4.3 Chapter Summary
Work attitudes, including job satisfaction and organizational commitment, are key emotional responses individuals have toward their job and work environment. These attitudes influence important outcomes such as job performance, absenteeism, turnover, and organizational citizenship behaviours—voluntary actions that go beyond formal job requirements. Positive work attitudes can be shaped by personal traits, perceived fairness, work-life balance, and interpersonal relationships at work. In turn, these attitudes influence not only individual behaviours but also broader organizational outcomes such as safety, customer service, and overall performance.
Job performance and citizenship behaviours are crucial for organizational success, while absenteeism and turnover represent costly challenges. Mental abilities strongly predict performance, but motivation and treatment in the workplace play major roles in citizenship behaviours. Poor work attitudes, stress, and youthfulness often contribute to absenteeism and turnover. Moreover, ethical climate intersects with work attitudes; while a committed workforce supports performance, it may also reduce vigilance toward unethical practices. Companies must balance cultivating positive attitudes and ethical oversight, especially in diverse, global settings where cultural differences shape expectations and behaviours.
Ethical Dilemma
You are a Golf Course Superintendent. The employees of the turf department have recently completed an attitude survey. Three employees in the department reported that they were harassed by senior people in the department and they are experiencing a hostile work environment. You do not know who these people are, but you feel that you need to do something. The surveys were filled out confidentially, and employees were assured that their identities would not be revealed to management. You feel that you can identify who they are because the person in HR who administered the survey is a friend of yours and that person can tell you the demographics of the employees, which would help you identify them.
- Should you ask for the identity-revealing information? What are the advantages and disadvantages of finding out the identity of these people?
- How would you handle a situation like this now and in the future?
Individual Exercise
Reading and Responding to Employee Social Media Posts
You found out that one (unidentified) employee from your Golf Course has been posting on social media about the company. Other current and ex-employees are also posting on this Social Media Feed, and the picture they are painting is less than flattering. They are talking about their gripes, such as long work hours and below-market pay, and how the golf course is not great compared to those of competitors. Worse, they are talking about the people in the company by name. A couple of posts mention you by name and call you unfair and unreasonable.
- What action would you take when you learn the presence of this social media post? Would you take action to stop this? How?
- Would you do anything to learn the identity of the person’s social media account? If you found out, what action would you take to have the employee disciplined?
- What would you change within the company to deal with this situation?
- Would you post on this social media feed? If so, under what name, and what comments would you post?
Group Exercise
Exit Interview Role-Play and Developing an Attitude Survey
This role-play will be played by three students. One student will be an employee from the human resources (HR) department conducting the interview, the second will be the employee who is leaving, and the third will be an observer. The HR employee and the departing employee will conduct an exit interview. At the conclusion of the interview, the observer will provide feedback to the HR employee regarding how the interview could have been improved and how the employee could have been more open.
Part 1: Role-Play
Be sure to read only the role sheet assigned to you.
Part 2: Review
In groups of three, review the information gathered from the exit interview. Many of these problems may be affecting the rest of the employees. Develop an attitude survey to be distributed to remaining employees of this company. Develop questions based on what came out of the interview as well as other areas you feel may be important to know. Discuss how the surveys would be administered and what would be done to (a) have a high response rate and (b) ensure the accuracy of responses.
“4.6: Conclusion” & “4.7: Exercises from Organizational Behavior by LibreTexts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
