A person can have thousands of attitudes, but organizational behaviour focuses our
attention on a limited number of job-related attitudes. These job-related attitudes tap pos-
itive or negative evaluations that employees hold about aspects of their work environ-
ment. In the following, we consider two important attitudes that affect organizational
performance: job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Job Satisfaction
The term job satisfactionrefers to an individual’s general attitude toward his or her job.
A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive attitudes toward the job, while
a person who is dissatisfied with his or her job holds negative attitudes toward the job.
When people speak of employee attitudes, more often than not they mean job satis-
faction. In fact, the terms are frequently used interchangeably.
A recent Canadian Policy Research Networks survey on job satisfaction found that only
40 percent of Canadian employees are very satisfied with their jobs. By comparison,
47 percent of American employees are happy with their work and 54 percent of Danish
employees are highly satisfied.^58 On the other hand, almost 40 percent of Canadian
employees would not recommend their companies as good places to work. Forty percent
also believe that they never see any of the benefits from their companies’ making money.
Almost 40 percent report that red tape and bureaucracy are among the biggest barriers
to job satisfaction. A majority of the workforce (55 percent) says that they feel the “pres-
sure of having too much to do.”
So what are the consequences of lower job satisfaction? We examine this question
below.
Job Satisfaction and Individual Productivity
The evidence suggests that the link between an individual’s job satisfaction and his or
her productivity is very slightly positive.^59 It turns out the productivity can be affected
as much by external conditions as it is by job satisfaction. For instance, a stockbroker’s
productivity is largely affected by the general movement of the stock market. When the
market is moving up and volume is high, both satisfied and dissatisfied brokers will
earn lots of commissions. Conversely, when the market is down, the level of broker
satisfaction is not likely to mean much. One’s position in the organization also seems
to be an important moderating variable.
The relationship between job satisfaction and productivity is stronger when the
employee’s behaviour is not controlled by outside factors. An employee’s productivity
Chapter 3Values, Attitudes, and Their Effects in the Workplace 85explains the problem women face: “They say that women cannot make sushi because
their hands are too warm and that will ruin the fish.”
Hiromi Suzuki, whose father is the chef and owner of Mie in the East Village of
New York, shared some of her father’s stories about women sushi makers: “Women
can’t make sushi because they wear perfume and makeup, and the smell of the per-
fume and makeup will ruin the food.” Others believe that women can’t become
sushi chefs because the area behind the counter is sacred.
These attitudes have made it difficult not only for women but also for nonJapanese
to become sushi makers in Japan and North America, although that is starting to
change. When Toshi Sugiura started the California Sushi Academy in Venice, California,
in 1998, he expected that his students would be Asian immigrants. Instead, most of
the students were American. This required him to change his vision: “Sushi is becom-
ing a worldwide food. Why can’t black people and white people make sushi?”
All of these examples suggest that who gets hired into any position can be affected
by attitudes about what the “right” person should look like.job satisfaction An individual’s
general attitude toward his or her
job.Canadian Policy Research
Networks
http://www.cprn.com/en/