Job Satisfaction Levels Essay

Submitted By juliaxu
Words: 8185
Pages: 33

Chapter 3
Attitudes and
Job Satisfaction

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Contrast the three components of an attitude. 2. Understand the relationship between attitudes and behaviour. 3. Compare and contrast the major job attitudes. 4. Define job satisfaction and show how we can measure it. 5. Summarise the main causes of job satisfaction. 6. Identify four employee responses to dissatisfaction.

Instructor Resources

Text Exercises • An Ethical Choice: I don’t hate my job…I hate you • OB in Practice: Job Satisfaction Hits Record Lows • Myth or Science? “Happy Workers Are Productive Workers” • Point/Counterpoint: Managers Can Create Satisfied Employees • Questions for Review • Experiential Exercise: What Factors Are Most Important To Your Job Satisfaction?

Text Cases • Case Incident 1: Generation Snap

Instructor’s Choice - Discovering Your Own VALS

This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student's textbook. Instructor's Choice reinforces the text's emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor's Choice activities are centred on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be used in-class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student's part. The course instructor may choose to use these at anytime throughout the class—some may be more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered in the chapter.

| |WEB EXERCISES |
| |At the end of each chapter of this Instructor’s Manual, you will find suggested exercises and ideas for researching the WWW |
| |on OB topics. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, |
| |distribute them to your class, and make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class |
| |activity or as lab activities with your class. |

Summary and Implications for Managers

Managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes because attitudes give warnings of potential problems and because they influence behaviour. Satisfied and committed employees, for instance, have lower rates of turnover, absenteeism, and withdrawal behaviours. They also perform better on the job. Given that managers want to keep resignations and absences down—especially among their most productive employees—they’ll want to do things that generate positive job attitudes. As one review put it, “A sound measurement of overall job attitude is one of the most useful pieces of information an organisation can have about its employees.”

The most important thing managers can do to raise employee satisfaction is focus on the intrinsic parts of the job, such as making the work challenging and interesting. Although paying employees poorly will likely not attract high-quality employees to the organisation, or keep high performers, managers should realise that high pay alone is unlikely to create a satisfying work environment. Creating a satisfied workforce is hardly a guarantee of successful organisational performance, but evidence strongly suggests that whatever managers can do to improve employee attitudes will likely result in heightened organisational effectiveness.

The chapter opens by profiling Amber Drum, a manager and recruiter from IPA, Melbourne. This vignette demonstrates that organisational commitment and employer loyalty are key signs of solid work values and job satisfaction, and how this commitment and loyalty lead to job satisfaction. This vignette shows how employees’