Performance deficiency and performance opportunity of Employee Attitudes

The causes of employee attitudes are major practitioner knowledge gap. In general, HR practitioners understand the importance of work situation as a cause of employee attitudes and an area of HR can change the through the organizational programs and management practices. Besides, some of the most important areas of the work situation are the work itself.

Furthermore, the dispositional influences have shown the influences of a person’s disposition on the job opportunity. From the studies (Staw & Ross 1985) demonstrated that a person’s job satisfaction scores have stability over time, even they changed their jobs. One of the limitations in this literature is that it is not yet confirmative as to how exactly disposition affect job satisfaction (Erez, 1994). The researchers have started to explore the psychological processes that underlie dispositional cause’s job satisfaction. One of the primary causes of the relationship was through the perception of the job itself. These various research findings indicate that there is in fact a relationship between disposition or personality and job satisfaction. Even though organizations cannot directly impact employee personality, the use of sound selection methods and a good match between employees and jobs will en- sure people are selected and placed into jobs most appropriate for them, which, in turn, will help enhance their job satisfaction.

The cultural influences on the employee attitudes, there is also a small, but growing body of research on the influences of culture or country on employee attitudes and job satisfaction. The continued globalization of organizations poses new challenges for HR practitioners, and the available research on cross-cultural organizational and human resources issues can help them better understand and guide practice (Erez, 1994; House, 1995; Triandis, 1994). There are four cross cultural dimensions are: (1) individualism-collectivism ;(2) uncertainty avoidance versus risk taking; (3) power distance, or the extent to which power is unequally distributed; and (4) masculinity/femininity, more recently called achievement orientation.

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Besides, the work situation causes the performance deficiency and organization impact. Contrary to some commonly held practitioner beliefs, the most notable situational influence on job satisfaction is the nature of the work itself. Unfortunately, some managers think employees are most desirous of pay to the exclusion of other job attributes such as interesting work. For example, in a study examining the importance of job attributes, employees ranked interesting work as the most important job attribute and good wages ranked fifth, whereas when it came to what managers thought employees wanted, good wages ranked first while interesting work ranked fifth (Kovach,1995).

The results of positive or negative job satisfaction are the second major practitioner knowledge gap is in the area of understanding the consequences of job satisfaction. We hear debates and confusion about whether satisfied employees are productive employees, and HR practitioners rightfully struggle as they must reduce costs and are concerned about the effects on job satisfaction and, in turn, the impact on performance and other outcomes. The study of the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance Most of the earlier reviews of the literature suggested a weak and somewhat inconsistent relationship between job satisfaction and performance. An emerging area of study is the interplay between job and life satisfaction. Researchers have speculated that there are three possible forms of the relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction: (1) spill over, where job experiences spill over into nonworking life and vice versa; (2) segmentation, where job and life experiences are separated and have little to do with one another; and (3) compensation, where an individual seeks to compensate for a dissatisfying job by seeking fulfilment and happiness in his or her nonworking life and vice versa. Thus, the spill over model, whereby job satisfaction spills into life satisfaction and vice versa, appears to characterize most U.S. employees. Also in support of a spill over model for job and life satisfaction, the research literature shows a consistent relationship between job satisfaction and depression. One might speculate on the possibility that the relationship is simply due to personality traits that cause both low job satisfaction and depression. However, to counter this, there is evidence that job loss and other work events are in fact associated with depression.

The third major practitioner knowledge gap is in the area of how to measure and influence employee attitudes. There are a number of possible methods for measuring employee attitudes, such as conducting focus groups, interviewing employees, or carrying out employee surveys. Of these methods, the most accurate measure is a well-constructed employee. Thus, we first provide an overview of the major research on employee attitude surveys. To positively influence employee attitudes, understanding of some of the research already discussed is important. In addition, knowledge of important considerations for analyzing employee survey results is essential for taking appropriate steps to improve attitudes. Finally, practitioners often use survey feedback discussion meetings as a means for acting on employee attitude surveys-the final part of this section addresses research related to this topic and the most important ways to support action. Employee attitude measures used in research and facet versus global measures. There are two additional issues with measuring employee attitudes that have been researched and provide potentially useful knowledge for practitioners. First, measures of job satisfaction can be faceted. Second, while most job satisfaction researchers have assumed that overall, single item measures are unreliable and therefore should not be used, this view has not gone unchallenged.

Analyzing and interpreting survey results for action effective analysis and interpretation of employee attitude survey data is necessary in order to understand the results and, in turn, take appropriate actions to improve employee attitudes and job satisfaction. Research on employee attitude measurement and statistical analyses is a key contribution of the field of psychology. For example, Switzerland tends to have some of the highest ratings, Italy some of the lowest. Therefore, it is helpful when interpreting survey data to know how the survey results compare to industry norms or country norms. Survey norms are descriptive statistics that are compiled from data on the same survey questions from a number of companies and are obtained by joining a consortium. Comparability of the companies, company size, and number of companies are important factors in the value of the norms (Morris & LoVerde, 1993). In addition, the professionalism in the norms process and the age of the norms will affect their relevance and accuracy (Bracken, 1992; R. H. Johnson, 1996). If survey norms are not an option, overall company or unit results can serve as internal norms, although they encourage an inward focus and potentially internal competition. Actions determined through normed-based comparisons can be strong drivers of change and help focus a company externally to other companies and the competition.

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES AND JOB SATISFACTION

Human Resource Management, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 4, Pp. 395-407

. 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20032

Lise M. Saari and Timothy A. Judge