retention, job satisfaction, and job performance.
When highly ranked instrumental and terminal values conflict and both cannot be met, we experience
inner conflict and stress.
Intrapersonal value conflict - conflict between the instrumental value of ambition and the terminal value
of happiness.
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are internal to an individual,
Interpersonal value conflicts occur when two different people hold conflicting values.
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often the cause of personality clashes and other disagreements.
Individual-organization value conflict – when an employee’s values conflict with the values of the
organization.
How Values Differ Around the World
Global differences in values can also lead to different managerial behaviors.
Values are influenced by culture.
Research has found that a large number of basic values can be condensed into two major dimensions
that vary across cultures: (1) traditional/secular–rational values and (2) survival/self-expression values.
Traditional/secular-rational values reflect the contrast between societies in which religion is very important
and those in which it is not.
More traditional societies emphasize the importance of parent–child ties and deference to authority, which
is reflected in high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook.
Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite characteristics.
Survival values emphasize economic and physical security.
Self-expression values emphasize subjective well-being, self-expression, and quality of life, giving high
priority to environmental protection, diversity tolerance, and participation in decision-making.
Societies that rank high on self-expression values also tend to have higher interpersonal trust and
tolerance and value individual freedom and self-expression.
The Role of Emotions in Behavior
Employees who effectively manage their emotions and moods can create a competitive advantage for a
company.
Emotions - are intense, short-term physiological, behavioral, and psychological reactions to a specific
object, person, or event that prepare us to respond to it.
Let’s break this definition down into its four important elements:
1. Emotions are short events or episodes. Emotions are relatively short-lived. Excitement about
making a big sale or anxiety over a looming deadline subsides after a little while.
2. Emotions are directed at something or someone. This differentiates emotions from moods, which
are short-term emotional states that are not directed toward anything in particular. Moods are less intense
than emotions and can change quickly. The cause of emotions can be readily identified—making a big
sale or facing a deadline, for example.
3. Emotions are experienced. They involve involuntary changes in heart rate, blood pressure, facial
expressions, animation, and vocal tone. We feel emotion.
4. Emotions create a state of physical readiness through physiological reactions. Increased heart
rate, adrenaline, and eye movements prepare our bodies to take action. Particularly strong emotions
including fear, anger, and surprise can demand our attention, interrupt our thoughts, and motivate us to
respond by focusing our attention on whatever is generating the emotion.
Emotions do not last as long as attitudes.
Attitude can be thought of as a judgment about something, an emotion is experienced or felt. Emotions do
not last as long as attitudes.
Emotions influence how we perceive the world, help us interpret our experiences, and prime us to
respond.
Why is understanding the role of emotions important to organizations?
First, because they are malleable, effective employees and managers know how to positively influence
their own emotions and the emotions of others.
Second, emotions influence both the creation and maintenance of our motivation to engage or not
engage in certain behaviors.
Third, research has found that emotion can influence turnover, decision-making, leadership, helping
behaviors, and teamwork behaviors.
The quality of subordinates’ emotional exchanges with their leader also influences the affective tone of
the workgroup.
Effective leaders use emotion to generate positive follower behaviors.
Affect and Mood
Moods are short-term emotional states that are not directed toward anything in particular.
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harder to cope with and can last for hours or even days.
Influences how we see and react to work events, which influences our performance.
Reflect an individual’s emotional state.
Can be influenced by others.
Affectivity represents our tendency to experience a particular mood or to react to things with certain
emotions.
Types of affectivities: positive and negative.
Individuals with a high positive affectivity experience tend to experience more positive emotions including
cheerfulness or enthusiasm. Individuals higher in negative affectivity tend to experience more negative
emotions, such as irritation or nervousness.
The two dominant dimensions of mood are:
Positive affect, which reflects a combination of high energy and positive evaluation characterized by
emotions like elation.
Negative affect, which comprises feelings of being upset, fearful, and distressed.
Positive and Negative affect are not opposites but are two distinct dimensions. Not being elated does not
mean that you are upset, and not being sad does not mean that you are elated.
Affect tends to be somewhat dispositional and fairly stable over time.
Perception in Organizations
Perception—the set of processes by which an individual becomes aware of and interprets information
about the environment—is another important element of workplace behavior.
People perceive the same things in very different ways.55 Moreover, people often assume that reality is
objective and that we all perceive the same things in the same way.
Basic Perceptual Processes
Two basic perceptual processes are particularly relevant to managers—selective perception and
stereotyping.
Selective perception is the process of screening out information that we are uncomfortable with or that
contradicts our beliefs.
Stereotyping is categorizing or labeling people on the basis of a single attribute. Certain forms of
stereotyping can be useful and efficient.
Common attributes from which people often stereotype are race and sex.
Stereotyping and selection perception are often the underlying causes of these errors, but other factors
may also come into play.
Errors in Perception
Perception shortcuts, for example, may play a role. One perception shortcut is categorization, which
reflects our tendency to put things into groups or categories (e.g., Southerner, energetic, athlete, etc.). We
then exaggerate the similarities within and the differences between the groups. This explains our
tendency to see members of a particular group to which we do not belong as being more alike than they
actually are. Have you ever seen someone work quickly and thought to yourself how good he or she is at
that job? If so, you may have put that person into a “high performer” category.
After we put people into categories, selective perception leads to selectively interpreting what we see
based on our interests, expectations, experience, and attitudes.
Selective perception reinforces stereotypes as the perceiver focuses on information and behaviors that
confirm rather than negate the assigned stereotype.
Managers need to be aware of this bias in order to evaluate subordinates more objectively and
accurately:
Halo Effect - when we form a general impression about something or someone based on a single
(typically good) characteristic.
Horns effect – opposite of halo effect. This occurs when we form a general impression based on a single
“bad” characteristic.
Contrast effect - occurs when we evaluate our own or another person’s characteristics through
comparisons with other people we have recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same
characteristics.
Projection occurs when we project our own characteristics onto other people.
First-impression bias may also be relevant. Research has found that not only do we tend to avoid
people after we have had a negative reaction to them, but also negative impressions are harder to
change than positive ones. First impressions are formed quickly.
Self-fulfilling Prophecies – if we categorize a person as untrustworthy, we are likely to reat that
individual with suspicion and distrust.
Perception and Attribution
Attribution refers to the way we explain the causes of our own as well as other people’s behaviors and
achievements and understand why people do what they do.
Our job performance and even our ultimate survival in an organization often depend on the accuracy of
our attributions for our own and supervisor, coworker, and customer behaviors and outcomes.
1. Consistency: Has the person regularly behaved this way or experienced this outcome in the past? If
your roommate consistently earns good grades in a subject, you are more likely to attribute a recent high
test grade to an internal cause like ability or effort. If his or her grades earlier in the semester have been
lower, you are more likely to attribute the grade to an external cause like luck. Consistency leads to
internal attributions.
2. Distinctiveness: Does the person act the same way or receive similar outcomes in different types of
situations? Low distinctiveness occurs when the person frequently acts in a certain way or receives
certain outcomes which leads to internal attributions. If your roommate is a straight-A student, the
distinctiveness of his or her recent high grade would be low, and you would make internal attributions for
it. If your roommate is a C student, the distinctiveness of the recent high grade would be high and you
would attribute it to external causes.
3. Consensus: Would others behave similarly in the same situation or receive the same outcome? If
almost everyone earns an A in the course in which your roommate just did well, consensus would be high
and you would make external attributions for your roommate’s grade. If consensus is low and few
students do well in the class, you would make internal attributions for the grade.
Self-handicapping, a related aspect of attribution, occurs when people create obstacles for themselves
that make success less likely. It tends to emerge during adolescence among persons with high concern
about looking competent.
Examples include using drugs and alcohol, refusing to practice, and reducing effort. Creating these
impediments obviously decreases motivation and performance. These behaviors may sound silly, but they
are very real and serve to protect the person’s sense of self-competence. If a self-handicapping person
does poorly, the obstacle creates an easy explanation for the failure. If the person succeeds in spite of the
obstacle, the success seems even greater.
Students sometimes use self-handicapping attributions, perhaps by not studying for a test. They might
feel that:
• If they study hard and give it their best shot but fail, they will look and feel incompetent.
• If they study hard and pass, the hard work will reduce the meaning of the success. (If they were really
smart, they would not have had to work so hard.)
• If they do not study and fail, the failure can be easily explained by the lack of effort. They can still believe
that they could have succeeded if they had really tried. Even if they fail the test, no one will have evidence
that they are stupid.
• If they do not study but still manage to succeed, then the only explanation for the success is that they
have really high ability.
Perception and perceptual processes play a major role in how people feel about fairness, justice, and
trust.
Organizational fairness refers to employees’ perceptions of organizational events, policies, and
practices as being fair or not fair.
Fairness is a primary concern in relationships where subordinates must rely on others in higher positions.
Distributive fairness refers to the perceived fairness of the outcome received, including resource
distributions, promotions, hiring, and layoff decisions, and raises. Imagine that you and a friend both apply
for a job with a local company at the same time. Although you believe that you are more qualified, your
friend is offered a job and you are not. Would this feel fair? Your belief about the fairness of you, not
getting the job reflects your perception of distributive fairness.
Distributive fairness relates only to the outcome received, not to the fairness of the process that
generated the decision.
Procedural fairness addresses the fairness of the procedures used to generate the outcome (e.g., what
rules were followed, whether people had the opportunity to express opinions and influence the outcome,
etc.).
Interactional fairness is whether the amount of information about the decision and the process was
adequate, and the perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment and explanations received during the
decision-making process.
Interactional fairness describes two specific types of interpersonal treatment.
1. interpersonal fairness, which reflects the degree to which people are treated with politeness,
dignity, and respect by authorities or third parties involved in executing procedures or determining
outcomes.
2. Informational fairness, which focuses on the extent to which employees receive adequate
information and explanations about decisions affecting their working lives.
Perception and Trust
Trust - the expectation that another person will not act to take advantage of us regardless of our ability to
monitor or control him or her.
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critical to long-term relationships and is positively related to job performance.
Stress - caused by a stimulus, that the stimulus can be either physical or psychological, and that the
individual responds to the stimulus in some way.
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a person’s adaptive response to a stimulus that places excessive psychological or physical
demands on him or her.
Stress Components:
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2.
3.
4.
Notion of Adaptation - people may adapt to stressful circumstances in any of several ways.
Role of Stimulus – generally called stressor, is anything that induces stress.
Stressors can be either psychological or physical.
the demands the stressor places on the individual must be excessive for stress to actually result.
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) - Identifies three stages of response to a stressor: alarm,
resistance, and exhaustion.
Eustress – the pleasurable stress that accompanies positive events.
Distress – the unpleasant stress that accompanies negative events.
Causes of Stress:
1. Organizational stressors – various factors in the workplace that can cause stress.
General sets:
a. Task Demands - stressors associated with the specific job a person performs. Such as
occupation, a lack of job security, and overload.
b. Physical Demands - its physical requirements on the worker; these demands are a
function of the physical characteristics of the setting and the physical tasks the job
involves. Such as temperature and office design.
c. Role Demands - demands can also be stressful to people in organizations. A role is a set
of expected behaviors associated with a particular position in a group or organization.
d. Interpersonal Demands - group pressures, leadership, and interpersonal conflict.
i. Group pressures may include pressure to restrict output, pressure to conform to
the group’s norms, and so forth.
ii. Leadership style – also may cause stress. Suppose and employee needs a
great deal of social support from his leader. This leader, however, is quite
brusque and shows no concern or compassion for him. This employee will
probably feel stressed.
iii. Interpersonal Conflict – Conflicting personalities and behaviors may also cause
stress. Conflict can occur when two or more individuals must work together even
though their personalities, attitudes and behaviors differ.
Consequences of Stress
Individual Consequences – the outcome that mainly affect the individual.
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Behavioral consequences of stress may harm the person under stress or others. One such
behavior is smoking.
Psychological consequences of stress relate to a person’s mental health and well-being. When
people experience too much stress at work, they may become depressed or find themselves
sleeping too much or not enough. Stress may also lead to family problems and sexual difficulties.
Medical consequences of stress affect a person’s physical well-being. Heart disease and stroke,
among other illnesses, have been linked to stress. Other common medical problems resulting
from too much stress include headaches, backaches, ulcers and related stomach and intestinal
disorders, and skin conditions such as acne and hives.
Organizational Consequences – include the decline in performance, withdrawal, and negative changes
in attitude.
Burnout - a general feeling of exhaustion that develops when a person simultaneously experiences too
much pressure and has too few sources of satisfaction.
Individual Coping Strategies
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Exercise
Relaxation
Time Management
Develop and maintain support groups.
Organizational Coping Strategies
1. Institutional programs for managing stress are undertaken through established organizational
mechanisms.
2. Collateral stress program - an organizational program specifically created to help employees
deal with stress.
3. Career Development Programs
Work-Life Balance
Work-life relationships – interrelationship between a person’s work life and personal life.
Stress will occur when there is a basic inconsistency or incompatibility between a person’s work
and life dimensions.
SUMMARY
Attitudes, values and emotions, perception, and stress are all important factors that influence
organizational behavior.
Our beliefs and feelings about something influence our attitudes about it.
Our attitudes then affect our behavior through our intentions.
The three most important job-related attitudes are job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and
employee engagement.
Job satisfaction reflects our attitudes and feelings about our job.
Organizational commitment is the degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and its
goals and wants to stay with the organization.
Employee engagement reflects a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee
has for his or her job, organization, manager, or coworkers that, in turn, influences the employee to apply
additional discretionary effort to his or her work.
There are many different kinds of values that can be held by people. Not surprisingly, then, it is somewhat
common for an individual to have conflicting values.
Values also differ across cultures in different parts of the globe.
Emotions, affect, and mood are also important contributors to behavior.
Emotions are intense, short-term physiological, behavioral, and psychological reactions to a specific
object, person, or event that prepare us to respond to it.
Mood is a short-term emotional state not directed toward anything in particular.
Affect represents our tendency to experience a particular mood or to react to things with certain
emotions.
Perception is the set of processes by which a person becomes aware of and interprets information about
the environment. Basic perceptual processes include selective perception and stereotyping.
The halo effect occurs when we form an overall impression about someone on the basis of a single
(typically good) characteristic.
The contrast effect happens when we evaluate someone by comparing that person to other people, we
have recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics. We also project our own
characteristics onto others who we perceive to be similar to us in some ways.
Perception and attribution are also closely related.
Internal attributions include ability and effort.
External attributions include luck, not having sufficient resources, and the interference or help of other
people.
Distributive fairness is the perception of fairness of the outcome received.
Procedural fairness is the fairness of the policies and procedures used to make the decision and
determine the outcomes.
Interpersonal fairness refers to the politeness, dignity, and respect with which people were treated
during the decision-making process.
Informational fairness focuses on the adequacy of the information and explanations received during the
decision-making process.
Trust is an outcome of fairness.
Stress is an individual’s response to a strong stimulus.
Challenging events are stressful only when also accompanied by negative emotions.
Some stress is actually beneficial.
Functional stress is the experience of a manageable level of stress for a reasonable period of time that
generates positive emotions including satisfaction, excitement, and enjoyment.
Dysfunctional stress is an overload of stress from a situation of either under- or over-arousal that
continues for too long.
The GAS outlines the basic stress process.
Stress can be caused by task, physical, role, and interpersonal demands.
Consequences of stress include organizational and individual outcomes, as well as burnout. Several
things can be done to manage stress.