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  • Leveraging Organizational Commitment – 2

    In the last byte, we looked at organizational commitment and what factors assist increasing this in the favor of an organization. We continue the discussion in this byte with exploring how managers can leverage on this.

    Communication is an important tool in the world of management. A manager would need to communicate to his employees that their contribution is extremely valuable and the organization care about their well being. This cannot be limited only to lip service, and some tangible action is what proves to the employees that what is said is what is intended. This increases Affective Commitment in the employees.

    At the point recruitment itself it is important to understand the value compatibility of the organization and the new recruit. Affective Commitment is found to increase when such value compatibility exists – the critical amongst these values are moral integrity, fairness, creativity and openness.

    As stated earlier, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It is essential that any action is consistent with what is committed by the organization to the employee. Even a single negative experience at work can undoubtedly diminish affective commitment!

    Managers could need to keep these points in mind when working in an organization and intends to have a group of organizationally committed employees.

  • Leveraging Organizational Commitment

    In the last byte, we discussed about organizational commitment. We further the same discussion today and explore it in a greater depth understanding how a manager can leverage this.

    If one were to begin with asking oneself – would he like to stay associated with a company that has given him/her a job but has nailed down every bit of the detail? Everything is process oriented, there is no independence felt when doing the job. Definitely this sort of a job would have less likes than a job which give greater autonomy, independence and inherently interesting. Thus the job characteristics influence the choice that one would make to say on or not in a job. Coupled with this an – research has shown some organizational conditions like: Participative Decision Making, Job Security, are major factors that get considered in the individual’s choice of commitment towards an organization.

    Affective and Normative Commitments are found to have a correlation with the lower rates of absenteeism, higher quality of work, increased productivity, and several such types of performances. Given these benefits of an individual’s commitment towards an organization, managers would have to encourage affective commitment – these committed individuals expend more task related effort and are less likely than others to leave the organization.

    We shall continue this discussion in the next byte.

  • Organizational Commitment – Work Attitude

    In the last byte, we looked at Job Satisfaction in a cultural context. In today’s byte, we define a new concept Organizational Commitment and begin the discussion on it.


    There exists a hotel in the town of Udupi, where the waiters have served the organization for more than 3 decades. It is rear to see someone stay with a hotel for that long! It is possible only if the individual has identified with the organization. There could be other reasons why one identifies with the organization, we shall explore these further.


    The strength of an individual’s identification with an organization is generally termed Organizational Commitment.


    Organizational commitment is of three kinds
    1. Affective Commitment
    2. Continuance Commitment
    3. Normative Commitment
    Affective Commitment indicates the commitment of an employee to remain in the organization because of strong desire to do so. This desire could be due to the belief the individual holds in the goals and values of the organization or willingness to put forth efforts on behalf of the organization or a desire to remain a member of the organization.


    Continuance Commitment indicates the employee’s tendency to continue with the organization because the person cannot afford to leave the organization. This is generally built on the belief that any shift in the work space would only get them to lose the investment of time and effort already done in the present organization.


    Normative commitment indicates a perceived obligation an individual would have to remain with the organization. It is the individual’s feeling that one has to say with the organization that makes him/her continue with the organization.


    We shall deal about these in greater detail over the next few bytes.

  • Work Attitude – Job Satisfaction – 2

    In the last byte, we discussed an interesting concept – Organizational Citizenship Behavior. In today’s byte we continue our discussion about work attitude and deal specifically a certain interesting aspects in the study of job satisfaction and the behavior of people, also talk about how cultures impacts job satisfaction.


    It is common human behavior to avoid something that is not pleasing, work too is no exception to this. A common employee behavior that is seen when something is not enjoyable at office, employees tend to delay the closure of what they see as a seemingly uninteresting job. They do this by avoiding devoting time on it, there by delaying it. Another behavior that is seen in employees when they do not enjoy their work is abscentism. It is generally seen that the worker’s dissatisfaction with work is the main reason for people being absent at work.


    Job Satisfaction is also influenced by the culture. For the sake of discussion, we could take the scene in the United States and Korea. American Managers place a high value on outcomes, autonomy, independence and achievement; this is in line with the belief that “works for its own sake” and this is central part of their life. The Koreans in contrast are found to place family before work. The Americans are found to find greater job satisfaction through intrinsic job factors while Koreans are found to prefer extrinsic factors.


    The current global nature of work requires managers to understand that job satisfaction is significantly affected by culture.

  • Organizational Citizenship Behavior – Work Attitude

    In the last byte we looked at job satisfaction and the affect of this attitude on behavior. In today’s byte, we look at a positive side effect of job satisfaction called Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB).

    Organizational Citizenship Behavior refers to the behavior that is above and beyond the call of duty.

    A short story I heard about work attitude is what I would like to share here. It revolves around a fresh recruit in an organized retail store who had undergone a training program on work attitude. The usual job of this recruit was to pack all the items of a customer into a few handy cover bags to carry away. Her usual duty didn’t require her to do anything in addition to this. After the attitude training, training she went home and took along with her a few carry bags, over night she spent some time looking out for interesting facts and adages that could inspire people and stuck them on the carry bag. Over time, this initiative of hers began engaging the customers to align towards her counter to get their packing done. The recruit who moved out of what was just defined as her duty got enormous recognition for the initiative she had taken.

    Such a behavior to go beyond the call of duty is important when organizations use teams to get their work done – employees depend on extra help from each other to get things accomplished. Satisfied workers are more likely to want to give something back to their organization because they want to reciprocate their positive experiences.

    Individuals who identify strongly with the organization are more likely to perform OCB. High-self monitors also more likely to perform OCBs. It is often seen that OCBs are contagious, generally an entire department could also benefit from one worker’s OCB.

  • Work Attitude – Job Satisfaction

    In the last byte, we looked at work attitudes and how it is could be influenced by the work environment. In today’s byte, we look at specific work attitude – Job Satisfaction.

    Job satisfaction refers to a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experience. In many ways it is a general attitude, but creates a satisfactory feeling through the combination of five specific dimensions:

    1. The Pay
    2. The Work itself
    3. Promotion opportunities
    4. Supervision
    5. Coworkers who work with you

    Given that job satisfaction has different dimensions, it is possible that one would be satisfied with one of these dimensions but be dissatisfied with other dimensions. As an employee you could possibly be satisfied with the pay but not the promotion policy and the work that you do could be thoroughly hated while the coworkers could be extremely cooperative and give you satisfaction of working with them.  It is generally seen that Challenging work, competent supervision, opportunities of advancement, valued rewards along with supportive coworkers are dimensions that lead to satisfaction.

    It is a commonly held belief that happy or satisfied employees are more productive at work. It is also true that most of us feel satisfied when we believe we are performing better than usual. If the first one true, the all that a manager would need to do is keep the workers happy and this would automatically improve the performance. In the latter case the manager would need to ensure that the employee performs well, and this would lead to satisfaction. It is clear from our argument above that the relation is not so straight forward.

    The possible reason why this is not so straight forward could be

    • the inherent difficulty in demonstrating the attitude – behavior link
    • the dimension of “reward” is one of the main sources that make this relation difficult to answer.

  • Attitude in Work a Environment Setting

    In the last blog we looked at the predictability of a behavior based on the attitude. In today’s blog, we attempt to understand attitude in the context of work environment and the impact it is able to create.


    Imagine a situation where you are working with a “boss” who is not from the domain of the company you have been working for the last 1 year almost. He is recently joined your company and has taken over just a couple of weeks earlier. Your project has been in development stage for more than 2 years now, most of the team members who started working on the project have now moved out of the company, and there are many fresh faces around you. You are in fact the oldest resource of the project, which also has a US team working on it. There are over hundred defects that have been raised in the project which have been pending at various stages since no one has a clear idea of the source of these defects. Conditions seem to be completely against you – How would you react to a situation like this?


    Definitely the situation like this wouldn’t be getting you excited working on the project. The lack of control over the project, the demanding requirements of the project etc all create an attitude in the mind of the employee that is negative and this would affect the work. On the other hand a positive climate at work would lead to a positive attitude and good performance. This positive performance could in many cases lead to a better return for the company. Take the following example in the hospitality industry:


    You go and stay in a hotel and invariably meet a lot of employees out there. The employee gestures, facial expressions, and words used. If you had an unpleasant experience when in contact with the employee of the organization, would definitely put you off and you might decide never to visit the hotel again!


    There are many such work attitudes that we observe. In the forth coming bytes, we shall discuss some of these.

  • Attitude and Behavior Relationship – 2

    In the last byte, we looked at the components that help us understand the relation between attitude and the behavior that follows. In today’s blog we continue to understand when this prediction of the behavior is possible.

    In a working environment like Bangalore there are people who come from all parts of the country. Let us assume for the time being that you come from a part of the country where there is a negative attitude held in the society towards women and the prevailing attitude is that women wouldn’t be in positions of power. If as a new employee an organization, you are supposed to report to a female supervisor; the inconsistency in the behavior with your attitude and cultural belief becomes clearly visible. Thus we see that the social context is an important provider of information that would define the outcome of the relation between acceptable attitudes and behavior.

    We have already learnt about self-monitoring in an earlier byte. The people who are low self-monitors relay on their internal states to make decision about behavior, while the high self-monitors are extremely responsive to the situational cues. Given the versatile nature of the people who are high self-monitors, there would be a lower degree of predictability of behavior from the attitude that is held, compared to those who are low self-monitors.

    Timing of the measurement also affects attitude-behavior correspondence. If the time is shorter between the attitude measurement and the observed behavior, the relationship would be stronger. This is exactly the benefit that the surveys before the actual voting reap on.

  • Attitude – Behavior Relationship – 1

    In the last blog, we looked at the way an attitude gets formed. In today’s blog we look at the possibility of understanding if we can have a relation between the attitude we carry and the behavior show.

    It is extremely difficult to predict by knowing one’s attitude what that person’s behavior would be, given this, a lot of the research has been focused on understanding when attitude could predict a behavior and when it wouldn’t. To get a strong grasp of this, we could look at 5 components

    1. Attitude Specificity
    2. Attitude Relevance
    3. Timing of Measurement
    4. Personality Factors
    5. Social Constraints

    As individuals, we have both specific and general attitudes. For example if I am against “black money laundering” (this is a general attitude) and I support Baba Ramdev in his agitation (a specific attitude) but I don’t attend the rallies etc. Since I do not join the rallies, my attitude could be seen as having little relation with my behavior. However, if I were to choose between a contestant who promises to get back the “black money” and one who doesn’t, it would be easier to predict that I would definitely vote for the first candidate and not the second. Thus, we can conclude – greater the attitude specificity, the stronger its link to behavior.

    Let’s consider another situation – Temporarily assume we are undergraduate students, the finance minister decided to reduce the tax slabs of the first 2 lakhs from being tax free to 1.5 lakh only to be tax free. We invariably would just not give this issue a lot of importance. However if we were in the working class, this decision of the government would immediately catch our attention and would become an item of discussion! Thus, we can conclude that the relevance of the subject is another important factor that could help us define a relation between attitude and behavior.

    We shall discuss the other components in the next blog.

  • How are attitudes formed?

    In the last blog, we looked at cognitive dissonance and understood the source of such a dissonance. In today’s blog, we look at how we form attitudes.

    When we reflect on the way we have learnt, we begin to see two distinct manners – one, where we have had direct experiences and second where we learn by observing others and then trying out ourselves.

    Our first few experience with mathematics, the experience which our teachers created for us when we learnt science, or the questions they asked in the exams in history really made our attitude towards these subjects. There were direct experiences in childhood that we carry even today. Such experiences derived from personal experience are stronger, held confidently, and are found to be more resistant than the ones we pick up from indirect experience (those that were just told and believed in by us)

    The second type of learning occurs when we look at our own surroundings – we observer our parents, friends, seniors etc We create “models” in our mind of these people and attempt to create our attitudes by merely observing others. This process of observing and creating our attitude generally would have 4 processes in it:

    1. We would focus and observe our model
    2. What is observed is retained in our mind
    3. We as learners practice what we observed as a behavior
    4. We are constantly motivated to learn from such a model.
    Having shown that we have 2 broad ways in which we learn an attitude, it would be extremely important to understand that society we live in and the cultural context of our operation have a major influence on the way we form our attitudes.