Saturday, April 30, 2011

FUNCTIONS OF ATTITUDES


According to Katz, attitudes serve four important functions from the viewpoint of organizational behaviour. These are as follows.

A. The Adjustment Function:
Attitudes often help people to adjust to their work environment. Well-treated employees tend to develop a positive attitude towards their job, management and the organization in general while berated and ill treated organizational members develop a negative attitude. In other words, attitudes help employees adjust to their environment and form a basis for future behaviour.
B. Value-expressive:
 Express basic values, reinforce self-image. Eg: if you view yourself as a Catholic, you can reinforce that image by adopting Catholic beliefs and values. Eg: We may have a self-image of ourselves as an enlightened conservative or a militant radical, and we therefore cultivate attitudes that we believe indicate such a core value.
C. Knowledge:
attitudes provide meaningful, structured environment. In life we seek some degree of order, clarity, and stability in our personal frame of reference. Attitudes help supply us with standards of evaluation. Via such attitudes as stereotypes, we can bring order and clarity to the complexities of human life.
D. Ego-defensive :
Some attitudes serve to protect us from acknowledging basic truths about ourselves or the harsh realities of life. They serve as defense mechanisms. Eg: Those with feelings of inferiority may develop attitude of superiority.

No comments:

Post a Comment