Attitude

28th Oct 2012

Case

There was a man who made a living selling balloons at afair. He had all colors of balloons. Whenever, the businessused to slow down, he would release a helium filled ballooninto the air and when the children saw it go up, they allwanted to buy.

They would all come up to him, buy a balloon and his saleswould go up again. On day a little boy came up to him andasked, “If you release a black balloon, would that also fly”?The man answered “Son, it is not the color of the balloon, itis what is inside that makes it go up”.

The same inside thing works for all of us. It is the Attitude.

What is attitude

• It is a belief, feeling and action tendency to anindividual or a group of individuals towardsobjects, ideas and people.

E.g. – If

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

=1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Hard work

H+A+R+D+W+O+R+K

8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

Knowledge

K+N+O+W+L+E+D+G+E

11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5=96%

Then what makes 100%???

Is It Money

M+O+N+E+Y

13+15+14+5+25 = 72% NO

Is It Leadership

L+E+A+D+E+R+S+H+I+P

12+5+1+4+5+18+19+9+16 = 89% NO

Every problem has a solution, only if wechange our ATTITUDE.

A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E

1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

How much do you see of an iceberg?Only 10% above sea level. Remaining 90% is below the water.

Above sea level

Below sea level

Human beings also works like the iceberg.

Behavior

Attitude

Nature of attitude

• It refers to feelings and beliefs of an individualor a group of individual.

• Attitude persists, unless something happens.

If X’s duty hours is changed, he will be happy.

• It is core to any individual.

Components of Attitude

Behavior

CognitiveAffective

AttitudeFeelings, sentiments, moods, emotio

ns about some ideas, object, pers

on.

Belief, opinion knowledge held by

an individual.

Pre tendency to get on a favorable

or unfavorable evaluation.

Cognitive My supervisor gave a promotion to a co-worker who deserved it less than me. My supervisor is unfair.

Affective / InformationalI dislike my supervisor

BehavioralI’m looking for other work.I have complained about my supervisor to anyone who would listen.

Negative attitude towards

supervisor

Formation of attitude

Attitude

Classical conditioning

Operant conditioning

Vicarious learning

Mass communication

Economic Status

Neighborhood

Family and peer group

Experience with the object

• Experience with the objects – attitude can develop from a personalityrewarding or punishing experience with an object.E.g. – If everyone who has held a job has been promoted within sixmonths, all those who are currently holding a job will also start thinkingthat they also will be promoted within six months.

• Classical conditioning – repetition of anything help to learn attitude.E.g. – Pavlov dog’s salivation at the sound of the bell.

• Operant conditioning – attitude can be learned byoutcome, consequences, results.E.g. – If a scientist performs a test and it results positive, his attitude alsobecomes the same, contrastingly if it results negative.

• Vicarious learning – attitude that is formed by observation andconsequences of that behavior from others.E.g. – If a child is been told that handicapped people are incompetent, hecarries the similar opinion unless they meet somebody handicapped.

• Family and peer group – attitude can also be learned throughparents, peers, friends.

• Neighborhood – in our society we are divided againstcast, creed, religion, status. So people tend to also developattitude from their neighbors.

E.g. – Hindu children are always taught not to interact withthe Muslim kids and vice versa. People of upper status lookdown upon lower status people. All of these help to buildone’s attitude.

• Economic status – Our socio-economic background alsoinfluences our present and future attitudes.

• Mass communication – Allmedias, television, radio, newspaper feed the people withlarge information. This influences in developing one’s attitudetowards something.

Functions of attitude

Attitude

Ego- defensive

Value expression

Adjustment

Knowledge

• Adjustment – attitude helps people to adjust in any circumstances. Ifpeople are well treated, they tend to have a positive attitude with anysituation. Just the reverse will happen, in case of poor treatment.

• Ego-defensive – people often maintain a certain attitude in order toprotect their self image.

E.g. – In a group assignment, an error is caused by you. Although you knowthe reason, you simply keep quite to hide your mistake and maintain yourimage.

• Value-expression – it helps express the individual values and self-identity.

E.g. – consumers express their values in the products they buy, the shopsthey patronize and the life-style they exhibit.

• Knowledge – attitude provide frames of references by which an individualjudges objectives or events.

E.g. – consumer before purchasing a particular brand of car, do not re-examine their values, habits and lifestyle prior to the decision to buy.

Types of attitude

Job Satisfaction

What is job satisfaction

Suppose, employees feel that they are working much harderthan others in the department but are receiving fewerrewards, they will probably have a negative attitude towardstheir work, boss, co-workers.

They will be dissatisfied.

Influences on job satisfaction:-

• The work itself

• Pay

• Promotion opportunities

• Supervision

• Co-workers

Consequences of Job Satisfaction

• Productivity – A happy worker is a productive worker.

Performance

Extrinsic Rewards

Intrinsic Rewards

Perceived equity of rewards

Satisfaction

• Job satisfaction and employee turnover

• Satisfaction and absences

• Satisfaction and job stress

• Unionization

Measuring job satisfaction

A job satisfaction survey is the procedure by whichemployees report their feelings towards their job andwork environment.

Job involvement

Job Involvement – The degree to which a person identifies with his job, actively participates and considers his performance self-worth.

JobInvolvement

Performance

Turnover

Absence

Effort

Organization commitment

• The degree to which an employee identifies with aparticular organization and its goals and wishes to beassociated with it.

• Believe in what their organizations are doing.

• Proud of what their organizations stand for.

• More likely to go above and beyond the call of duty.

• Less likely to quit.

Case

Payal and Rahul were both young, aggressive, and competent. They joined the M. K.Company on the same day and went through the same training program in preparation foridentical jobs involving a great deal of close contact with fellow employees. Although it wasnot easy, Payal made a good adjustment to her work environment. She was able to do thisbecause of her warm, flexible personality and the application of the human relations skillsshe had learned and developed at technical school. Rahul, on the other hand, made littleprogress. He appeared rigid and distant to those who worked around him. To a few older andexperienced employees, he even seemed aloof and hostile. Rahul's supervisor, watching himfrom a distance, felt he was waiting around expecting others to approach him and be friendly.He seemed to be standing on the sidelines, unable or unwilling to meet people halfway.Perhaps he did not know how to communicate with others.

A few weeks later, during lunch, Rahul told Payal he was going to look for another job. Hisreasons were as follows:

(1) he felt some co-workers were unfriendly,

(2) He resented some of his fellow employees, who seemed excessively critical of him, and

(3)He felt his supervisor was trying to push him into a mold of conformity that was simply nothis style.

Why should he go all out to adjust? After all, building working relationships is a two-waything. He felt confident that he could find another company that would appreciate him moreand give him all the freedom that he needed to be himself.

What chance do you think Rahul has of finding a job environment that would make himcompletely happy?

AssignmentAssume you are Rahul's supervisor and willing to spend thirty minutes in a two-waycommunications session trying to help him and keep him with the firm.

Rishi is a first-year student. He felt since the beginning that his roommate, Bhushan, doesn’tlike him. Rishi admits that he is often a sensitive person and he cares deeply about whatothers think, however, Rishi has been highly bothered by the lack of interaction fromBhushan. Rishi states he has met plenty of other friends on campus, especially through hiscurrent acting class, but he feels frustrated with not having the type of roommate heexpected and hoped he would have. Rishi predicted a roommate that he could go out todinner with, share what’s going on in their days, and eventually, maybe, best friends.

It’s November in the school year and Rishi feels that is vision for this roommate relationshipis shattered since all Bhushan wants to do is play video games or go running by himself –neither of which Rishi enjoys. Rishi has tried to reach out to Bhushan, asking him to go out todinner or just calls him up when he’s on his way to a campus event, but Bhushan always saysno since he thinks that Rishi asks too last minute to do things. But Rishi defends that likes tokeep his schedule free and decide what he likes to do on occasion. Rishi feels dissatisfied withhis roommate situation and is considering moving out. How do you proceed?

• What do you think Rishi’s MBTI type is? Why?

• How would you help Rishi in this situation, considering his potential MBTI type andpersonality characteristics?

Values

• It is a mode of conduct in a society.

• It is in which an individual tends to make judgments or choices, aboutgoals at different stages of one’s life.

• Values in Indian society

Karta – it is the nurturing, caring, dependable, authoritative of the fatherfigure.

Relationships – warm and lose personal relationships, which displaysempathy, intimacy, togetherness.

Proximity to power – It is idealized and invested with heroic dimensions interms of capacity and action.

Security – a parent-child relationship of dependence produces security.

Simple living and high thinking – Mahatma Gandhi is an ideal example.

Survival – The believe in Karma.

Importance of values

• Values lay the foundation for the understanding ofattitude and motivation because they influence ourperception.

• Individuals enter organization with notion of what isright and wrong with which they interpret behavioror outcomes.

• Values generally influence attitude and behavior.

Source of values

Family

Friends

Society

Religion

Work place / school

Organizational values

Effect of values on work performance

• People demonstrate and model the values in action in their personal workbehaviors, decision making, contribution, and interpersonal interaction.

• Organizational values help each person establish priorities in their dailywork life.

• Values guide every decision that is made once the organization hascooperatively created the values and the value statements.

• Rewards and recognition within the organization are structured torecognize those people whose work embodies the values the organization

embraced.

• People hire and promote those whose, values are congruent with theorganizations.

Types of values

• Terminal values – desirable end-state ofexistence. The goals that a person would liketo achieve during his lifetime

• Instrumental values – preferable modes ofbehavior or means of achieving one’s terminalvalues.