organizational behavior

2.1PERSONAL VALUES MAJOR QUESTION What role do values play in influencing my behavior? THE BIGGER PICTURE You may already have a good understanding of your personal values and the role they play in your life. In an organization, personal values contribute to workplace attitudes and behavior. So it’s important to understand how the full range of potential human values impacts our attitudes and behavior at work. In the values model shown on the next page, see if you can locate yourself first, and then your friends or coworkers. From an OB perspective, you first need to understand personal values to understand, let alone influence, workplace attitudes. Values are abstract ideals that guide one’s thinking and behavior across all situations. They are strongly influenced by our religious or spiritual beliefs, the values of our parents, experiences during childhood, and events occurring throughout the communities and societies in which we live. Managers need to understand an employee’s values because they encompass concepts, principles, or activities for which people are willing to work hard. All workers need an understanding of values to work effectively with others and manage themselves. Renowned researcher Shalom Schwartz created a theory of personal values that over time many managers and OB professionals have found especially useful for understanding the motivational impact of our values. Schwartz’s Value Theory Schwartz believes that values are motivational in that they “represent broad goals that apply across contexts and time.”6 For example, valuing achievement will likely result in your studying hard to get an A in this class. It could also drive you to compete against friends in a weekly golf game. Values also are relatively stable and can influence behavior outside of our awareness. Schwartz proposed that 10 broad values guide behavior. (See Figure 2.1.) These values are categorized around two bipolar dimensions, which are described below. FIRST BIPOLAR DIMENSION SELF-ENHANCEMENT SELF-TRANSCENDENCE Concern for the welfare and interests of others (universalism, benevolence). Pursuit of one’s own interests and relative success and dominance over others (power, achievement). SECOND BIPOLAR DIMENSION OPENNESS TO CHANGE CONSERVATION Independence of thought, action, and feelings and readiness for change (self-direction, stimulation). Order, self-restriction, preservation of the past, and resistance to change (security, conformity, tradition).Page 41 FIGURE 2.1VALUES AND MOTIVES IN SCHWARTZ’S THEORY SOURCE: Graphic from S. H. Schwartz, “An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values,” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 2(1), December 1, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116. Reprinted with permission of the author. Definitions from A. Bardi and S. H. Schwartz, “Values and Behavior: Strength and Structure of Relations,” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, October 2003, 1208. Reproduced with permission of Sage Publications, Inc. via Copyright Clearance Center. Not only have these 10 values been found to predict behavior as outlined in the theory, but they also generalize across cultures.7 The model in Figure 2.1 organizes values by showing the patterns of conflict and congruity among them. In general, adjacent values like self-direction and universalism are positively related, whereas values that are farther apart (like self-direction and power) are less strongly related. Taking this one step further, Schwartz proposes that values that are in opposing directions from the center conflict with each other. In Figure 2.1, notice the unique treatment of several values. Tradition and conformity share a single wedge, supporting the same broad motivational goal. Conformity is toward the center because it does not conflict quite as much as tradition, which is toward the periphery, with their opposing values. See also how hedonism shares elements of both openness to change and self-enhancement. Values are identified in each section of the circle, with underlying motives for the values shown outside the circle. Schwartz noted that one set of values is in opposition to the other set, as suggested by the use of color. Not all values are compatible. “One basis of the value structure is the fact that actions in pursuit of any value have consequences that conflict with some values but are congruent with others.”8 In the circular model, Schwartz positions values most in conflict the farthest apart and those most in congruity the closest together. For instance, Stimulation—the drive to live a stimulating life by engaging in activities like skydiving or mountain climbing—would conflict with Tradition—the desire to live a moderate or traditional life. Page 42 Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who served as the country’s first black president. He served 27 years in prison for conspiracy to overthow the state. As president, Mandella initiated many changes that helped people and the country at large. His desire to help his country was cleary driven by strong personal values. Which of Schwartz’s values do you think guided Mandela’s behavior? Workplace Application of Schwartz’s TheoryManagers can better supervise workers by using Schwartz’s model to understand their values and motivation. For example, if a manager knows that an employee values universalism and benevolence, then it would be wise to assign this employee to projects or tasks that have social value. Managers can also use Figure 2.1 to reduce the chances of employees’ experiencing conflict between their values and their work assignments, when options are available. If an employee values tradition and conformity over achievement, for example, then he or she will not be happy about being asked to work on a holiday or to miss a child’s school play due to work. Managers can also reduce employee turnover by trying to reduce the gap between an employee’s values and the values that comprise the organization’s culture. Organizational culture is discussed in Chapter 14. For example, if an employee wants security and tradition (two values that are part of the conservation motive), they will not be happy with a job that provides little direction and lots of changing job requirements (two values that are part of the openness to change motive). SELF-ASSESSMENT 2.1What Are My Core Values? Go to connect.mheducation.com and complete Self-Assessment 2.1. It measures the extent to which you subscribe to each of Schwartz’s 10 values. Then answer the following questions: 1.Rank the values from high to low; do you agree with the rank order? 2.What are your top five values? Which of these do you think has the greatest impact on your personal goals? 3.Do you think that you may want to focus more on any of the five lowest-rated values as you graduate from school and pursue a career? Explain. Page 43 Personal Application of Schwartz’s TheoryThis model can help you determine if your values are consistent with your goals and whether you are spending your time in a meaningful way. We illustrate this by having you first complete a Self-Assessment that measures Schwartz’s 10 values and then incorporate the results into a Take-Away Application (TAAP). TAKE-AWAY APPLICATION—TAAP 1.Identify the three most important goals in your life. 2.Now consider the extent to which your personal goals are aligned with the top five values identified in the Self-Assessment. Are your goals and values aligned? 3.For those values that are inconsistent with your goals, theory suggests that you need to either change your values or change your goals. Because values don’t easily change, it typically is wise to change your goals. Identify what you might do to make your goals more aligned with your values. The Dynamics of Values In general, values are relatively stable across time and situations. This means that positive employee attitudes and motivation are greatest when the work environment is consistent with employee values. For example, outdoor gear retailer Recreational Equipment (REI) attempts to attract and motivate employees by letting them “use kayaks, skis, and other equipment for free [which they can buy new at a deep discount].”9 The company does this because it believes that its employees are motivated to participate in outdoor activities. Starbucks represents another company that is trying to appeal to employees’ values regarding education. The company created a partnership with Arizona State University in order to offer employees the chance to complete a bachelors degree online with full tuition reimbursement. Employees can choose from 40 different bachelors degrees. REI and Starbucks are good examples of companies where attention to the input of values as a person factor could yield measurable positive outcomes such as low turnover, higher retention, increased employee engagement, and better customer satisfaction. Values tend to vary across generations because they are influenced by events occurring during childhood. For example, our parents both lived through the depression that lasted through parts of the 1930s and 40s. This experience led them to value security and to be conservative with their money. They did not like debt, and they were against the use of credit cards. Do you know anyone with values like these? In contrast, the values held by baby boomers, people born between 1946 and 1964, are influenced by events like the assassination of President John Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the shooting deaths of student protestors at Kent State University. In contrast, Gen Ys, people born between 1980 and 2001, tend to have different values than boomers because their values are influenced by events like September 11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the financial crisis of 2008. We discuss generational differences thoroughly in Chapter 4. Page 44 2.2PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND THEIR IMPACT ON BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES MAJOR QUESTION How do personal attitudes affect workplace behavior and work-related outcomes? THE BIGGER PICTURE Closely related to values are personal attitudes. Like values, personal attitudes operate as an input in the Integrative Framework for Understanding and Applying OB. (In contrast, workplace attitudes are defined as outcomes in the Integrated Framework.) Starting from the personal, look for your own experiences in the OB view that personal attitudes have three components—affective, cognitive, and behavioral. Knowing these components brings you closer to understanding how and when personal attitudes affect behavior. Have you ever been stopped short by something that didn’t seem to make sense? When personal attitudes collide with reality, the result is cognitive dissonance. From an OB perspective, your personal attitudes affect your behavior via your intentions. In this section, we discuss the components of personal attitudes and examine the connection between personal attitudes and behavior. Personal attitudes affect behavior at a different level than do values. While values represent global beliefs that influence behavior across all situations, personal attitudes relate only to behavior directed toward specific objects, persons, or situations. We can summarize the differences between the two as follows: Attitudes represent our feelings or opinions about people, places, and objects, and range from positive to negative. They are important because they impact our behavior. For example, you are more likely to select chocolate ice cream over vanilla if you are more positively disposed toward chocolate. In contrast, workplace attitudes are an outcome of various OB-related processes, including leadership, a topic to be discussed in Chapter 13. In this chapter we reserve the term “workplace attitudes” for attitudes that have resulted from the interaction of various individual, group, and organizational processes. We examine the effects of workplace attitudes later in Section 2.3. Page 45 As predictors of likely behavior, attitudes attract serious attention. Hardly a day goes by without the popular media reporting the results of another effort to take the pulse of public opinion (attitudes). What do we think about the president and members of Congress, efforts to combat terrorism, the war on drugs, gun control, or taxes? Political consultants use this information to craft messages to nudge the public’s attitudes toward the results they feel are favorable to their side. In the workplace, managers conduct attitude surveys to monitor workplace attitudes like job satisfaction and employee engagement, and to determine the causes of employee turnover. For example, one study showed that seniors with a positive attitude about aging had better memory, had better hearing, and lived longer than those with negative attitudes.10 In a work setting, workplace attitudes were positively related to performance and negatively to indicators of withdrawal—lateness, absenteeism, and turnover.11 Personal Attitudes: They Represent My Consistent Beliefs and Feelings about Specific Things Consider a work example. If you have a positive attitude about your job (specifically, you like what you are doing), you would be more willing to extend yourself at work by working longer and harder: Working longer and harder is often referred to as “organizational citizenship behavior,” a concept discussed later in this chapter. This example illustrates that attitudes propel us to act in a specific way in a specific context. Values and attitudes generally, but not always, are in harmony. A manager who strongly values helpful behavior may have a negative attitude toward helping an unethical coworker. The Three Components of Attitudes: Affective, Cognitive, and BehavioralOur overall attitudes toward someone or something are a function of the combined influence of three components: 1.The affective component—“! feel.” The affective component of an attitude contains the feelings or emotions one has about a given object or situation. For example, how do you feel about people who talk on their cell phones in restaurants? If you feel annoyed or angry with such people, you are experiencing negative affect or feelings toward people who talk on cell phones in restaurants. 2.The cognitive component—“! believe.” The cognitive component of an attitude reflects the beliefs or ideas one has about an object or situation. What do you think about people who talk on cell phones in restaurants? Your ideas about such behavior represents the cognitive component of your attitude toward people talking on cell phones in restaurants. 3.The behavioral component—“! intend.” The behavioral component refers to how one intends or expects to act toward someone or something. For example, how would you intend to respond to someone talking on a cell phone during dinner at a restaurant if this individual were sitting in close proximity to you and your guest? We are more likely to purchase a car when we have positive attitudes toward it. These attitudes might pertain to make, model, color, price, and quality. What are your attitudes toward purchasing a white, used car? Which component of attitudes is most strongly impacting your overall attitude toward white, used cars? All three components influence our behavior. You are unlikely to say anything to someone using a cell phone in a restaurant if you are not irritated by this behavior (affective), if you believe cell phone use helps people to manage their lives (cognitive), and if you have no intention of confronting this individual (behavioral). Page 46 Social psychologist Leon Festinger When Attitudes and Reality Collide: Consistency and Cognitive DissonanceHave you ever been accused of being a hypocrite—saying one thing and then behaving differently? Like most people, you probably want to maintain consistency between your attitudes and your behavior. But sometimes attitudes conflict with reality. Suppose that Samantha has a positive attitude about helping others. One day her boss asks her if she would work on a special project for an important new client—and it must get done in two months. The project represents significant revenue, and her boss even promises a one-time bonus for successfully completing the project on time. The rub is that two of her peers have also come to her seeking help on their project. Samantha feels that she is best suited to help them, given her past experience, but she feels pressured given the demands of her new assignment. While Samantha has some flexibility in how she uses her time, she doesn’t want to miss the project deadline. Should she make time to help her peers or singularly focus on the special project? According to social psychologist Leon Festinger, this situation would create cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance represents the psychological discomfort a person experiences when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions (ideas, beliefs, values, or emotions).12 Festinger was fascinated by how people are motivated to maintain consistency (and avoid dissonance) among their attitudes and beliefs, and how they resolve inconsistencies that drive cognitive dissonance. From observation, he theorized that if you are experiencing cognitive dissonance, or psychological tension, you can reduce it in one of three ways: 1.Change your attitude or behavior or both. Samantha could either (a) tell herself that she can’t help her peers because the special project is too important for the company or (b) schedule extra time each day or week to help her peers. 2.Belittle the importance of the inconsistent behavior. Samantha could belittle (in the sense of “make small”) the belief that she needs to help peers every time they ask for assistance. 3.Find consonant elements that outweigh dissonant ones. Samantha could tell herself that she can’t help because the company needs the revenue and she needs the bonus. Attitudes Affect Behavior via Intentions Psychologist I. Ajzen and M. Fishbein further explored the rationale for why someone’s attitudes and behavior could misalign. Based on this work, Ajzen developed and refined a model focusing on intentions as the key link between attitudes and planned behavior. See Figure 2.2. Determinants of IntentionFigure 2.2 suggests how three key general motives predict or at least influence intention and behavior. 1.Attitude toward the behavior. The degree to which a person has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation or appraisal of the behavior in question. 2.Subjective norm. A social factor representing the perceived social pressure for or against the behavior. 3.Perceived behavioral control. The perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behavior, assumed to reflect past experience and anticipated obstacles.13 FIGURE 2.2AJZEN’S THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR SOURCE: Reprinted from Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 50, No. 2, I. Arjzen, “The Theory of Planned Behavior,” Copyright © 1991, with permission from Elsevier. Putting the Theory into PracticeTheories are developed from observation and prove their usefulness in application. Let’s demonstrate this with Ajzen’s theory. Consider the behavior of patients lying to doctors and doctors lying to patients. See the Problem-Solving Application below. Read the example and answer the questions posed under “Your Call.” solving application Why Do Patients Lie to Doctors and Doctors Lie to Patients? Doctors are cautious about what patients say. “It’s a rule many residents learn in training. If a patient says he has four drinks a week, consider it eight. The same for cigarettes and illicit drugs, doctors say.” Kevin Campbell, a cardiologist from North Carolina, noted that he had patients who claimed to have stopped smoking, yet smelled like cigarettes when they came in to his office. Why does this happen when lying can lead to the wrong diagnosis, wrong treatment, and wrong prescriptions? Some lie for fear of a bad diagnosis or hospitalization. Others lie in order to get the preferred handicapped parking permit or mood-altering drugs. Doctors also note that some patients lie for more positive reasons, such as avoiding embarrassment or disappointing the doctor. “Others worry about electronic medical records or information being communicated to employers, insurance companies, or the authorities.” Parents also lie about their children when they believe that they will be judged. Page 47 It works both ways. A recent survey of physicians revealed that 10 percent told patients things that were untrue. Fifty percent of these doctors “told patients something that was untrue in the previous year. More than half said they described a prognosis in a more positive manner than warranted, and about 20% admitted to not fully disclosing a mistake to a patient due to fears of litigation.” Other doctors reported using a “generalized diagnosis” instead of a specific illness like schizophrenia so as to not alarm patients.14 Page 48 If we apply Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (see Figure 2.2) to the patient who underreports his drinking, we might analyze his behavior as follows: 1.Because he does not see his existing alcohol intake as problematic, he has no reservations about telling a white lie (attitude toward the behavior). 2.He might believe most people underreport their drinking behavior to doctors (subjective norm). One would not want to be labeled an alcoholic. 3.He sees little downside risk or difficulty in undereporting his intake (perceived behavioral control). The result? The patient proceeds to lie to the doctor. YOUR CALL Apply the 3-Stop Problem-Solving Approach. Stop 1:What is the problem in this example? Stop 2:What are the causes of the problem? Stop 3:What would you do to correct this situation? Research and Practical ApplicationsAccording to the Ajzen model, someone’s intention to engage in a given behavior is a strong predictor of that behavior. For example, if you want a quick way to determine whether a worker will quit his or her job, have an objective third party ask the worker if that is what the worker is intending. The answer is likely to be accurate. Research supports this conclusion15 and the prediction that intentions are influenced by the three general motives in Ajzen’s model.16 So if we want to change behavior we should look at intentions and how we might modify them by working on the three general motives shown in Figure 2.2. Managers may be able to influence behavioral change by doing or saying things that affect the three determinants of employees’ intentions to exhibit a specific behavior: attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. In your own life, if you want to exercise more, you should start by changing your intentions about exercising and your associated beliefs about exercising. Let’s consider another practical illustration that has happened to many of our students. It involves a lack of equal contribution among team members on class projects. Have you ever wanted a classmate to increase the quality of his/her work on a team project? If yes, Ajzen’s model can be used to help you get the desired behavior. Start by trying to create a positive intention to contribute high-quality work. You might do this by telling the person that getting a good grade will increase everyone’s chances of getting higher grades and a better job upon graduation (attitude toward the behavior). Next, role model the desired behavior by producing good work yourself and recognize others who do the same. This should increase the subjective norm about doing high-quality work. Finally, talk to the individual about any obstacles getting in the way of high-quality work and discuss solutions for overcoming them. We expect that this will increase the person’s perceived behavioral control. The Lever of InformationIn the workplace, one of the simplest levers managers can use to change behavior is information. Management provides information to employees daily. Standard organizational information that can affect motivation includes: •Reports on the organization’s culture. •Announcements of new training programs. •News on key managers. •Updates to human resource programs and policies. •Announcements of new rewards of working for the company. Page 49 EXAMPLEAlston & Bird Engages Employees through Its Words and Deeds Managing partners at the firm wanted to boost employee morale after the Great Recession in 2008–2009. Richard Hays, managing partner at the firm, decided that increased communication would help. “We started town hall meetings and initiated an online suggestion box,” he says, “where employees could comment (or vent) about anything on their minds.” He also spent more time in offices outside of Atlanta to communicate with geographically dispersed employees. The company also tried to make the work environment more enjoyable by installing chair massages and employees’ favorite coffee on all floors. To help employees manage work-life balance issues, it instituted on-site day care, offered on-site dining, and provided financial experts once a quarter to assist employees in their short- and long-term financial planning. Hays concluded that these actions “convey a message to employees that you care.”17 Town hall meetings like this were used at Alston & Bird to increase communication with employees. Do you think such meetings are useful? Why? YOUR THOUGHTS? 1.What beliefs do you have about Alston & Bird? 2.What type of performance intentions would the company’s actions help create? 3.Would you like to work at Alston & Bird? All such messages reinforce certain beliefs, and managers may consciously use them to influence behavior. For example, if management wants to improve employee retention, it can provide information or implement policies that underscore the value of staying at the company. Such efforts extend beyond perception into programs that can benefit the workplace. This is precisely what happened at Alston & Bird, an Atlanta law firm that was rated as the 40th best place to work by Fortune in 2014 (see Example box above). The company wanted to enhance employees’ beliefs about the value of staying at the firm rather than taking a job elsewhere. TAKE-AWAY APPLICATION—TAAP 1.Based on the theory of planned behavior, how might you improve your attitude about studying for this course? 2.How can you influence the social norms about studying for classes? 3.Assume you want to get a good job upon graduation. What does the theory of planned behavior suggest that you should start or continue doing? Page 50 2.3KEY WORKPLACE ATTITUDES MAJOR QUESTION Why is it important for management to pay attention to workplace attitudes? THE BIGGER PICTURE Of the many workplace attitudes we might see as outcomes in the Integrative Framework for understanding and applying OB, researchers have identified a small number that are especially potent. These key attitudes allow you to track a limited number of workplace attitudes to gauge how the organization is doing. When you try to make sense of the workplace on either side of a manager’s desk, these are the important attitudes to follow. Savvy managers will track four key workplace attitudes: 1.Organizational commitment 2.Employee engagement 3.Perceived organizational support 4.Job satisfaction That’s because these attitudinal measures serve a dual purpose. First, they represent important outcomes that managers may be working to enhance directly. Second, they link to other significant outcomes that managers will want to improve where possible. For example, low job satisfaction and low employee engagement imply lower task performance and higher employee turnover.18 This is why managers should track key workplace attitudes and understand their causes and consequences. This section specifically examines the first three of these: organizational commitment, employee engagement, and perceived organizational support. We’re saving job satisfaction, the most studied workplace attitude, for a later section of its own. Organizational Commitment OB researchers define commitment as “a force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets.”19 This definition highlights how OB researchers link commitment to behavior and how workers can commit to multiple targets or entities. For example, an individual can be committed to his or her job, family, girl- or boyfriend, faith, friends, career, organization, and/or a variety of professional associations. Let us now consider the application of commitment to a work organization. Organizational commitment reflects the extent to which an individual identifies with an organization and commits to its goals. Committed individuals tend to display two outcomes: •Likely continuation of their employment with the organization. •Greater motivation toward pursuing organizational goals and decisions. What Drives Organizational Commitment?There are many factors we will encounter through this book, but let’s start with something basic, like personal values. Organizational commitment exists to the degree that your personal values generally match the values that undergird a company’s organizational culture. For example, if you value achievement and your employer rewards people for accomplishing goals, you are more likely to be committed to the company. This consistency is called person-culture fit and is discussed in Chapter 15. Page 51 Throughout this book we will cover other drivers of organizational commitment, in the course of discussing: •Personality, Chapter 3. •Meaningfulness, Chapters 5 and 7. •Organizational climate, Chapter 7. •Leader Behavior, Chapter 13. •Organizational Culture, Chapter 14. Finally, commitment depends on the quality of an employee’s psychological contracts. Psychological contracts represent an individual’s perception about the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange between him- or herself and another party. In a work environment, the psychological contract represents an employee’s beliefs about what he or she is entitled to receive in return for what he or she provides to the organization. Research shows that an employer breach of the psychological contract is associated with lower organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and performance, and greater intentions to quit.20 How Can Managers Increase Employees’ Commitment?To highlight how managers can increase employees’ commitment, we review three general best practices and then discuss approaches used by Edward Jones, Cisco, and Google. General Best Practices •Hire people whose personal values align with the organization’s. •Make sure that management does not breach its psychological contracts. •Explicitly and conscientiously enhance the level of trust throughout the organization. Example Company: Edward Jones •Fortune’s 4th best company to work for in 2014. •Promotes close-knit culture. •Does so across about 11,000 small offices. •Hosts regular regional gatherings for ice skating, fishing tournaments, etc. •Pulls about 44 percent of new hires from employee referrals.21 Example Company: Cisco •CNN/Fortune’s third top-paying company in 2013 and 55th best company to work for in 2014. •Great pay. •Flextime. (Flextime consists of giving employees flexible work hours that allow people to come and go at different times, as long as they work the normal number of hours.) Cisco Payoff: “[T]he fact that I am given so much flexibility makes me want to go above and beyond,” Cisco employee. •Employees called into military service continue with full benefits for themselves and family. •Employees called into military service receive additional pay to make up difference between Cisco pay and military pay. •Employees called onto jury duty receive full pay while in jury for up to three months.22 Page 52 Example Company: Google •Fortune’s number 1 best company to work for in 2013 and 2014. •Free electric cars to borrow for short jaunts. •Microkitchens open 24/7 throughout campus. •Hundreds of Google bikes on which to speed off to another building. •Weekly group sitdowns with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. •Free food in over 30 cafeterias. •Drop-in free IT repair centers (with loaners). •Community gardens. •Free massages. Sleep pods. •Free laundry rooms. •Three wellness centers. •Seven-acre sports complex, with roller hockey rink; courts for basketball, bocce, and shuffle-ball; and horseshoe pits.23 This employee looks highly engaged with his work. Note the attention and focus being used to measure aspects of this skull. Would you find this type of work meaningful? Employee Engagement A relatively new concept to the field of organizational behavior, employee engagement was defined in 1990 by William Kahn. Observing workers at a summer camp and an architecture firm, Kahn defined employee engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performance.”24 The essence of this definition is the idea that engaged employees “give it their all” at work. Further study identified its components as four feelings: •Urgency •Being focused •Intensity •Enthusiasm25 Have you ever felt at work or school that time seems to fly by you? If yes, then you understand why academics, consultants, and managers want to understand how they can harness the power of employee engagement. How Much of the US Workforce Is Actively Engaged?Our workforce appears to be operating above the global average. Consulting firm Aon Hewitt has tracked data on employee engagement around the globe for over 15 years on millions of employees. They released figures on North America (of which the United States is the largest component) as shown:26 Page 53 The US workforce leads several regions but is not riding highest. Latin America outpaces us. The other regions rank as follows: What Contributes to Employee Engagement?Multiple views of employee engagement identify various factors. Person Factors (discussed in more detail in Chapter 3) •Positive or optimistic personalities •Proactive personality •Conscientiousness Environmental Characteristics •Job characteristics. These represent the motivating potential of the tasks we complete at work. For example, people are engaged when their work contains variety and when they receive timely feedback (discussed in Chapter 5). •Leadership. People are more engaged when their manager is charismatic and when a positive, trusting relationship exists between managers and employees27 (leadership is discussed in Chapter 13). •Stressors. Stressors are environmental characteristics that cause stress. Finally, engagement is higher when employees are not confronted with a lot of stressors28 (stress is discussed in Chapter 16). What motivates employee engagement at the organizational level? Aon Hewitt, the global engagement consulting firm, identifies from 2012 data the top five engagement drivers for organizations in North America: Organizational Level Factors 1.Career opportunities 2.Managing performance 3.Organization reputation 4.Communication 5.Recognition Interestingly, only North America leaves pay out of the top five drivers.29 What Outcomes Are Associated with Employee Engagement?Consulting firms such as Gallup, Hewitt Associates, and Blessing White have been in the forefront of collecting proprietary data supporting the practical value of employee engagement. For example, Gallup estimates that when an organization’s employees are highly engaged, it can achieve 12 percent higher customer satisfaction/loyalty, 18 percent more productivity, and 12 percent greater profit-ability.30 Other recent academic studies similarly showed a positive relationship between employee engagement and employees’ performance and physical and psychological well-being, and corporate-level financial performance and customer satisfaction.31 Now that you know engagement is correlated with performance at work, can you see the value of increasing your engagement for your school work? We created the following Self-Assessment to measure your level of engagement for your studies so that you can consider how to improve your performance in the classroom. Page 54 SELF-ASSESSMENT 2.2To What Extent Am I Engaged in My Studies? Do you think you learn more and get higher grades when you are engaged? Do you have any idea how you might increase your engagement with studying? If you answered yes and no, then you will find it valuable to go to connect.mheducation.com and take Assessment 2.2—it assesses your level of engagement with your school work. Then consider the following reflections: 1.Is your level of engagement what you expected? 2.How might you increase your level of engagement? 3.To what extent do your professors influence your level of engagement? How might they foster more engagement from you? How Can I Increase Engagement?As a manager you will have many opportunities to improve employee engagement, even if the lavish perks of the richest corporation are out of reach financially. One way is to make sure that the inputs in the Integrative Framework are positively oriented. Organizations do this by measuring, tracking, and responding to surveys of employee engagement. EXAMPLEThe Ritz-Carlton was able to significantly lower employee turnover (18 percent vs. an industry average of 158 percent) and increase both customer satisfaction and customer spending by following this recommendation.32 Other ideas include the creation of career and developmental opportunities for employees, recognizing people for good work, effectively communicating and listening, effective use of performance management practices (discussed in Chapter 6), allowing people to exercise during the work day, creating a physically attractive and stimulating work environment, and giving people meaningful work to do.33 solving application Companies Foster Employee Engagement in Different Ways Here’s a roundup of how several companies are working to improve worker engagement. •Red Bull. Red Bull created a stimulating work environment in its Amsterdam office to engage its employees, according to a dispatch in Bloomberg Businessweek.“Employees who chug too much of the merchandise, from seven Red Bull–stocked fridges, can burn off excess energy in ‘The Beast,’ the half of the office dedicated to play. It includes an Xbox connected to a giant screen made up of four LG Flatron TVs.” Employees really get jazzed at 5:30 on Fridays when they “stop answering their phones, and take turns DJ-ing as beer and wine are served.”34 Red Bull employees having fun at work. Page 55 •CHG Healthcare Services. The CHG Learning & Development team is one of the company’s main ways of fostering its corporate efforts “in putting people first, fostering a Return on Culture philosophy, and providing an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives,” according to one industry write-up. CHG strives to create a people-driven culture by spending “significant training time developing new leaders on how to create a team of engaged employees.” The CEO and top management team also travel around the United States twice a year to meet with employees and explain the company’s strategies and update them on corporate performance.35 •Duke Energy. James Rogers, president and CEO of Duke Energy, uses “listening sessions” to enhance engagement. He regularly meets with groups of 90 to 100 managers and encourages them to raise any issues on their minds. He also asks these employees to anonymously grade his performance.36 YOUR CALLLet’s apply the 3-Stop Approach. While there may not seem to be a problem, because all three companies are doing interesting and potentially beneficial things, can you determine what common problem they are trying to head off or solve proactively? Stop 1:What is the implied problem in this example? Stop 2:Which OB concepts are these managers using to explain the causes of the implied problem? Stop 3:What other recommendations can you make? Perceived Organizational Support Perceived organizational support (POS) reflects the extent to which employees believe their organization values their contributions and genuinely cares about their well-being. Perceptions of support can be either positive or negative. For example, your POS would be negative if you worked for a bad boss and a company that did not provide good health benefits or career opportunities. It would more likely be positive if you worked for The Everett Clinic in Washington. The Clinic pays employees a $10,000 bonus for referring physicians, pays 100 percent of health expenses, and offers profit-sharing up to 5 percent of pay.37 How Does POS Impact Employees?The basic idea is that people are willing to work hard and commit to their organizations when they believe that the company “truly” cares about their best interest. Quite simply, we are motivated by the norm of reciprocity when someone treats us well. The norm of reciprocity obliges the return of favorable treatment. This is why we are more likely to reciprocate with hard work and dedication when our employer treats us favorably. There is one caveat, however, for this to work. The favorable treatment must be voluntary as opposed to imposed by external constraints such as the government or unions. This is critical because voluntary actions demonstrate that the giver genuinely values and respects us. Benefits of POSThe outcomes associated with POS include increased organizational commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and task performance. POS also is related to lower turnover.38 How can managers foster POS? POS can be increased by treating employees fairly, by avoiding political behavior, by providing job security, by giving people more autonomy, by reducing stressors in the work environment, and by eliminating abusive supervision.39 Page 56 solving application POS Can Be Positive or Negative Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Salesforce.com is a great example of a company that is supportive of its employees. The company showed its true colors when engineer John Greene got cancer—acute myeloid leukemia—at the age of 40. He had worked for the company for only one year. Initially, John only informed his boss and small team about his illness. This changed when he sent a systemwide message on the company intranet revealing that he needed a bone marrow transplant. CEO Marc Benioff called John within five minutes of the post and then made sure that John received the best care from the hospital. Marc also sent a follow-up message to all employees that said, “Salesforce employee John Greene has AML and needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. Are you a match?” Three hundred fifty people signed up with the match registry by morning. In turn, the company “covered insurance costs that Greene would have had to pay for himself. Its foundation made a $25,000 grant to the marrow registry in Greene’s name.” Greene is back at work and doing well. “The company was awesome,” Greene said.40 Naiel Nassar, an Egyptian who became a US citizen in 1990, was the recipient of negative POS. Dr. Nassar was hired by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as an assistant professor of infectious disease. Dr. Beth Levine, chief of the infectious disease program, “directed that Nassar begin billing for the services he provided to the HIV clinic. Nassar objected to the directive, arguing that his salary for clinical services was fully funded by a federal grant and stating that billing the patients therefore would be ‘double dipping.’ Nassar claimed that Levine then began to ‘harass’ him, making derogatory statements about his race and his Muslim religion, including one comment that Middle Easterners were ‘lazy.’ His allegations were supported by a clinical supervisor.” Nassar later applied for another job, only to learn that “the medical center retaliated against him by blocking the offer.”41 YOUR CALLThese examples illustrate very different workplace experiences. We’ll focus on just one stop in our 3-Stop decision-making journey: Stop 2:What OB concepts or theories explain the causes of these different experiences? Page 57 2.4THE CAUSES OF JOB SATISFACTION MAJOR QUESTION How can changes in the workplace improve job satisfaction? THE BIGGER PICTURE Job satisfaction is the most frequently studied outcome in the Integrative Framework. You will live with this outcome as an employee or manager. To help you understand job satisfaction better, the next section provides you with the five predominant models of job satisfaction. These models can help you to manage others and yourself, leading to an increased sense of satisfaction at work or school for you and others. Job satisfaction essentially reflects the extent to which an individual likes his or her job. Formally defined, job satisfaction is an affective or emotional response toward various facets of one’s job. This definition implies job satisfaction is not a unitary concept. Rather, a person can be relatively satisfied with one aspect of her or his job and dissatisfied with one or more other aspects. Researchers at Cornell University developed the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) to assess satisfaction with the following job dimensions: work, pay, promotions, coworkers, and supervision.42 In contrast, researchers at the University of Minnesota identified 20 different dimensions underlying job satisfaction. Several other surveys also provide assessments of employee job satisfaction. We use one of them in the following Self-Assessment to measure your level of job satisfaction for a current or past job. Are you curious where you stand? Taking this survey will make the rest of this chapter more meaningful and practical. SELF-ASSESSMENT 2.3How Satisfied Are You with Your Present Job? If you currently work, or have worked in the past, your boss should care about your level of job satisfaction because it is related to a host of important outcomes. More importantly, understanding your level of satisfaction will help you think about ways to improve your current job situation. If you would like to know more about your level of satisfaction, go to connect.mheducation.com and take Assessment 2.3, which assesses your level of job satisfaction for your current job. Then consider the following questions: 1.What is the relative satisfaction among the aspects of recognition, compensation, and supervision? 2.Which of these three aspects of satisfaction are most important to you? Explain. 3.What can you do to increase your level of satisfaction? Source: Adapted from D.J. Weiss, R.V. Dawis, G.W. England and L.H. Lofquist, Manual for the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, Minneapolis: Industrial Relations Center, University of Minnesota, 1967. Used with permission. Do you think job satisfaction across the country has been going up or down over the last few years? A national survey conducted by Gallup attempted to answer this question. The company conducted phone interviews between 2008 and 2011 with 61,889 people from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Results revealed that 87.5 percent of Americans were satisfied with their jobs in 2011. While this was down from satisfaction levels in 2008 (89.4 percent), it was higher than the low of 86.9 percent in 2010. These results, which were supported by another national survey in 2012, suggest that American workers are highly motivated. The importance of this conclusion will become more apparent after you read the final section of this chapter. It focuses on the correlates and consequences of job satisfaction.43 Page 58 At a Glance: Five Predominant Models of Job Satisfaction While OB has developed numerous concepts to improve our understanding of job satisfaction, we can capture many of their insights by considering five predominant models, summarized as follows. MODEL HOW MANAGEMENT CAN BOOST JOB SATISFACTION Need fulfillment Understand and meet employees’ needs. Met expectations Meet expectations of employees about what they will receive from the job. Value attainment Structure the job and its rewards to match employee values. Equity Monitor employees’ perceptions of fairness and interact with them so they feel fairly treated. Dispositional/genetic components Hire employees with an appropriate disposition. (See qualifications below.) Brief Review: Five Predominant Models of Job Satisfaction For these models to make more sense, and provide further insight into the variety of methods for increasing employees’ job satisfaction, we should look closer. Need FulfillmentNeed fulfillment models propose that satisfaction is determined by the extent to which the characteristics of a job allow an individual to fulfill her or his needs. Needs are physiological or psychological deficiencies that arouse behavior. All of us have different needs, which means that managers need to learn about employees’ needs if they want to increase employees’ job satisfaction. EXAMPLEA 2012 national survey of 600 individuals by the Society for Human Resource Management asked employees to choose the aspects of their job that were very important to their job satisfaction. Their top five choices were opportunities to use skills and abilities, job security, compensation, communication between employees and senior management, and the relationship with the immediate supervisor.44 Are any of these aspects important to you? Research generally supports the conclusion that need fulfillment is correlated with job satisfaction.45 Met ExpectationsThese models propose that satisfaction results from met expectations. Met expectations represent the difference between what an individual expects to receive from a job, such as good pay and promotional opportunities, and what she or he actually receives. When expectations are greater than what is received, a person will be dissatisfied. In contrast, this model predicts that an individual will be satisfied when she or he attains outcomes above and beyond expectations. Research strongly supports the conclusion that met expectations are significantly related to job satisfaction.46 Many companies use employee attitude or opinion surveys to assess employees’ expectations and concerns, and then they plan how best to meet these expectations. Page 59 Value AttainmentThe idea underlyingvalue attainment is that satisfaction results from the perception that a job allows for fulfillment of an individual’s important values. In general, research consistently supports the prediction that value fulfillment relates positively to job satisfaction. Managers can thus enhance employee satisfaction by structuring the work environment and its associated rewards and recognition to reinforce employees’ values. EquityEquity theory, discussed in Chapter 5, builds on the notion that satisfaction ties to how “fairly” an individual is treated at work. Satisfaction results from one’s perception that work outcomes, relative to inputs, compare favorably with a significant other’s outcomes/inputs. Research has strongly supported the theory behind this model.47 Managers thus are encouraged to monitor employees’ fairness perceptions and to interact with employees in such a way that they feel equitably treated. Chapter 5 explores how this can be accomplished. This diverse group of employees from Great Harvest Bread Company displays the company’s products. Dispositional/Genetic ComponentsEver notice that some coworkers or friends remain satisfied in situations where others always seem dissatisfied? This model posits that job satisfaction remains partly a function of both personal traits and genetic factors. Indeed, the model implies that stable individual differences at least match characteristics of the work environment in their impact on satisfaction. Although few studies have tested these propositions in depth, a review of existing literature reveals a more nuanced understanding. Dispositional factors were significantly associated with only selected aspects of job satisfaction. Dispositions had stronger relationships with intrinsic aspects of a job (e.g., having autonomy) than with extrinsic aspects of work (e.g., receipt of rewards).48 Genetic factors also were found to significantly predict life satisfaction, well-being, and general job satisfaction.49 Overall, researchers estimate that 30 percent of an individual’s job satisfaction is associated with dispositional and genetic components.50 EXAMPLEConsider Pete and Laura Wakeman, founders of Great Harvest Bread Company. They have used this model of job satisfaction while running their company for more than 25 years. Pete sees it this way: Our hiring ads say clearly that we need people with “strong personal loves as important as their work.” This is not a little thing. You can’t have a great life unless you have a buffer of like-minded people all around you. . . . If you want a happy company, you can do it only by hiring naturally happy people . . . you can’t really “make” people any way that they aren’t already.51 Caveat: Although Pete and Laura’s hiring approach is consistent with the dispositional and genetic model of job satisfaction, it raises legal and ethical concerns. Hiring “like-minded” people could lead to discriminatory decisions. Managers must not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, color, national origin, and age. Page 60 A Shorter Walk to Work Now that we have looked at the predominant models of job satisfaction, let’s highlight one element that allows people to balance their work and family lives. And that’s the opportunity to telecommute. Telecommuting allows employees to do all or some of their work from home, using advanced telecommunications technology and Internet tools to send work electronically from home to the office, and vice versa. •Roughly 24 percent of the US workforce telecommutes for at least part of the job. •On average, telecommuters work six hours per week from home. •Studies confirm telecommuting enhances productivity and retention, and decreases absenteeism.52 These positive statistics imply that the opportunity to telecommute could improve job satisfaction. Despite telecommuting’s appeal, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer decided to ban it for all employees—see the Problem-Solving Application below. solving application Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer Bans Telecommuting Yahoo!’s 14,500 employees were told that they could no longer telecommute after June 1, 2013. The company’s head of Human Resources, Jackie Reses, said, “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.” She defended the decision by stating, “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussion, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.” Reses believes that telecommuting negatively impacts the company. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” Reses said. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is the youngest leader of a Fortune 500 company and was hired from Google when she was five months pregnant. Mayer took two weeks off after having her child, and then installed a nursery next to her office. The company later decided to ban telecommuting, which provoked a wave of negative reactions among employees.53 While Reses may have a point about potential downsides to telecommuting, Yahoo! might have been better served by eliminating telecommuting for only those specific jobs that are better done at work than home. YOUR CALL Stop 1:What is the problem in this example? Stop 2:What OB concepts explain Yahoo! employees’ response to Mayer’s decision? Stop 3:If you were CEO, what would you recommend? TAKE-AWAY APPLICATION—TAAP Complete this activity by reviewing the results of your Self-Assessment of your job satisfaction you completed earlier in this section. 1.Which causes of job satisfaction are impacting your level of satisfaction? 2.Describe two things you might do to improve your job satisfaction. 3.If you could ask your boss or employer to change one thing to improve your job satisfaction, what would you suggest? Page 61 2.5MAJOR CORRELATES AND CONSEQUENCES OF JOB SATISFACTION MAJOR QUESTION What work-related outcomes are associated with job satisfaction? THE BIGGER PICTURE The documented relationship between job satisfaction and other positive organizational outcomes is good news. It means that employers have economic reasons for fostering job satisfaction to improve results. You’re about to learn four key attitudinal and four key behavioral outcomes associated with this relationship. Thousands of studies have examined the relationship between job satisfaction and other organizational variables. We consider a subset of the most important variables from the standpoint of managerial relevance. Eight key outcomes correlate to job satisfaction, four attitudinal and four behavioral. Job satisfaction has positive correlations to: Attitudes •Motivation •Job involvement •Withdrawal cognitions •Perceived stress Behavior •Job performance •Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) •Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) •Turnover Attitudinal Outcomes of Job Satisfaction We examine four attitudinal outcomes of job satisfaction that are important to OB researchers and managers: motivation, job involvement, withdrawal cognitions, and perceived stress. MotivationEmployee motivation, which is discussed in Chapter 5, represents a psychological process that arouses our interest in doing something, and it directs and guides our behavior. As you might expect, employee motivation positively correlates to job satisfaction. Managers can potentially enhance employees’ motivation by using a host of techniques and recommendations that are discussed throughout this book. Job InvolvementJob involvement represents the extent to which an individual is personally involved with his or her work role. Many years of research have demonstrated that job involvement is moderately related to job satisfaction.54 Managers can foster satisfying work environments to fuel employees’ job involvement. Page 62 Withdrawal CognitionsAlthough some people quit their jobs impulsively or in a fit of anger, most go through a process of thinking about whether or not they should quit. Withdrawal cognitions encapsulate this thought process by representing an individual’s overall thoughts and feelings about quitting. What causes an individual to think about quitting his or her job? Job satisfaction is believed to be one of the most significant contributors. Have you ever felt like this when studying for exams. Unfortunately, too much stress impairs our ability to perform at school or work. EXAMPLEA study of managers, salespersons, and auto mechanics from a national automotive retail store chain demonstrated that job dissatisfaction caused employees to begin the process of thinking about quitting.55 Results from this study imply that managers can indirectly help to reduce employee turnover by enhancing employee job satisfaction. Perceived StressStress has negative effects on many different OB-related outcomes. For instance, stress is positively related to absenteeism, turnover, coronary heart disease, and viral infections. As expected, perceived stress has a strong, negative relationship to job satisfaction. Perceived stress also was found to be negatively associated with employee engagement. Managers should attempt to reduce the negative effects of stress by improving job satisfaction and by encouraging employees to detach from work during off-job time (i.e., stop thinking about work and “don’t take it home with you”).56 solving application What to Do about Bullying Let’s return to the issue of bullying with which we started this chapter and consider how you might have resolved the situation faced by Stuart McGregor. Stuart’s goal was to be a chef, and he received a highly prestigious apprenticeship as a chef just before turning 17. Shortly after starting his apprenticeship, he experienced verbal abuse and colleagues began making innuendos about his sexuality. He was once given a large bag of peas by the kitchen managers and asked to count them. Stuart was told by his colleagues that he was going to receive an award. Excitedly, he called his family and could not wait to receive the award later in the day. Unbeknownst to him, his peers broke into his car and stole the knob of his gearstick. They then wrapped it up and gave it to him as his “award” in front of the entire staff. Stuart was humiliated! Stuart was regularly asked to perform tasks he did not know how to do, and then was ridiculed when he did them incorrectly. Shortly before the conclusion of the apprenticeship period, Stuart was invited to go on a camping trip with his workmates. Sadly, the kitchen managers threatened Stuart with bodily harm if he went on the trip. Stuart was afraid for his safety and made excuses to avoid the trip. Another employee ultimately complained about being bullied, and investigators questioned Stuart about his experience. Stuart denied being bullied, probably out of fear for his safety, fear of losing his job, or because he thought he could handle the situation.57 YOUR CALL Let’s apply the 3-Stop Approach. Stop 1:What is the problem in this case? Stop 2:What OB concepts or theories help explain Stuart’s situation and reaction? Stop 3:What would you do if you were Stuart? What would you do as a manager of the restaurant? Page 63 Behavioral Outcomes of Job Satisfaction Job satisfaction has a positive association with two constructive behavioral outcomes—job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). It also has a negative relationship with two potentially negative behaviors—counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and turnover. The following discussion is more practical when you consider that these individual-level outcomes in our Integrative Framework are driven by processes at the group and organizational level, which, further upstream, are influenced by environmental characteristics. Job PerformanceOne of the biggest controversies within OB research centers on the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. You might be surprised to learn that this is more complicated than it might first appear and that OB experts have identified at least eight different ways in which these variables are related. The good news (for you learning about this) is that the dominant theories are either that satisfaction causes performance or performance causes satisfaction.58 But which causes which? Which comes first, the performance or the satisfaction? A team of researchers recently attempted to resolve this controversy by analyzing data from 312 samples involving over 54,000 individuals.59 They made two key findings: •Job satisfaction and performance were moderately related. This is an important finding because it supports the belief that employee job satisfaction is a key workplace attitude that managers should consider when attempting to increase employees’ job performance. •The relationship is complex. In fact, the relationship between job satisfaction and performance is much more complex than originally thought. It is not that one directly influences the other or vice versa. Rather, researchers now believe both variables indirectly influence each other through a host of person factors and environmental characteristics contained in the Integrative Framework. There is one additional consideration to keep in mind regarding the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance: measurement of performance. Researchers now believe that incomplete measures of individual-level performance understate the relationship between satisfaction and performance. EXAMPLEIf performance ratings used in past research did not reflect the actual interactions and interdependencies at work at the individual level, inaccurate measures of performance served to lower the reported correlations between satisfaction and performance. To solve this problem, researchers examined the relationship between aggregate measures of job satisfaction and organizational performance. In support of these ideas, a team studied more than 5,000 business units. The result? The researchers uncovered significant positive relationships as shown:60 It thus appears managers indirectly or directly can positively affect a variety of important organizational-level outcomes such as job performance and customer satisfaction by increasing employee job satisfaction. Organizational Citizenship Behavior Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is defined as “individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization.”61 This definition highlights two key points: Page 64 •OCBs are voluntary. •OCBs help work groups and the organization to effectively achieve goals. Examples include such gestures as: •Constructive statements about the department. •Expression of personal interest in the work of others. •Suggestions for improvement or training new people. •Respect for the spirit as well as the letter of housekeeping rules. •Care for organizational property, and punctuality and attendance well beyond standard or enforceable levels.62 Managers certainly would like employees to exhibit these behaviors, and research clearly supports the value of this outcome. OCBs have a moderately positive correlation with job satisfaction.63 Moreover, OCBs are significantly related to both individual-level consequences (e.g., performance appraisal ratings, intentions to quit, absenteeism, and turnover) and organizational-level outcomes (e.g., productivity, efficiency, lower costs, customer satisfaction, and unit-level satisfaction and turnover).64 These results are important for two reasons. First, exhibiting OCBs is likely to create positive impressions about you among your colleagues and manager. In turn, these impressions affect your ability to work with others, your manager’s evaluation of your performance, and ultimately your promotability. Second, the aggregate amount of employees’ OCBs affects important organizational outcomes. It thus is important for managers to foster an environment that promotes OCBs. Counterproductive Work BehaviorYou already know from personal experience and OB research that the absence of satisfaction may be associated with some types of undesirable behavior, such as low employee engagement and performance. In contrast to the helping nature of OCBs, counterproductive work behavior (CWB) represents behavior that harms other employees, the organization as a whole, or organizational stakeholders such as customers and shareholders. CWBs represent a particularly negative work-related outcome. Examples of CWBs include bullying, theft, gossiping, backstabbing, drug and alcohol abuse, destroying organizational property, violence, purposely doing bad or incorrect work, surfing the Internet for personal use, excessive socializing, tardiness, sabotage, and sexual harassment.65 EXAMPLEA Maryland man swiped 32 laptops from his nonprofit health-care employer and put them on eBay. EXAMPLEA chief financial officer changed the color of the type on some spreadsheet data from black to white so as to render the fake numbers invisible while juicing the totals—and his bonus. EXAMPLEOne regional vice president for sales billed his corporate card $4,000 for Victoria’s Secret lingerie—and not for his wife, either.66 CWB has a strong, negative relationship with job satisfaction. This means that it is important for managers to find ways to reduce CWB. This can be done in three key ways. 1.Organizations can limit CWBs by hiring individuals who are less prone to engage in this type of behavior. Cognitive ability is associated with many measures of success, so it is a logical quality to screen for in hiring decisions. Personality tests also may be relevant. Page 65 2.Organizations should ensure they are motivating desired behaviors and not CWBs, for example, by designing jobs that promote satisfaction and by preventing abusive supervision. A study of 265 restaurants, for example, found that CWBs were greater in restaurants where employees reported abuse by supervisors and where managers had more employees to supervise.67 CWBs in these restaurants were associated with lower profits and lower levels of customer satisfaction, so adequate staffing and management development could not only make employees’ lives more pleasant but also improve the bottom line. 3.If an employee does engage in CWBs, the organization should respond quickly and appropriately, defining the specific behaviors that are unacceptable and the requirements for acceptable behavior. TurnoverConsider the pros and cons of turnover. Yes, turnover can be a good thing when a low-performing person like George Costanza from the Seinfeld show quits or is fired. This situation enables managers to replace the Georges of the world with better or more diverse individuals or to realign the budget. In contrast, losing a good employee is bad because the organization loses valuable human and social capital (see Chapter 1), and it can be costly. Experts estimate that the cost of turnover for an hourly employee is roughly 20 percent of annual salary, whereas the cost is higher for professional employees needing specialized skills.68 Job satisfaction has a moderately strong, negative relationship with turnover. This finding suggests that managers are well served to reduce turnover by trying to enhance employees’ job satisfaction. This recommendation is even more important for high performers.69 For example, a survey of 20,000 high-potential employees indicated that 27 percent planned to find another job within a year.70 All of these considerations suggest several practical steps employers can take to tackle a turnover problem. Managers can reduce voluntary turnover if they: 1.Hire people who “fit” within the organization’s culture. Person-culture fit is discussed in Chapter 14. 2.Spend time fostering employee engagement. Engaged employees are less likely to quit. 3.Provide effective onboarding.71 Onboarding programs help employees to integrate, assimilate, and transition to new jobs by making them familiar with corporate policies, procedures, culture, and politics by clarifying work-role expectations and responsibilities.72 4.Recognize and reward high performers because they are more likely to quit than average performers.73 If more approaches are desired, revisit the five causes of job satisfaction we previously discussed (need fulfillment, met expectations, value attainment, equity, and dispositional/genetic components). One Last Piece of AdviceOn the topic of turnovers, consider the issue of flexible work schedules. Counter to Yahoo!’s decision to eliminate telecommuting in 2013, a recent survey of 637 employees demonstrated that 66 percent desired greater flexibility. This means that managers should consider the value of offering flexible work schedules to enhance job satisfaction and reduce turnover. EXAMPLEThis is exactly what State Street Corp., a multinational financial services firm with over 29,000 employees, has done. The company offers five different work schedules that allow employees increased flexibility in deciding when and where they work.74 TAKE-AWAY APPLICATION—TAAP 1.What are the three most important things you want from a job and its associated working conditions? 2.How can you determine if a future job opportunity offers these things? 3.Assume that you are in a job that is not meeting your needs and that you cannot quit. How would you improve your workplace attitudes in this situation? Page 66 what did i learn? You learned that values and attitudes directly affect a variety of organizational outcomes. You saw how companies pay attention to employees’ values and personal attitudes to align positively with improved performance results. You also saw how companies track the work attitude of job satisfaction because it positively correlates with other positive workplace attitudes (like motivation, job involvement, and reduced stress) and behavior (like job performance, OCB, and reduced CWB and turnover). Reinforce your learning with the chapter’s Key Points listed below. Next, consolidate your learning using the Integrative Framework, shown in Figure 2.3. Then, challenge your mastery of the material by answering the chapter’s Major Questions in your own words. Key Points for Understanding Chapter 2 You learned the following key points. 2.1PERSONAL VALUES •Values are abstract ideals that guide your thinking and behavior across all situations. •Schwartz proposed that 10 core values guide behavior across contexts and time (see Figure 2.1). •The 10 core values relate to one of four themes: self-transcendence, conservation, self-enhancement, and openness to change (see Figure 2.1). •Managers can use the Schwartz model to motivate employees and to reduce the chances of employees’ experiencing conflict between their values and their work assignments. 2.2PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND THEIR IMPACT ON BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES •Attitudes represent your feelings or opinions about people, places, and objects, and range from positive to negative. Workplace attitudes are outcomes in the Integrative Framework of OB. •Three components of attitudes are affective, cognitive, and behavioral. •Cognitive dissonance represents the psychological discomfort an individual experiences when his or her attitudes or beliefs are incompatible with his or her behavior. •Intentions are the key link between attitudes and behavior in Ajzen’s model. Three determinants of the strength of an intention are one’s attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (see Figure 2.2). 2.3KEY WORKPLACE ATTITUDES •Organizational commitment reflects how strongly a person identifies with an organization and is committed to its goals. It is influenced by a host of factors in the Integrative Framework, including personality, leader behavior, organizational culture, meaningfulness, organizational climate, and psychological contracts. •Employee engagement occurs when employees give it their all at work. It contains feelings of urgency, being focused, intensity, and enthusiasm. •Employee engagement is influenced by a host of personal factors and environmental characteristics contained in the Integrative Framework. •Perceived organizational support reflects the extent to which employees believe their organization values their contributions and genuinely cares about their well-being. Employees are happier and work harder when they feel supported. 2.4THE CAUSES OF JOB SATISFACTION •Job satisfaction is an affective or emotional response toward various facets of one’s job. It is a key OB outcome. •The five major causes of job satisfaction are need fulfillment, met expectations, value attainment, equity, and dispositional/genetic components. •Telecommuting allows people to balance their work and family lives. It consists of using advanced telecommunication technology and Internet tools to send and receive work from home to work, and vice versa. 2.5MAJOR CORRELATES AND CONSEQUENCES OF JOB SATISFACTION •Job satisfaction has been correlated with many different attitudes and behaviors. It is significantly associated with the following attitudinal variables: motivation, job involvement, withdrawal cognitions, and perceived stress. •Job satisfaction is significantly related to four key behavioral outcomes: job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, counterproductive work behavior, and turnover. Page 67 FIGURE 2.3INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND APPLYING OB © 2014 Angelo Kinicki and Mel Fugate. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without permission of the authors. The Integrative Framework for Chapter 2 As shown in Figure 2.3, you learned how values and personal attitudes serve as inputs that lead to workplace attitudes as an outcome. In the figure, we boldface the term workplace attitudes so it will stand out among the other outcomes mentioned in passing in the chapter, at both the individual and organizational levels. In future chapters we will look at other of these outcomes in more detail, as well as other related processes that generate them. Challenge: Major Questions for Chapter 2 At the start of the chapter, we told you that after reading the chapter you should be able to answer the following major questions. Unless you can, have you really processed and internalized the lessons in the chapter? Refer to the Key Points, Figure 2.3, the chapter itself, and your notes to revisit and answer the following major questions: 1.What role do values play in influencing my behavior? 2.How do personal attitudes affect workplace behavior and work-related outcomes? 3.Why is it important for management to pay attention to workplace attitudes? 4.How can changes in the workplace improve job satisfaction? 5.What work-related outcomes are associated with job satisfaction? Page 68 PROBLEM-SOLVING APPLICATION CASE (PSAC) A Good Stock to Own, a Bad Place to Work? The Dish Network Corporation (DISH) started operations in March 1996. It was founded and run by Charles Ergen. Ergen stepped down in 2011 and the company named Joseph Clayton as president and chief executive officer. Today, Ergen remains chairman. As of March 2013, the company provided satellite TV to over 14 million subscribers. And the stock price continues to climb. But the path to this success has been rocky, and often at the price of job satisfaction. Bad News in 2011 and 2012 DISH’s 2011 annual report revealed that the company “lost approximately 166,000 net subscribers” in 2011, compared “to a gain of approximately 33,000 net new subscribers during the same period in 2010.” A 2012 MSN Money survey of 1,500 randomly chosen people also was used to assess the customer service provided by 150 companies in 15 industries. Ratings were obtained on a scale ranging from excellent, good, and fair, to poor. MSN Money then selected the 10 companies with the greatest percentage of “poor” ratings and designated them to the Hall of Shame. DISH was on that list. The bad news did not stop here. In 2012 DISH was designated as the worst employer to work for by website 24/7 Wall St. People at 24/7 Wall St. tried to identify the worst place to work by reviewing comments posted at Glassdoor.com, an online service that allows employees to gossip about their employers and jobs. While not a scientific study, 24/7 Wall St. identified a sample of 202 companies that had a minimum of 300 reviews. DISH had 346 former or current employees post comments about the company, and many were quite negative. Complaints included long hours, limited paid holidays, and excessive mandatory overtime. One post stated, “You’re part of a poisonous environment . . . go find a job where you can use your talents for good rather than evil.” Other comments included, “You work all day all night. Your day starts from 6:45 am till 6 pm, or 10pm. You work every holiday that your day falls on.” Here is another comment from a former employee who worked at the company for over 10 years, mainly as a Field Service Manager. If you like being told “there’s the door” every time you disagree with or question a policy’s effectiveness or purpose and then offer viable solutions/ideas, then this is the job for you. If you want to be told to “just drink the Kool-Aid” and “just get on board” no matter the cost, then this is the job for you. If you like to work 601 hours per week with no overtime pay (salaried employees), then this is the job for you. If you like to put your job first when your employer puts you last, then this is the job for you. If you like to be micromanaged and told that your own management style is wrong, then this is the job for you. Chairman Ergen Setting Tone Michael Neuman, former president and CEO at DISH for eight months, commented that Charles Ergen made a lot of unilateral decisions. Neuman did not feel empowered. Ergen also had a tendency to micromanage. For example, Ergen was noted to have signed every check that left headquarters for many years. Today, he signs only checks that exceed $100,000. At the company headquarters, people are supposed to start working at 9 a.m., and the company had employees use their badges to scan in when they arrived for work. Ergen was unhappy with this system because “some employees were taking advantage of the system by having others badge-in for them.” He installed fingerprint scanners to stop this from happening. E-mails were sent to human resources when someone arrived late. A message might also be sent to the employee’s boss and Ergen himself. A few years ago Ergen became frustrated with employees who arrived late to work because of snow. He told employees at a quarterly meeting that they should stay at nearby hotels, at their expense, if the weather suggested a few inches of snow. Current and former employees describe the culture in terms of values representing “condescension and distrust.” DISH does not allow people to work from home, and employees do not get corporate credit cards. If you like flexibility at work, DISH is not the place for you. For many years, employees had to reimburse the company if they provided a tip greater than 15 percent for an expensed meal. Ergen’s style also pertains to how he treats Wall Street analysts and large investors. For example, Chris Marangi, a portfolio manager for a firm that holds 4 million shares, says, “DISH goes out of its way to be uncooperative.” Despite visiting corporate headquarters many times, he has not met Ergen or other DISH executives. “They’re probably the least transparent company of any I’ve ever dealt with,” said Marangi. Corporate Culture Page 69 Liz Ryan, founder of human workplace, wrote an article about the culture of DISH for Huffington Post. She commented on an interaction she had with a recruiter from DISH a few years ago while attending a networking event for human resource professionals. Liz approached the recruiter from DISH and asked, “Are you busy?” The recruiter said, “We’re swamped. We have so many openings, we’re going crazy.” Liz then inquired about the types of employees DISH was looking to hire. The recruiter replied, “Hispanics.” She wanted to hire Hispanics because “they don’t complain about the pay.” When Liz told her that you can’t favor one ethnic or racial group more than another, the recruiter replied, “We’ll hire anyone who’s qualified, but we prefer to hire Hispanic people.” The company is also very litigious. The company has sued, or been sued by, so many companies that it has employed more than 100 law firms in 10 years. DISH once sued one of its own lawyers. The lawsuit resulted in a $40 million judgment against DISH. DISH Network CEO Joe Clayton responded to the label of DISH being the worst company to work for as “ridiculous.” What do you think? As noted earlier, the stock continues to climb and was up 30 percent just in 2012. The company has beaten earnings estimates five of the last eight quarters as of this writing.75 Apply the 3-Stop Problem-Solving Approach to OB Stop 1:What is the problem? •Use the Integrative Framework shown in Figure 2.3 to help identify the outcomes that are important in this case. •Which of these outcomes are not being achieved in the case? •Based on considering the above two questions, what is the most important problem in this case? Stop 2:Use the Integrative Framework in Figure 2.3 to help identify the OB concepts or theories that help you to understand the problem in this case. •What person factors are most relevant? •What environmental characteristics are most important to consider? •What concepts or theories discussed in Chapter 1 and in this chapter are most relevant for solving the key problem in this case? Stop 3:What are your recommendations for solving the problem? •Review the material in the chapter that most pertains to your proposed solution and look for practical recommendations. •Use any past OB knowledge or experience to generate recommendations. •Outline your plan for solving the problem in this case. LEGAL/ETHICAL CHALLENGE Social Media in the Hiring Process This challenge focuses on your attitudes toward the use of social media in the hiring process. Justin Bassett, a statistician in New York City, was interviewing for a job when the interviewer used the computer to search his Facebook page. The interviewer could not access Justin’s private profile, so she asked for his login information. This practice is increasingly happening to job applicants. How common is the practice of employers looking at information on Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts, and other available sites to learn about applicants? Probably enough to worry about. Annual surveys have shown results ranging from 10 percent to almost 70 percent in recent years. A July 2013 survey by CareerBuilder showed a slight increase: [N]early 39 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, up from 37 percent last year. Of those, 43 percent said they have found information that factored into their decision not to hire a candidate.76 Because many people set their profiles to private, employers have begun asking for passwords. Rather than asking for passwords, other companies ask applicants to friend someone at the company or to log into the site during the interview. The end result is the same; employers want to view applicants’ private profiles.77 Addressing the Challenge 1.What would you do if an interviewer requested that you provide private login information? Be sure to explain or justify your answer. a.Don’t provide the information. Private is private, and the employer has no right to view this information. b.If you want the job, provide the information. c.Withdraw your application. Who wants to work for a company that wants to see such private information? d.Invent other options. 2.What information about a person’s values or attitudes might be gleaned from a Facebook page? 3.If you were running a company, would you want to review potential employees’ social media pages? Why or why not? Page 70 GROUP EXERCISE The Paper Airplane Contest Objectives 1.To examine the role of attitudes in completing a group-based task. 2.To determine the impact of job satisfaction, job involvement, and engagement on task performance. Introduction In this chapter, we discussed the impact of an individual’s values and attitudes on a variety of outcomes such as performance and turnover. We did not consider, however, that these same concepts apply in the context of working on a team project. The purpose of this exercise is to examine the role of abilities and attitudes when working on a team project to build a paper airplane. The quality of the team’s work will be assessed by measuring three aspects of your team’s airplane: (1) how far it flies, (2) how far it flies with a payload, and (3) design characteristics.78 Instructions Your instructor will divide the class into groups of three to six people. Each team should pick a team name. Once formed, begin to plan what type of plane you want to design and actually construct. Keep in mind that the quality of your work will be measured through the three criteria noted above. You will be provided with one 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of blank paper and adhesive tape. Try not to make mistakes, as you will not be given more than one piece of paper. Use these materials to construct one airplane. Decorate your plane as you see fit. It is recommended that you decorate your plane before actually building it. Once all groups complete their work, a contest will be held to determine the best overall plane. There will be three rounds to complete this assessment. In the first round, each team will be asked to launch their plane and distance flown will be measured. The second round entails adding a payload—a paperclip—to your plane and then flying it once again. Distance flown will be measured. The final round entails a subjective evaluation by the entire class of the plane’s design. Each team’s overall performance will be assessed and posted. Questions for Discussion 1.How did the group decide to design the plane? 2.Did the team consider each member’s abilities when designing and flying the plane? Explain. 3.Were all team members equally involved in the task and equally satisfied with the team’s final product? Discuss why or why not. 4.What did you notice or infer about the attitudes of each group member based on how he or she approached the group exercise? 5.How could the team have increased its members’ job involvement, engagement, and task performance? Provide specific recommendations. 6.What values in the Schwartz model (discussed early in the chapter; see Figure 2.1) do you see as predicting successful participation in this group exercise? Page 71