Lecture 12: Workplace Application – Employee Attitude Testing

1. Lecture 12: Workplace Application –Employee AttitudeTesting PSY 605

2. Attitudes - Defined • How we think, feel, and/or act (or intend to act) with regards to certain stimulus/object/person • The Tri-partite Model of Attitudes (Eagley & Chaiken, 1998); the ABC’s of Attitudes • Affect – Behavior – Cognition • MANY attitudes of interest in organizational settings • Focus on individual-level attitudes AND group-level shared attitudes

3. Applications in Organizational Settings

4. Job Satisfaction

5. Job Satisfaction • The original organizational application of attitudes • The multi-dimensional psychological response to one’s job (Hulin & Judge, 2003) • Discussion points in measurement of job satisfaction: • Are facet scales or general measures best? • What’s a well-supported, useful measure of job satisfaction?

6. Facet or general job satisfaction measures? • General: do you like your job? • Can be just one simple item! • But does it capture full construct domain? • Facet-level: do you like your coworkers? do you like your supervisor? do you like the specific daily tasks you carry out? do you like your role within the organization?... • More fine-grained understanding of job-related attitudes; can lead to more actionable solutions. • But facets (and therefore items) can be endless!

7. Facet or general job satisfaction measures? • BOTH are useful – depends on purpose • If purpose is to get general understanding of global satisfaction with the job • a general – even just 1 item – measure is appropriate • If purpose is to understand which specific dimensions employees are/are not satisfied with and/or to directly impact dimensions based on results • a multidimensional or facet-level measure is appropriate e.g., Cortese & Quaglino (2006)

8. What’s a well-supported measure? • For global job satisfaction, a simple “How satisfied with your job?” will work • For facet-level, many turn to the Job Descriptive Index (JDI; original developed by Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969) • 5 facets (1997 revision): work, pay, promotions, supervision, & coworkers • Each facet contains 9 or 18 adjectives/short phrases describing various aspects of work experiences • Test-takers respond with ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘??’ • Total of 72 items

9. The JDI - Abridged • Stanton et al. (2002) maintained the 5-dimension structure and cut # items from 72 to 25. • Psychometric properties well-supported

10. Employee Engagement

11. Employee engagement defined • A major challenge in engagement measurement – lack of current consensus on what this slide should say • 3 major approaches to defining and measuring employee engagement: • Engagement as the anti-thesis to burnout; consisteing of vigor, dedication, & absorption (Maslach, Schaufeli, and colleagues) • Engagement as a physical, cognitive, and emotional motivational construct; a holistic investment of oneself into one’s work role (Kahn, 1990) • Engagement as what predicts performance, customer satisfaction, & sales (e.g., Gallup)

12. Engagement as anti-burnout • Definition: engagement consists of: • Vigor – high levels of energy & mental resilience, willingness to work, persistence • Dedication – strong involvement in work, experiencing pride/enthusiasm/positive challenge • Absorption – happily engrossed in ones work; sense of flow • Measurement: the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES; Schaufeli et al., 2002); the shorter UWES-9 (Schaufeli et al., 2006) • At my work, I feel bursting with energy (V) • I am enthusiastic about my job (D) • Time flies when I am working (A)

13. Engagement as holistic motivational construct • Definition: engagement is the harnessing of employee’s energies into work roles; consists of physical, cognitive, and emotional components (Kahn, 1990) • Measurement: Rich et al. (2010) developed 3-dimensional measure • Physical: I exert a lot of energy on my job. • Emotional: I feel energetic at my job. • Cognitive: At work, I pay a lot of attention to my job.

14. Engagement defined by outcomes • Definition: employee-related construct that predicts productivity, sales, customer satisfaction… (defined by outcome) • Measurement: scales developed empirically based on criterion-related validity • E.g., The Gallup Q12 Engagement Measure • 12 items on basic needs, management support, teamwork, and growth perceptions • Focus on ‘actionable items’ that predict outcomes of interest to Gallup’s clients

15. Organizational Culture/Climate

16. Org. Culture & Climate Defined • Culture & Climate: shared attitudes/emotions/assumptions among group of employees regarding organizational experiences/stimuli/targets • Examples: general org. culture; safety climate; justice climate • Culture is more deeply rooted – shared assumptions and norms • Climate is more surface-level – shared perceptions of policies/practices/routines/organizational rewards

17. Measurement Approaches • Surveys: self-reported perceptions of values/assumptions shared by the group • E.g., the Organizational Culture Profile (O’Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell) • Ethnography – qualitative observational methods • Archival Analysis – content analysis of artifacts • Cognitive Mapping – graphic representation of the process employees use to understand culture • Best Practice? Schein (1990) recommends ‘combining insider knowledge with outside questions’; combination of approaches that get at the deep roots of culture

18. Climate level vs. strength • Climate level: average level of response across group members (e.g. ,‘high safety climate’) • Climate strength: consistency in responses across group members (e.g., ‘high consensus regarding safety climate’) • Can have any combination of level/strength • BOTH can uniquely predict outcomes; in some studies strength shown to moderate (enhance) effects of level (e.g., Schneider et al., 2002)