Exploring Job Satisfaction and Work-Unit Absenteeism: A Multi-Focus Analysis

The provided assignment content is a collection of research articles and books that explore various aspects of organizational behavior, job satisfaction, and employee engagement. The texts discuss the link between job satisfaction and firm value, the impact of organizational commitment on job satisfaction, and the factors that influence employee job satisfaction. Additionally, the content examines the role of habits in guiding behavior, the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational performance, and the importance of understanding attitudes and attitude change. Overall, the articles and books aim to provide insights into the complex dynamics of organizational behavior and employee motivation.

Attitude and Job Satisfaction on Motivation of Employee 1
Impacts of Attitude and Job Satisfaction on Motivation of Employees at Work.
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18th September 2017

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Attitude and Job Satisfaction on Motivation of Employee 2
Impacts of Attitude and Job Satisfaction on Motivation of Employees at Work.
In the business world, management structure determines the behaviors attitudes, dispositions and
Ethics that create the work culture (Colquitt,et al., 2011), so we can relate organization with work
and behavior with actions. Organizational Behavior is the field of study that researches the action
of people at work. “It is a human tool for human benefits” (Pinder, 2014); it can be classified into
four areas: People, Structure, Technology, and environment. When People join the organization to
accomplish the goals/objective, some Structure is required. They use machinery gadget and
technology to achieve the organizational goals. All the same, they are influenced by external
environment (Pinder, 2014).
According to Kinicki and Kreitner (2012) Organization does not accomplish anything. Plans don’t
accomplish anything either. Theories of Management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or
fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people that an organization
accomplishes great deeds. It’s individuals who count. Therefore, Organizational Behavior is the
interdisciplinary science of looking at people’s behavior in organizations and trying to
organizations and seeks to understand it. So, it includes the whole batch of relatively powerful
ideas such as human perception and how that affects people’s behavior, the role of personality in
one's behavior in a system, the leadership process, conflict process, and the motivational process.
That means that it uses the scientific method to establish the truth and to validate its theories. The
concern is, first, with the behavior and nature of the people within organizations and, second, with
the behavior and nature of organizations within their environments (Miner, 2015).

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Organizational
Behaviour
Attitude and Job Satisfaction on Motivation of Employee 3
Employee to knowing, think
carefully, in order to understand
and describe behavior in the
company.
Leader to improve, enhance, or
make work better so that individual,
groups and whole organization can
succeed.
Miner (2015). Organizational behavior
Attitudinal and Behavioural Entities
Attitudinal and behavioral entities may be viewed as consisting of four different elements: the
action, the target at which the action is directed, the context on which the action is performed, and
the time at which it performed (Carver and Scheier, 2012). Attitudes are everywhere around us;
because attitudes are some evaluative statement, and with them, we at least say “how do we feel
about something?”
Employee attitude involves the ways an organization behaves which include the general
association of the management with the employees whereas job satisfaction happens when the
employee is happy with the work and its environment. Some studies have identified job attitude
and job satisfaction to be significant in the motivation of the employees at the workplace
(Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman, 2011; Parvin and Kabir, 2011; Skaalvik, M. and Skaalvik,
S., 2011). The attitude and psychological aspect of the workers are either positively or negatively
affected by the management practices which in turn influence job satisfaction and motivation

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(Solnet, Kralj, and Kandampully, 2012). Some of the impacts of the attitude and job satisfaction on
the motivation of the employee include employees’ performance, (Stoyanov, 2017), organizational
commitment, employee engagement/involvement, job satisfaction and job involvement.
Attitudes are created out of components
The most basic one is a cognitive component; this is an evaluation, a description of or belief in the
way things are, “I have got a job, and I express my cognitive component of an attitude I evaluate
that my pay is low.” No emotions; here there is no action is taken out of this belief. Another
element is an effective component, and here an employee is going to express his/her feeling about
the belief; this is emotional or feeling segment of an attitude, “I am angry over my salary because
it is a little.” In the end, there is a behavioral component; this is an action, intention to behave in a
certain way toward someone or something .so “I am going to look for another job that gives me a
good salary” (Petty and Brinol, 2010). The question is why our attitudes still so important to
motivation at work? The behavior or organizational behavior follows attitudes, the employees
within the organization have some attitudes, and it’s going to influence or decide the determine
what kind of behave they are going to have
How can behavior follow attitudes?
At first, employees had some attitude which is what they believe, let’s say: “they have had an
attitude that the company salary is good, the working hours are clear…etc.” Now what kind of
behavior they will go to perform, “they will stay at this company and develop them self.” this is an
action, the activity.
Behaviour =action
PREDICT
...through moderating variables
- Importance of the attitude
- Correspondence to behaviour
- Accessibility to behaviour
- direct experience
Attitudes=Beliefs

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(Neal et al., 2012)
Cognitive Dissonance
The cognitive use constructs such as proposition, Knowledge structure, image, set of beliefs, and
schema to describe the mental representation of an attitude (Pratkanis, Breckler, and Greenwald,
2014). Wicklund & Brehm (2013) defines cognitive dissonance as an incompatibility between two
or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes. Let’s say the employees think the pay is low
this is the attitudes and still work in the company which is the behavior these two is incompatible
and in this case; we must diminish this incompatibility by either change the attitudes or change the
behavior.
The impacts of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of employees
A recent study by the society for human resource management has revealed the factors that lead to
employee satisfaction, 54% of respondents say a good relationship with their supervisors is key to
their happiness, no one ever wants to feel overworked and underappreciated maintaining positive
working relationships in the office is a crucial way to have lower- level employees know that

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they’re a critical of the team. 57% say good communication is key to satisfaction in the workplace
just in any relationship the ability to communicate clearly and positively is a key component to any
company’s success. Good communication is a way to cultivate an open and creative work
environment (Aziri, 2011).
Griffin and Moorhead (2011) showed that satisfied employees are more likely to work harder and
provide better services. Employees who are satisfied with their jobs tend to be more involved in
their employing organizations, and more dedicated to delivering services with a high level of
quality. Previous research has also suggested that loyal employees are more eager to and more
capable of delivering a higher level of service quality (Aziri, 2011). Researchers have argued that
service quality is influenced by job satisfaction of employees Böckerman and Ilmakunnas, 2012;
Edmans, A., 2012). Oliver, (2014) found evidence that job satisfaction felt by customer-contact
employees is associated with service quality.
The performance of the employees is directly affected by their job attitudes (Griffin and
Moorhead, 2011). A bad attitude towards work does affect not only the individual staff but also the
co-workers and the overall value of the organization. It also perceives things in the wrong
perspective which leads to a lot of complaints. On the contrary, right work attitude puts events in
their proper perspective, and the employee derives satisfaction from work. Therefore, an
employee’s attitude influences both individual and co-workers performance.
Organizational commitment is the positive evaluation of the company and its objectives (Eslami
and Gharakhani, 2012). An employee with a positive attitude towards work will identify him or
herself with the actual organization and its objectives and will desire to preserve the membership
to it. This means that the staff will develop a belief in and accept the aims and ideals of the
company (Aydogdu and Asikgil, 2011), have the disposition to concentrate efforts towards the

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assistance of the company to realize its aims, and maintain the organization’s membership (Bushra,
Ahmad, and Naveed, 2011).
Employee engagement is central to employee motivation and depends on their willingness to go
over and above the job description. Employee engagement entails the physical, cognitive and
emotional expressions of the worker in the performance of roles. Employee engagement at the
physical level encompasses the physical energies applied by the staff to undertake roles; the
emotional aspect is about the feeling of the worker towards the three factors and their attitude to
the company and its management whether positive or negative. Additionally, Employee
engagement at the cognitive level covers the beliefs of the employee towards the organization, its
leaders and the work environment (Macey et al., 2011).
Employees that are engaged feel satisfied and feel an attachment to their occupation and employer
and promote the organization’s positive features to their families and friends and endeavor to make
the company successful which is derived from their motivation (Truss et al., 2013). On the
contrary, employees that have a negative attitude towards their job and work environment have a
weaker attachment to their job and employer and therefore are not motivated to talk about their
organization to friends and are not concerned with the achievement of the organizational goals.
Positive Employee attitude leads to job satisfaction which is enhanced when the staff feels to have
accomplished a high level of performance and is appropriately rewarded and hence motivated.
Additionally, Bozeman and Gaughan (2011), points out that a high job satisfaction level is as a
result of a positive attitude to the work. A staff that is satisfied with his/her occupation is most
likely to appreciate his/her position and be proud of the company in which case job satisfaction is
perceived as a final product of motivation. Job satisfaction as a result of a motivated employee is
concerned with many attitudes including attitudes towards the job characteristics, reward and

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benefits, social security, improvement of opportunities, and challenges in technology and respect
(Aziri, 2011). Respectively, a demotivated worker as a result of low levels of satisfaction is not
happy or eager to participate to the success of the organization and therefore not effectively
engaged at work. Furthermore, job satisfaction leads to increased levels of organizational
citizenship conduct and commitment.
The responses to job satisfaction/dissatisfaction
Constructive
Passive
Loyalty
- waiting for
conditions to
improve
Voice
- attempting to
improve
conditions Active
Neglect
- allows
conditions to
worsen
Destructive
(Vangel, 2011)
Exit
- leaving the
organization

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The voice is the constructive and active response; the employee is attempting to improve the
conditions; in another case, the employee is dissatisfied and just wait for conditions to
improve. Here the employee is passive, not active, the worst-case scenario for the company
when a dissatisfied employee is passive and as well destructive the neglect employee who
allows conditions to worsen. The final response to dissatisfaction can be exit which would be
leaving the organization, where the employee performs some action.
Job dissatisfaction as expressions of negative employee attitude can occur in the forms of
absenteeism, lateness, and theft. Diestel, Wegge, and Schmidt (2014) define absenteeism as
the regular pattern of absence from obligation. Low morale among the employees can lead to
frequent absenteeism which may, in turn, cost the organization enormous costs. Employee
lateness as a negative attitude is the tendency to arrive at work after the scheduled time. The
arrival to work late is an expression of the negative feelings of the employees either
consciously or unconsciously to the organization. The research conducted by Berry,
Lelchook, and Clark (2012) found out that the workers who arrive at work on time were
significantly committed to the organization compared to those who came late. Theft is the
unsanctioned taking, control, or relocation of funds/property. The employee who is
dissatisfied with the workplace is most likely to engage in criminal activity such as theft.
Hollow, (2014) in their research found out that employees steal not because they find an
opportunity but because they are motivated to steal. The study concludes that every person as
an individual self-worth which if not compensated adequately, then the financial pressures
can be a motivation itself to seek retribution. Employees can also express dissatisfaction due
to demotivation through exit, neglect, voice or loyalty. That is they can decide to leave the

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organization, permit conditions to deteriorate, try to improve conditions or patiently wait for
the improvement of the conditions respectively.
How to keep the team motivated
Armache (2014) suggests fours steps towards employee motivation. The first step is to
develop an employment contract; a contract is a one-page mission statement of the focusing
on three things; the goal, the responsibilities, and the norms. Everybody sign and everybody
commits. The step is to hold two short, frequent meeting. The gap between the meetings
makes the employee started to drift off track. The third step is to stand and do your work, that
means every week team member need to stand up and report out to the team what they have
accomplished that week, case in point Google ventures weekly Tuesday meetings everybody
stands up and report out what they have accomplished. The research is the team that stands
up are 34% more productive than the team sits down. The fourth step is to create a line of site
when the employee can see how they are having the impact on the end goal they are much
more efficient.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
This theory is founded on the premise that human needs are ranked hierarchically Block,
(2011). All Human beings have needs that are core, and in the in their absence, nothing else
matters. These need include physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and self-
actualization. The satisfaction of the basic needs leads to seeking for high order needs and the
moment the lower level needs are met, they no longer become motivators.

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Physiological needs the most basic because their absence overrides the urge for everything
else. They Include water, food and other biotic needs. Human beings are likely to seek for
safety needs once the physiological needs are met. These include being free from the threat of
danger, discomfort or unclear future. The next level in the hierarchy are the social needs
which comprise of the need to associate with fellow human beings, feel loved and longing for
relational attachment which is critical to human motivation. Self-Actualization is the last
need in the hierarchy which refers to becoming the best you can. This need expresses itself by
the motivation to attain new skills and approach new challenges.
(Block, 2011)

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