Employee Attitude as a Function of Job Satisfaction
EMPLOYEE ATTITUDE AS A FUNCTION OF JOB SATISFACTION
Introduction
There is confusion and debate among practitioners on the topic of employee attitudes and job satisfaction even at a time when employees are increasingly important for organizational success and competitiveness. “Happy employees are productive employees.”“Happy employees are not productive employees.” We hear these conflicting statements made by HR professionals and managers in organizations. This research aims at establishing job satisfaction as a basis for employee attitude; whether good or bad and we will do this by answering three questions: “What are the causes of employee attitudes?”, “What are the results of positive and negative job reaction?”and “How can we measure and influence employee attitudes?”
Before we begin a description of what we mean by employee attitudes and job satisfaction will suffice.
What is job satisfaction?
Job satisfaction is how content an individual is with his/her job. In other words, a contentment (or lack of it arising out of interplay of the employees positive or negative feelings towards his/her job. However, there is a distinction between affective job satisfaction and cognitive job satisfaction. Affective job satisfaction is the extent of pleasurable emotional feelings an individual has about his job overall while the cognitive job satisfaction has to do with the extent to which the individual is satisfied with particular facets o his job. The most-used research definition of job satisfaction is by Locke (1976), who defined it as “. . . a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” (p. 1304). Implicit in Locke’s definition is the importance of both affect, or feeling, and cognition, or thinking. When we think, we have feelings about what we think. Conversely, when we have feelings, we think about what we feel. Cognition and affect are thus inextricably linked, in our psychology and even in our
Introduction
There is confusion and debate among practitioners on the topic of employee attitudes and job satisfaction even at a time when employees are increasingly important for organizational success and competitiveness. “Happy employees are productive employees.”“Happy employees are not productive employees.” We hear these conflicting statements made by HR professionals and managers in organizations. This research aims at establishing job satisfaction as a basis for employee attitude; whether good or bad and we will do this by answering three questions: “What are the causes of employee attitudes?”, “What are the results of positive and negative job reaction?”and “How can we measure and influence employee attitudes?”
Before we begin a description of what we mean by employee attitudes and job satisfaction will suffice.
What is job satisfaction?
Job satisfaction is how content an individual is with his/her job. In other words, a contentment (or lack of it arising out of interplay of the employees positive or negative feelings towards his/her job. However, there is a distinction between affective job satisfaction and cognitive job satisfaction. Affective job satisfaction is the extent of pleasurable emotional feelings an individual has about his job overall while the cognitive job satisfaction has to do with the extent to which the individual is satisfied with particular facets o his job. The most-used research definition of job satisfaction is by Locke (1976), who defined it as “. . . a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” (p. 1304). Implicit in Locke’s definition is the importance of both affect, or feeling, and cognition, or thinking. When we think, we have feelings about what we think. Conversely, when we have feelings, we think about what we feel. Cognition and affect are thus inextricably linked, in our psychology and even in our