WORK RELATED ATTITUDES

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” - Aristotle

The above quote aptly justifies the role played by work-related attitudes. It is  attitudes that create the distinction between pleasure and displeasure towards work.

Attitudes are evaluative statements reflected towards any object, person or situation. An individual’s behaviour to a great extent is determined by the attitude he carries, which could be positive or negative, favourable or unfavourable, good or bad. The cognitive and affective components of attitude remain hidden and it is the behavoural component that is overt and hence observable. The initiation of attitude occurs with the formation of cognitive component which is the ‘information seeker and analyser’. It gives rise to the emergence of the affective component, which is governed by the emotional and sentimental aspects of human beings. Eventually, it is the affective component that is reflected through our behaviour, which could be desirable or undesirable depending upon the assessment of the object, person or situation.

Organizations these days are very concerned about the work-related attitudes carried by their employees. There are three universally recognized organizational attitudes, namely, job satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment.

Job Satisfaction: It is the deep sense of happiness derived from the job. It also, advocates the favourability or unfavourability of the job vis-a-vis the job-holder. Researchers have defined it in terms of job characteristics, which signifies that the presence of task identity, skill variety, task significance and autonomy would provide satisfaction with the job. Most organizations are concerned about keeping their employees satisfied mainly because satisfied employees are productive, efficient and effective and also they stay with the organizations for relatively longer periods of time. A number of programmes related to employee engagement, participation, involvement, benefits, perks, etc. are adopted by organizations to keep their employees not only happy but also satisfied.

Job Involvement: Job involvement is all about the degree of involvement of an individual with his job. It is the extent to which an individual identifies with his job and feels a kind of commitment towards the job. Job involvement is a positive organizational attitude and creates perfectionists as far as performance standards are concerned but excessive job involvement may become counter-productive when the employees become obsessed with their job. Their entire focus of life is their job which may eventually lead to burnout. Individuals may also face the issue of worthlessness once their job comes to an end. It can hamper their psychological well-being. These individuals are committed to their job and not to the organization, hence, if the organization fails to provide them with the right kind of job content, they may quit the organization.

Organizational Commitment: This particular attitude focusses on an individual’s sense of identity with his organization. It is the extent to which an individual feels proud of being the member of the organization and derives his identity from it. This is an extremely important attitude from the organizational point of view as people with a higher degree of organizational commitment are loyalists. They are the staunch supporters and believers of the organizational philosophy and its culture. They might not be star performers but they are the cornerstones of the organization. An organization can bank upon them through thick and thin.

Delving a bit deeper into this, it can also be surmised that there can be various patterns of permutation and combination of these work-related attitudes. There can be employees who are are just confined to the context factors or dissatisfiers inherent in the work environment. Their association with the organization might squarely depend on the hygiene factors hovering at the workplace. Their continuance in the job is directly proportional to the degree of favourableness of the situational factors surrounding their job.

On the other hand, employees with a higher level of job involvement are fixated with the content factors or satisfiers of their core job. They see their performance on the job as an extension of their personality, to the extent that it becomes an index of their self-esteem.

Employees who carry an attitude of organizational commitment are beyond both context and content factors. They align their personal growth trajectory with the growth graph of the organization. Loyalty is uppermost in their minds, which may also result in dereliction of duty on their part or lack of attention to their job. To them the organization is sacrosanct and the job becomes secondary.