Attitudes

Attitudes enable people to adapt to their work environment. They are also used by people to defend their ego, express their values, and to interpret events. The cognitive dissonance theory refers to the incompatibility that an individual may perceive between two or more of his attitudes, or between his behavior and attitudes. The efforts made by an individual to reduce dissonance depend on the significance of the elements that give rise to the dissonance, the extent to which they can be controlled, and the rewards that the individual is likely to lose by not overcoming the dissonance. Involvement in the organization is also a determinant in an employee’s attitude. An employee who doesn’t feel like part of the “team” will try just to meet the minimum levels of performance, while one who feels like he or she is an integral part will try to go over that standard. So management must consider each worker as equal importance to the organization and members of the peer group, apart from the predispositions acquired at birth. The three job-related attitudes are job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. According to Edwin A. Locke, job satisfaction is the pleasurable or positive emotional state that results when an individual evaluates his job or job experience. Job involvement refers to the degree to which a person psychologically identifies with his job, actively participates in it, and considers that his performance in the job contributes to his self-worth.

Organizational commitment refers to the extent to which an individual identifies with a particular organization, and its goals and wishes to remain a member of that organization. Organizations can reduce turnover by taking steps to enhance the job satisfaction of their employees and increase their job involvement and organizational commitment. Managers must be trained to identify conditions symptomatic of a problem requiring further attention, of which negative employee attitudes is one.