16 Attitude: Meaning and Concept

Dr. Pooja Mehta

 

1.      Learning Outcome

 

2.      Introduction

 

3.      Meaning and Definitions of Attitude

 

4.      Nature of Attitude

 

5.      Components of Attitude

 

6.      Functions of Attitude

 

7.      Measurement of Attitude

 

8.      Types of Work related Attitude

 

9.      Summary

 

 

1.   Learning Outcome:

 

  • After completing this module the students will be able to: Understand the concept of attitude.
  • Describe the components of attitude Explain various functions of attitude
  • Determine various methods for measuring attitude
  • Illustrate various types of work related attitudes and their effect on work related behaviour.

 

2.  Introduction

 

Attitude has been widely studied in organisational behaviour because it is considered as an important variable of human behaviour. Attitude has a psychological attribute that shapes human behaviour. Work related attitudes of an individual tend to influence job related behaviours of employees such as absenteeism, performance, turnover and organisational citizenship behaviour very strongly.

 

3. Meaning and Definitions of Attitude

 

Attitudes are evaluative statements which are frequently used to describe people, events and objects. These statements can be either favourable or unfavourable. Attitude reflects one’s feelings towards particular object, event or person. For example, when I say ‘I like this pen’, with the help of this statement I am expressing my favourable attitude towards the pen. Therefore, we can say that attitude is a bent of mind or predisposition towards certain actions. It shows persistent tendency of an individual to act or behave in a particular manner towards some object.

 

Some important definitions of attitude are given as below:

 

According to G.W. Allport, “Attitude is a mental or neutral state of readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.”

 

Krech and Crutchfield define, “Attitude is an enduring organisation of motivational, emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of the individual’s world.” According to Katz and Scotland, “Attitude is a tendency or predisposition to evaluate an object or symbol of that object in a certain way”.

 

“By attitude we mean beliefs, feelings and action tendencies of an individual or group of individuals towards objects, ideas and people. Quite often persons and objects or ideas become associated in the minds of individuals and as result attitude becomes multidimensional and complex.”

 

Therefore, we may conclude that in general terms attitude reports what people think or feel or the way they intend to act. Attitude represents our beliefs, feelings and action tendencies towards individuals, groups, objects, events and ideas.

 

4.  Nature of Attitude

 

From the definitions of attitude discussed above, following inferences can be drawn about nature of the attitude:

 

a) Attitudes are evaluative statements, either favourable or unfavourable.

 

b) Attitude refers to feeling or beliefs of individuals or group of individuals.

 

c) The feelings and beliefs are often directed towards objects, people, events or ideas. For example, when somebody says, “I like my job”. It shows his positive attitude towards his job.

 

d) Attitudes result in the behaviour or actions of people.

 

e) Attitude is psychological phenomenon which cannot be observed directly. However, it can be noticed indirectly by noticing behaviour of an individual. For example, if a person is very regular on the job and perform very well on the job, we can judge that he likes his job.

 

f) Attitudes are acquired over a period of time. The process of attitude formation starts from childhood stage of an individual and continues throughout the life time.

 

g) Attitude is an enduring characteristic of individual behaviour, which is difficult to change.

 

h) Every person irrespective of his status and intelligence hold attitudes.

 

5.  Components of Attitude

 

Attitude is comprised of three components viz. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioural. These components are described as follows:

 

a) Cognitive or informational component: Cognitive component of attitude is the description of beliefs and ideas about other persons, objects or events. This component describes the information an individual has towards others no matters whether this information is correct or not. For example, a person in search of new job may acquire information from his own sources that salary package and chances of promotion are very favourable in a particular company. In reality, this information may or may not be correct, the person will use this information to develop his feelings or action tendencies.

 

b)  Affective or emotional component: This component reflects the emotions or feelings of an individual towards a person, object or events. The feelings or emotions can be positive or negative and favourable or unfavourable. For example, “I like this job”, this statement reflects a person’s positive feelings for the job in question.

 

c) Behavioural component: This component includes the behavioural tendencies or intentions of an individual to act in a particular manner towards an object, event or person. For example, “I am going to join this job”, this statement reflects a person’s intentions to act in a particular manner.

 

These three components of attitude are very important to study in order to understand the relationship between attitude and behaviour and also to understand the complexity of this relationship. These three components are very closely related, specifically cognitive and affective components are almost inseparable. Out of the three components, only behavioural component can be observed directly whereas, the other two components can only be inferred but cannot be observed directly.

 

The exhibit given below shows the relationship between the three components of attitude. From an organisational point of view behavioural component of attitude is particularly very important to understand the reasons of behaviour of employees. For example, if in an organisation, workers of worker union believe that top management is using tactics to delay the table discussion to be held between workers and management to settle down new terms and conditions of employment. In such case, it becomes very important for the management to study how this attitude among the workers has been developed and what can be done to change the same.

 

6. Functions of Attitude

 

Why do people develop attitude toward individuals or objects? Why do people resist changing their attitude? This is because attitude helps an individual to respond towards an individual or object in a meaningful way. Specifically attitude serves four important functions viz. utilitarian function, ego-defensive function, value expressive function and knowledge function. These functions are explained as follows:

 

a) Utilitarian function: Individuals may develop attitude because sometimes attitude is helpful in obtaining rewards or avoiding punishments. For example, a worker reveals that when he expresses positive attitude towards management and supervisor in front of his colleagues, they neglect him, but when he expresses negative attitude towards management and supervisor, he gains attention and sympathy of his colleagues. Thus, he finds negative attitude towards top management instrumental in gaining acceptance and avoiding rejection from his group members.

 

b) Ego-defensive function: Generally people develop certain type of attitude because attitude helps them in maintain or defending their self images. For example, workers in an organisation may feel threatened because of appointment of some new workers. These workers may develop prejudices against new workers that new workers are less qualified and less experienced. Such ego defensive attitude is formed to cope up with the feeling of threat and guilt. This attitude will never be changed unless or until the negative feeling is removed.

 

c) Value expressive function: Attitudes reflect our value system. Such attitudes which reflect our values are closely related to our self-concept. For example, a person whose value system is centralised towards equality in the organisation will express a very positive attitude towards participative style of management, decentralised decision making etc.

 

d) Knowledge function: Attitude can also serve as substitute for knowledge. In the absence of relevant information, attitudes help us in organising and drawing inference from the perceived object. Stereotyping is the perfect example of this. In the absence of knowledge towards a person we use stereotyped attitude for judging the person.

 

Every manager must have a deep understanding about the functions of attitude. Such an understanding can help the managers in two ways:

 

Firstly, it helps in predicting how a person will behave in a particular situation. For example, if a supervisor is prejudiced against a worker, he is less likely to give him fair judgement in the process of performance appraisal. Knowledge about functions of attitude may also help a manager in analysing why a supervisor has developed such attitude towards the employee.

 

Secondly, it can help the manager in changing the attitude of another person. This can be done by changing the situations which lead to a particular type of attitude.

 

7. Measurement of Attitude

 

It has been discussed earlier that studying attitude of an individual is very important to predict his behaviour and reasons behind the behaviour. Various methods have been developed to assess attitude of employees and executives in an organisation. Some important methods are explained as below:

 

1) Thurston Attitude Scale: Thurston attitude scale is comprised of questionnaires which are filled up by the employees. This method of attitude scaling is widely used for measurement of attitude. The scaling procedure was developed before the wide use of computers and, therefore, relied heavily on manual procedures. However, with the rapid introduction of computers in the late 50’s and early 60’s, Thurston scaling procedures became less dominant. Development of Thurston attitude scale involve following steps:

 

(i) First of all, large numbers of one-dimensional statements pertaining to employee’s feelings towards jobs or other factors of organisation are listed. The items should be phrased in such a way that response to these statements can be generated in the form of

 ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

 

(ii) After this, statements are typed on a separate slip of paper and a panel of judges is asked to place the statements in one of several piles (usually 7,9 or 11) ranging from statements representing the least favourable view point to statements representing the most favourable view points.

 

Several judges are used for the process of scale construction. Judges allocate the statements to the several piles to assess the scale value of several statements. If all judges place a statement in favourable pile, that statement will be considered to express favourable attitude towards the organisation. If all judges place a statement in a unfavourable pile, that will be considered to express unfavourable attitude. At the end, we can determine the average location of each statement. The statements which are scattered by various judges over different piles are eliminated from the scale.

 

2) Likert scale: This method of attitude measurement is relatively simpler than Thurston method and does not require involvement of judges in the process of scale construction. In this method every statement which is included in the scale has five degrees of responses viz. strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree and strongly disagree. The individual responding to the scale is asked to state the extent to which he agrees or disagrees with the statement. Score is assigned to each response and total scores of each statement are summed up to produce overall score. This overall score indicates the respondent’s attitude.

 

Validity of the scale is measured with the help of following three methods:

a)      Internal consistency

b)      Judgement of experts

c)      Comparing the results obtained from the scale with the results obtained from already established scale.

 

3) Interviews: Interview is the method of obtaining information about employees’ attitude towards organisation, job related factors, working conditions or other parameters. The interviews of workers should be taken by the representatives from outside the organisation. The information obtained from the responses given by the employees is then analysed to make a generalisation about the attitude of employees.

 

8. Work related attitudes

 

An individual may develop hundreds of attitudes in his life towards any number of people, objects or events, but in the study of organisational behaviour, our prime focus is on individual’s work related attitudes. These work related attitudes generally express an employee’s favourable or unfavourable evaluations about the work or work environment. Important work related attitudes are discussed as below:

 

a) Job satisfaction: Job satisfaction reflects a general attitude or feeling of liking or disliking of an employee towards his job. A person who is highly satisfied from his job, will express a positive attitude towards the job and the person who is highly dissatisfied, will express negative attitude towards the job. For example, a person who is highly satisfied from the job will tend to be regular, punctual and perform well.

 

b) Job involvement: Job involvement is the degree to which an individual identifies psychologically with his or her job and consider his or her perceived performance level important to self worth. Employees with high level of job involvement identify themselves with their jobs very strongly and are generally very particular about their performance. High level of involvement leads to less absenteeism and lower turnover rates. Another concept which is very closely related to job involvement is psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment is the degree to which individuals believe that they have influence over their work environment, their capability, perceived autonomy and meaningfulness of their job. Both job involvement and psychological empowerment are positively related to performance of the employees.

 

c) Organisational commitment: Organisational commitment refers to the job attitude in which an employee identifies with a particular organisation and its goals and wishes to maintain his membership in that organisation. Where job involvement refers to identification with one’s job, organisational commitment refers to identification with one’s organisation and its goals. There is a positive relationship between organisational commitment and productivity. Organisational commitment is “relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organisation”. Strongly committed employees tend to remain in the organisation for a longer period of time than those who have lower commitment. There are three components of organisational commitment:

 

  1.  Affective commitment: Affective commitment refers to emotional attachment of an employee with his organisation and its values. For example, an employee may be emotionally attached to its organisation because it is following environment friendly practices.
  2. Continuance commitment: Continuance commitment refers to an employee’s perception about economic benefits of remaining in the organisation. An employee may be committed to the organisation because he is getting very good salary package which he would not get in any other organisation.
  3. Normative commitment: Normative commitment is when an employee feels obligation to remain in the organisation for ethical or moral reasons. For example, an employee who is heading a new project in the organisation may not leave the organisation because he feels that it would be morally wrong if he leaves the organisation without completing the project.

 

Different forms of commitment have varied effects on individual behaviour. Research studies have showed that both affective commitment and normative commitment generally lead to increased positive work related behaviours such as increased performance and organisational citizenship behaviour and decreased withdrawal behaviours such as absenteeism and turnover. Out of all, affective commitment is more strongly related to performance level of employee. On the other hand, continuance commitment results in lower turnover rates but rate of absenteeism tends to increase and performance level decreases in such cases.

 

d)  Perceived organisational support: Perceived organisational support is the degree to which employees feel that their organisation values their involvement in the organisation and cares for their well being. Usually employees perceive their organisations as supportive when the reward system in the organisation is fair, they participate in the decision making and when they find their supervisors supportive to them. Individuals with strong perception of organisational support are more likely to express organisational citizenship behaviour, lower levels of lethargy and decreased rate of absenteeism.

 

e) Employee engagement: Employee engagement is the term which refers to individual’s level of involvement, satisfaction and interest for the job he is performing. Highly engaged employees feel a strong connection with their work and the company whereas, disengaged employees just invest their time in the organisation but not energy and attention into their work. Research on employee engagement has pointed out that the organisations whose employees had higher levels of employee engagement were more productive, earned more profits, had highly satisfied customers, experienced lower levels of turnover and faced fewer accidents than other companies.

  1. Summary

 

Attitude has been widely studies in organisational behaviour because it is considered as an important variable of human behaviour. Attitude has a psychological attribute that shapes human behaviour. Work related attitudes of an individual tend to influence job related behaviours of employees such as absenteeism, performance, turnover and organisational citizenship behaviour very strongly. Attitudes are evaluative statements which are frequently used to describe people, events and objects. These statements can be either favourable or unfavourable. Attitude reflects one’s feelings towards particular object, event or person. Therefore, we can say that attitude is a bent of mind or predisposition towards certain actions. It shows persistent tendency of an individual to act or behave in a particular manner towards some object. Attitude is comprised of three components viz. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioural. Cognitive component of attitude is the description of or beliefs and ideas about other persons, objects or events. Affective component reflects the emotions or feelings of an individual towards a person, object or events. Behavioural component includes the behavioural tendencies or intentions of an individual to act in a particular manner towards an object, event or person.

 

Attitude serves four important functions viz. utilitarian function, ego-defensive function, value expressive function and knowledge function. An individual may develop hundreds of attitudes in his life towards any number of people, objects or events, but in the study of organisational behaviour, our prime focus is on individual’s work related attitudes. These work related attitudes generally express an employee’s favourable or unfavourable evaluations about the work or work environment. Important work related attitudes are job satisfaction, job involvement, psychological empowerment, organisational commitment, perceived organisational support and employee engagement. Positive work related attitudes lead to increased performance and organisational citizenship behaviour and decreased absenteeism and turnover.

 

Learn More:

1.      Stephen Robins (2012). Organizational Behaviour. New Delhi-110092: Prentice Hall publications.

2.      Aswathappa, K. (2003). Organisational Behaviour. Himalaya Publishing House.

3.      Nair, S. R. (2010). Organisational Behaviour (text & Cases). Himalaya Publishing House.

4.      Prasad, L. M. (2014). Organizational Behaviour. Sultan Chand & Sons.

5.      Greenberg, J. (2003). Organizational Behavior: The State of the Science. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

6.      Miner, J. B. (2002). Organizational Behavior: Foundations, Theories, and Analyses. Oxford University Press.

7.      Pareek, U. (2014), Understanding Organisational Behaviour, Oxford University Press (Revised and Updated by Sushama Khanna)

8.      Kalliath, T. and Brough, P. (2011), Organisational Behaviour, McGraw Hill.

9. http://studymore.org.uk/glolea.htm

10. www.slideshare.net/vybhavi1/power-point-presentation-on-attitude

11. http://www.bput.ac.in/lecture_notes/ob.pdf

12. www.slideshare.net/amitbishnoi3557/attitude–pptmba-hons

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_(psychology)

14. www.fu.uni-lj.si/…/usr…/ORGANIZATIONAL–BEHAVIOR-2013.pdf