ATTITUDES, VALUES AND JOB SATISFACTION

ASHRAF MULLA
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ATTITUDES
 Concept of attitudes Attitudes are evaluative statements. They respond one s feeling either favourably or unfavourably to person, object or/and events. In other words, attitude reflect how one feels about something. For example, professor Kotler says I like teaching, he is expressing his attitude about his work.
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According to Munn, Attitude are learned predisposition towards aspect of our environment. They be positively or negatively directed towards certain people, service or institution.
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 Salient Features: The salient features of attitudes flowing from its definitions are summarized as follows: 1. Attitudes are related to feelings and beliefs of people. 2. Attitudes respond to persons, objective or events. 3. Attitudes affect behaviour either positively or negatively. 4. Attitudes undergo changes.
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Attitudes affect perception and, in turn, behaviour. This underlines the need for managers to understand different types of attitudes and their formation, how attitudes are measured and what cause change in attitudes.
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Formation of Attitudes
 Attitudes are not inherited. These are acquired or learned by the people from the environment in which they interact. The formation of attitudes is broadly classified into two sources: 1. Direct Experience, and 2. Social Learning.

 Direct Experience: Attitude are formed on the basis of one s past experience. How do you know that you like organisational behaviour or dislike financial management? The answer to it is that you have formed these attitudes from your experience in studying the two subjects. Research has shown that attitudes derived from the direct experience are more powerful, stronger, durable and are difficult to change than are attitudes that are formed through indirect experience.
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 Social Learning: The process of deriving attitudes from family, peer groups religious organisations and culture is called social learning. In social learning, an individual acquires attitudes from his/her environment in an indirect manner. Social learning starts from early age when children derive certain attitudes from their parents.

Types of Attitudes
 Individual can have numerous attitudes, but organisational behaviour focuses on job related attitudes only. Job-related attitudes are of three types-job satisfaction, job involvement and organisational commitment.  Job satisfaction: The term job satisfaction refers to an individual s pleasurable or positive emotional state toward his or her job. Job satisfaction is related with the five specific dimensions of the job: pay,
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the work it self, promotion opportunities, supervision, and co-workers. When people speak of employee attitude, more often than not, they mean job satisfaction. In fact, the two terms attitude and job satisfaction are frequently used interchangeably. Without question, job satisfaction has received bulk of attention in organisational behaviour. Therefore, this is discussed in considerable detail later in this chapter.
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 Job Involvement: Job involvement is the degree to which employee immerse themselves in their job, invest time and energy in them, and consider work as a central part of their overall lives. Employees with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with their job and take utmost care about the kind of job they do. Such employees seldom will be tardy and absent. They will attempt to be high performer.
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 Organisational Commitment: Organisational Commitment is attitude about employee s loyalty to their organisation. It is process through which employees identify with the organisation and want to maintain membership in the organiastion. In fact, like a strong magnetic force attracting one metallic object to another, organisational commitment is a measure of the employees willingness to remain with a firm in the future also.
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It is usually stronger among longer-term employees, and those who have relished personal success in the organisation. So, while job involvement means identifying with one s job, organisational commitment means identifying with one s employing organisation.

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Measurement of Attitude
We have maintained that attitudes affect behaviour. Changes in attitudes make behaviour unpredictable. But, the managers need to know the dimension of attitude so as to anticipate employees behaviour at work. One way to know the attitudinal dimension is attitude measurement.
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There are many methods of attitude measurement. All methods are classified into four types. 1. Self-Report 2. Indirect Tests 3. Direct Observation technique 4. Psychological Reaction Techniques
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However, attitude measurement of employees in organisations is most commonly carried out with Self-Report Method. Self-report usually elicits responses from employees through questionnaires dealing with their feeling about their work and related matters. Self-report is carried out through the use of attitude surveys.
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Attitude surveys contain a set of statements or question to be answered by the employees A definite scale is assigned to each answer. Scaling-terms assigned are tailored to obtain the information what managers actually want.
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Statement in the questionnaire is: My job makes the best use of my abilities
Attitude scaling for the statements
Strongly Agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree 5 4 3 2 1

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There are three types of attitude scaling commonly used in attitudes measurement of employees in the organisation. These are: 1. Equal Appearing Interval Scale(L.L. Thurstone Scale) 2. Summated Rating Scales (Rensis Likert Scale) 3. Semantic Differential (C.E. Osgood et al Scale)
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Equal Appearing Interval Scales: Perhaps the most widely used procedure of attitude measurement is L.L. Thurstone s technique of equal appearing interval scales. It is simple in application as it requires only one judgement for each item/statement. The statements range from pile 1 to pile 11 corresponding to the most favourable and the most unfavourable respectively.
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The other statement fall between these two extremes. The scale so prepared are then presented to the respondents for their responses on the statements . The responses given by the respondents are then summed up.
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 Summated Rating Scales: This scale is experimented by Likert for measuring attitudes. The scale has five point viz, always, often, sometimes, seldom and never. The statement is presented to the respondent who checks one of the five point assigned to each statements. These points indicate the degree of agreement or disagreement with the statement given to the respondents. then.. The score or individual s attitude.
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The Likert scale is considered better as compared to Thurstone s one because of its simplicity in making numerous statements which require only one statement for every aspect.
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 Semantic Differentials: Semantic differential refers to the successive allocation made of a concept to a score in a given multidimensional space by selection from a set of given scaled semantic alternatives. It comprises of many pairs of opposite alternatives having a scale value in between the extremes. The respondent marks the score along the scale for his/her attitude about the given object.
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Finally, the respondent s score assigned to each statement are summed. The sum reflects the individual s attitude to the object, person or event, whatever it may be. Apart form these, the other scales developed for attitude measurement include the Guttman technique, the error-choice method, and the sentence completion method. However, these have not been discussed here for want of space.
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Change of Attitude
Attitudes affect behaviour. Hence, it is the interest of the organisation to try for the favourable change in the attitude. The following are some important ways that can be used for changing attitudes: 1. Filling in the Information Gap: Unfavourable attitudes are mainly formed owing to information gap or inadequate supply of information.
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Then, providing information to fill in the gaps can change attitudes. For example, workers may be anti-management because of the ignorance about the good intentions of management. If they are made known about the same, they may change their attitudes to pro-management. 2. Use of Fear: Researches report that attitudes can also be changed by giving fear.
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However, both low and high degree of fear arousal do not cause attitude change. The reason is while the former is often ignored, the latter makes the people stubborn in their held attitudes. In fact, only moderate level of fear arousal makes the people aware of the situation and induces to change their attitudes.

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3. Resolving Discrepancies: Resolving discrepancies between attitude and behaviour, if any, is yet another way to change attitudes. For example, people try to have good attitude about the job they have held and negative ones about the jobs they did not choose to work. 4. Impact of Peers: Persuasion by peers with high credibility can also cause change in attitude. The same is not true with peers having low level of credibility.
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5. The Coopting Approach: Coopting is also yet another way to change attitudes. In coopting approach, the people who are dissatisfied with a certain situation are taken to make them involved in improving things. However, it would be naive to assume that attitude only affects behaviour. Sometimes, behaviour also, on reciprocal manner, influence attitudes, as this illustration demonstrates.
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Nalini Pandey, a supervisor in cachar Paper Mills, was resisting the implementation of personnel computers at work. After six months passed, Rupak Dayal, the General manager decided to purchase computer without wasting time to change supervisor s attitude. The computer were immediately installed and training on how to use computers was offered.
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The after three weeks, Nalini emerged the most enthusiastic supporter for the computer and confided to her colleague: We waited so long unnecessarily to get computer . Clearly, the General Manager s behaviour changed the supervisor's attitude.

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VALUES
 Concept of Value The answer to the question-what is right or wrong and good or bad-are value laden. Values are basic convictions that gives us a sense of right and wrong, good and bad. In this way, values from the basis for ethical behaviour. Values are learned. These changes as individuals grow and mature. Changes in values change individual behaviour.
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Values and Attitudes

 Both attitude and values are tinged with moral. There are some similarities and dissimilarities between the two. The similarities are: 1. Both are learned or acquired from the same sources-experience with people, object, and event. 2. Both affect cognitive process and behaviour of people. 3. Both are endurable and difficult to change. 4. Both influence each other and, other and, more often than not, are used interchangeably
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Differences between Attitudes and Values

Attitudes Values

1.Attitudes exhibit predisposition to respond. 2.They refer to several beliefs relating to a specific object or situation. 3. These are one s personal experiences.

Values represent judgmental ideas like what is right. They represent single belief focused on objects or situations. These are derived from social and cultural mores.
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Types of Values
Terminal Values: The goals an individual would like to achieve during his/her life time. Instrument Values: Instrumental values reflect the way to achieving goal. In other words, these represent preferable modes of behaviour or means of achieving one s terminal values.
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Terminal and Instrumental Values

Terminal Values
1.World Peace 2.Happiness 3.Equality 4.Achievement 5.Inner Peace 6.Beauty in Nature 7.Family Security 8.Self-Respect 9.Salvation

Instrumental Values
1.Honesty 2.Forgiving Nature 3.Helpfulness 4.Self-Control 5.Independence 6.Obedience 7.Ambition 8.Open-mindedness 9.Cleanliness
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10.Friendship 11.Mature Love 12.Pleasure 13.Freedom 14.Wisdom 15.Prosperity 16.National Security 17.Social Respect 18.Exciting Life

10.Affection and Love 11.Politeness 12.Rationality 13.Responsibility 14.Courage 15.Competence 16.Cheerfulness 17.Intelligence 18.imagination
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THANK YOU
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