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.

Components of Attitude

(a) Cognitive component: Cognitive component of attitude is related to value statement. It consists of belief, ideas, values and other information that an individual may possess or has faith in. Quality of working hard is a value statement or faith that a manager may have.  For example, he says smoking is injurious to health.

(b) Affective component: Affective component of attitude is related to person’s feelings about another person, which may be positive, negative or neutral. I do not like Madan because he is not hard working, or I like Manmohan because he is hard working. It is an expression of feelings about a person, object or a situation.

For example, in an organization a personal report is given to the general manager. In report he point out that the sale staff is not performing their due responsibilities. The general manager forwards a written notice to the marketing manager to negotiate with the sale staff.

(c) Behavioral component: Behavioral component of attitude is related to impact of various situations or objects that lead to individual’s behaviour based on cognitive and affective components. I do not like Madan because he is not hard working is an affective component, I therefore would like to disassociate myself with him, is a behavioural component and therefore I would avoid Madan. Development of favourable attitude and good relationship with Manmohan is but natural. Individual’s favourable behaviour is an outcome of the fact that Manmohan is hardworking. Cognitive and affective components are bases for such behaviour. Former two components cannot be seen; only the behaviour component can be seen.

For example, before the production and launching process the product. Report is prepared by the production department which consists of their intention in near future and long run and this report is handed over to top management for the decision.

Former is important because it is a base for formation of attitude. These components are explained in Figure below.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ATTITUDES

Difficult to measure- Indicated by behavior, reactions to individual situations, social values


May create inflexibility and stereotypes- Based on inconsistencies, incorrect assumptions or other false data


Demonstrated by behavior


Formed largely from the continuous process of socialization


Positive or negative


Once formed not easily changed


Takes a SEE, new conditions, new experience, and new information


Attitudes may be affected by age, position, and education


Persist- unless something is done to change them.


Can fall anywhere in a continuum-very favourable to very unfavourable.


are directed towards some objects about which a person has some feelings and beliefs

ATTITUDES

DEFINITIONS

Attitude is a tendency to act/think in certain ways either favourably or unfavourably concerning objects, people or situation. For example, if I say I am satisfied with my job, what actually I am doing is expressing my attitude towards the job. An attitude is the way a person feels about a person, a place, a thing, a situation or an idea. Attitude could be positive or negative. Attitude can be measured either by observing the action of the individual or simply asking him the questions about how he would behave in a particular situation.

An attitude is evaluating statements or judgments concerning objects, people or events (Robbins).

Attitudes are relatively lasting feelings, beliefs and behavioural tendencies directed towards specific people, groups, ideas, issues or objects (Hellriegel et al).

An attitude is the predisposition of the individual to evaluate some object in a favourable or an unfavourable manner.

An attitude is the predisposition to respond to a certain set of facts.

An attitude is Foundations of success.

NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

Lead to deviant work place behaviours. Employee deviance-voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten the organization, its members, or both.

Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviours. Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes that people often engage in voluntary actions that violate established norms and threaten the organization, its members, or both. These actions are called employee deviance.They fall into categories such as production (leaving early, intentionally working slowly); property (stealing, sabotage); political (gossiping, blaming co-workers); and personal aggression (sexual harassment, verbal abuse).

Many of these deviant behaviours can be traced to negative emotions. For instance, envy is an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for having something that you don’t have but strongly desire. It can lead to malicious deviant behaviours. Envy, for example, has been found to be associated with hostility, “backstabbing,” and other forms of political behaviour, as well as with negatively distorting others’ successes and positively distorting one’s own accomplishments.

Types of emotions:

We can call the two types of emotions Negative and Positive. That is not so much as value judgment as it is a description of the main action of each group. Judging either as "good" or "bad" isn't very helpful.

Negative emotions express an attempt or intention to exclude. Strengthening one's own position at the expense of others. Keeping bad stuff away, destroying what is perceived as a threat. Negative emotions are fueled by an underlying fear of the unknown, a fear of the actions of others, and a need to control them or stop them to avoid being harmed.
Positive emotions express an attempt or an intention to Include. Taking the whole into consideration. Working on learning more viewpoints, interacting more with others, enjoying making things better. Positive emotions are fueled by an underlying desire for enjoyment and unity.
Negative emotions are, for example: apathy, grief, fear, hatred, shame, blame, regret, resentment, anger, hostility.
Positive emotions are, for example: interest, enthusiasm, boredom, laughter, empathy, action, curiosity.