Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Feelings About Work: Job Attitudes and

Emotions

Copyright Paul E. Spector, All rights reserved, March 15, 2005

 Learning Objectives
• Define job satisfaction and organizational
commitment.
• Characterize the differences between job satisfaction
and organizational commitment.
• Explain how job satisfaction and organizational
commitment are measured.
• Summarize the findings on possible causes and
effects of job satisfaction and organizational
commitment.
• Discuss how emotions are experienced by
employees at work and how they impact
organizations.
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 Let's imagine: Scenario 1
(Positive)
You just came to work and found a letter of
appreciation from your boss! it's because you
have just finished a great project!
1. how would you feel?
2. will emotion have any effect upon your
behavior at job? if yes, how?
 Scenario 2 (Negative)
You are continually having too much pressure
from your boss. Despite working longer hours
each day feel you won't be able to finish the
project. Because it's too much to get the project
done by this week.
1. How would you feel?
2. What would be the consequences of your
emotion at work?
 Attitude Matters
Attitudes are employee beliefs and opinions that influence their
behaviour
For example, if an employee likes his boss, he will most
probably like the job too, regardless of the activities involved.
Whereas, if an employee hates his boss, he will most probably
hate the job too, even if it is a comparatively good job. (low
pressure, fewer hours etc.) All because of attitude

Companies need to create positive attitudes among employees,

because when they have positive attitudes, they perform better.
(more profits!)
 Emotions and Work
• Positive emotions: Feeling good
– Greater creativity, job satisfaction, and contextual
performance

• Negative emotions: Feeling bad

– Lower job satisfaction
– Higher absence and turnover
– Low morale
 Life is full of emotion
Emotion at work:

Emotion at Non work

Work Behavior ← → behavior
work
 Emotional labour: good / bad?
• required expression of certain emotions at
work is called emotional labour
• possible effects on employees?
• positive/ negative?
• Ex- Call center operator is required to smile
and be polite to rude, insulting customers.
 zapf's sudies (2002)
person experienceing the ＋
emotions being displayed

pretend to be happy but

experiencing emotional
－
dissonance

having control over the Neutral

situation
 Visual learning on consequence
of emotional labour
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 Nature of Job Satisfaction
• Global approach: Overall satisfaction with work
• Facet approach: Satisfaction with particular
aspects of the job
– I.e. pay, promotion, supervision, and nature of work

 It is possible to be satisfied with one factor, but

dissatisfied with another factor.
 Ex- Happy with high salary, but dissatisfied with
work pressure and frequent travel. BAT territory
managers are an example.
Mean levels of U.S. Satisfaction On
the Job Satisfaction Survey
 Assessment of Job Satisfaction
• Self-report survey
– Person best judge of own feelings
– Giving a questionnaire/interview to the employee to find out his level of job
satisfaction.
• Standard scales exist
– Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
• A scale which measures 5 factors of job satisfaction: Pay, promotion, nature of
work, supervision, coworkers
• Often times, the individual scores are added to form a total score for an employee.
– Job In General (JIG) Scale
• Measures overall job satisfaction
• Individual scores are added to get total score, but each factor has a weighting based
on individual personality traits.
• For example, one person might give more importance to salary, another person
might think company image (brand name) is more important.
 Factors of Job Satisfaction:
• Environment

Job Satisfaction

Personality
 Environmental Factors of Job
Satisfaction:
• Job characteristics (Hackman & Oldham, 1976)
– Skill Variety: the no. of different skills necessary to do
a job
– Task Identity: whether the employee does an entire job
or a piece of a job
– Task Significance: the impact a job has on other people
and the organization
– Autonomy: the freedom employees have to do their
jobs as they see fit
– Task Feedback: the extent to which it is obvious to
employees that they are doing their jobs correctly
• Summing up five factors gives us scope of the job.
 Environmental Factors of Job
Satisfaction:
• Pay
– Salary compared to people in same job more important than
different jobs
• Justice
– Distributive and procedural justice related to global and factor
satisfaction
– Distributive Justice: extent to which people perceive the allotment
of rewards at work to be fair
– Procedural Justice: extent to which people perceive the process by
which rewards at work are allocated to be fair
 The Equity theory of motivation
– Says that people psychologically strive to
maintain a balance between their efforts and
their rewards
– If a person detects an inequity, it creates a
dissatisfaction in the person’s mind and he or
she will try to reduce or eliminate the source of
that dissatisfaction (take steps to restore the
balance)

© 2005 Prentice Hall Inc. All 11–18

rights reserved.
 Types of Equity
• External equity
– How a job’s pay rate in one company compares to the same job’s pay rate in other
companies
• Internal equity
– How fair the job’s pay rate is, when compared to other jobs within the same company
(ex- production manager vs marketing manager)
• Individual equity
– How fair an individual’s pay is compared with what his or her co-workers are earning for
the same or very similar jobs within the same company (ex- Production Manager 1 vs
Production Manager 2)
• Procedural equity
– The perceived fairness of the processes and procedures used to make decisions regarding
the allocation of pay (i.e. fair process evaluation by employees regarding pay)
 Methods to Address Equity
Issues
• Salary surveys of other companies
– To maintain external equity
• Job analysis and job evaluation
– To maintain internal equity
• Performance appraisal and merit pay
– To maintain individual equity
• Communication, grievance mechanisms, and employee participation
– To help ensure that employees view the pay process as transparent and
fair, i.e. to maintain procedural equity
Environmental: Job Characteristics Theory
 Envrionmental: other related
antecedents
• Pay: job satisfaction/ pay satisfaction?
• justice
– distributive justice
– procedural justice
 Factors of Job Satisfaction: Personal

Personality

Negative affectivity Locus of control

(Natural tendency for people to be dissatisfied) (internal vs external
Ex- Chronic kickers (externals less satisfied)
 Factors of Job Satisfaction:
Personal
• Effect of Personality
– Negative affectivity: Natural tendency for people to be
dissatisfied
– Ex- Chronic Kickers

– Locus of Control: Whether you think outcomes depend

on your own actions (internals) or environmental factors
(externals)
 Factors of Job Satisfaction:
Personal
• Gender
– Few differences between gender.
• Age
– Curvilinear relationship—job satisfaction lowest
from age 26 to 31, then increases
• Culture and ethnicity
– Few racial differences
 Person-Job Fit approach
• Says match between individual and the job is main
factor of job satisfaction.
• People differ in reactions to same situation
• Growth need strength (GNS): Refers to a person’s
desire for the satisfaction of higher order needs,
such as autonomy or achievement.
– People high on GNS are more satisfied with high scope
jobs (i.e. impactful, important jobs)
– People low on GNS are not more satisfied with high
scope jobs (i.e. indifferent, they are not that ambitious,
low life goals)
 Effects of Job Satisfaction
• Job performance
– Two Models
• 1. Qualitative- Job satisfaction results in increased effort which results in
increased job performance

• 2. Quantitative- Higher Job performance results in more rewards, which

results in higher job satisfaction.
– More evidence that performance causes satisfaction
• Turnover
– Dissatisfied people more likely to quit
• Absence
– Very small correlation - other factors more important
• Health and well-being
– Job satisfaction related to physical symptoms, anxiety, and
depression
 Effects of Job Satisfaction
• Life satisfaction
– Spillover, compensation, and segmentation hypotheses
• Spillover Hypothesis: suggests that satisfaction (or dissatisfaction)
in one area of life affects, or spills over to another
• Compensation Hypothesis: says that dissatisfaction in one area of
life will be compensated for in another area. A person with a
dissatisfying job will seek satisfaction in other aspects of life.
Conversely, a person with a dissatisfying home life might seek
satisfaction at work.
• Segmentation Hypothesis: states that people compartmentalize their
lives, and that satisfaction in one area of life has no relation to
satisfaction in another (i.e. professionalism)