Chapter 4: Attitudes, Values, and Ethics1
4ATTITUDES, VALUES, AND ETHICS
Chapter Scan
Attitudes are shaped by the interaction of situations, experiences and values. Attitudes are learned, and carried into the work environment. This chapter examines how attitudes are formed and how they affect our perceptions and our actions in relationship to ethics. Development of values is discussed by examining Rokeach’s instrumental and terminal values research. A model of ethical behavior is presented, and factors affecting ethical behavior are discussed.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
1.Explain the ABC model of an attitude.
2.Describe how attitudes are formed.
3.Define job satisfaction and organizational commitment and discuss the importance of
these two work attitudes.
4.Identify the characteristics of the source, target, and message that affect persuasion.
5.Distinguish between instrumental and terminal values.
6.Explain how managers can deal with the diverse value systems that characterize the
global environment.
7.Describe a model of individual and organizational influences on ethical behavior.
8.Discuss how value systems, locus of control, Machiavellianism, and cognitive moral
development affect ethical behavior.
Chapter 4: Attitudes, Values, and Ethics1
KEY TERMS
Chapter 4 introduces the following key terms:
attitude
affect
cognitive dissonance
social learning
job satisfaction
organizational citizenship behavior
organizational commitment
affective commitment
continuance commitment
normative commitment
values
instrumental values
terminal values
ethical behavior
Machiavellianism
cognitive moral development
THE CHAPTER SUMMARIZED
I.THINKING AHEAD: Values See Harley-Davidson through the Tough Times
II.ATTITUDES
Attitudes are an integral part of the workplace that directly impact employee behavior. Understanding how people form attitudes, how those attitudes affect work behavior, and persuasion will help managers improve their ability to change counterproductive attitudes.
A.The ABC Model
The ABC Model includes three areas: affect, behavioral intentions, and cognition. Affect is the emotional component of an attitude. When we ask an employee how he or she feels about a new policy, we are requesting an affective response. Behavioral intentions relate to the action(s) an individual would take given the opportunity. Cognition is a verbal statement regarding one’s belief about a specific person or situation, which reflects perceptions and attitudes. People experience cognitive dissonance when their behavior conflicts with their own attitudes or beliefs.
B.Attitude Formation
All attitudes are learned, and our attitudes vary based on our experiences and learning environment. One way in which our attitudes are formed is through social learning, which involves the influences of family, peers, colleagues, and institutions.
C.Attitudes and Behavior
The association between attitudes and behaviors intrigues researchers. Attitude enactment is not as simple as thinking positively to produce positive results. The degree to which our behavior matches our attitudes has to do with relevance, personality factors, and social context.
D.Work Attitudes
Two primary work attitudes are job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
1.Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is the pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experience. There are several measures of job satisfaction. One of the most widely used measures is the Job Descriptive Index. Job satisfaction correlates with several other outcomes, including organizational citizenship behavior – behavior that is above and beyond the call of duty.
2.Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment is the strength of an individual's identification with an organization. There are three kinds of organizational commitment: affective, continuance, and normative. Affective commitment refers to an employee's intention to remain in an organization because of a strong desire to do so. Continuance commitment is based on the fact that an individual cannot afford to leave. Normative commitment refers to a perceived obligation to remain with the organization. Some interesting outcomes of widespread company downsizing ventures may alter the level and types of organizational commitment.
E.Persuasion and Attitude Change
Because attitudes can be altered and shaped, it is in the interest of managers to be conscious of ways in which they might affect attitude changes. Through persuasion, attitudes can be altered. Characteristics of the persuader, and the individual being persuaded, and the message itself must be considered. Source characteristics are related to the individual trying to persuade another, while target characteristics are related to the individual being persuaded.
1.Source Characteristics
The persuader may have an impact on the target through expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and/or likability.
2.Target Characteristics
The persuader may have difficulty persuading a target who has high self-esteem, who is resistant to change, or who is negative.
3.Message Characteristics
People react either negatively or positively to the message content, as well as to the perceived intent of the persuader sending the message.
4.Cognitive Routes to Persuasion
Persuasion occurs through either a central route or a peripheral route, or both. The central route involves direct cognitive processing, in which the content of the message is very important. In contrast, peripheral routes involve persuasion based on characteristics of the persuader or the method of presentation. Consequently, the target's level of involvement with the issue becomes very important, and the persuader should adopt the route that matches the individual's level of involvement.
III.VALUES
Values are the enduring beliefs that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence. Values are more difficult to change or alter than are attitudes, although attitudes are based on values. As ethical conduct receives more visibility in the workplace, values increase in importance as a topic of discussion in management.
A.Instrumental and Terminal Values
Rokeach divides values into instrumental and terminal values. Instrumental values represent acceptable behaviors as the means to reach a goal. Terminal values represent the goals to be achieved.
B.Work Values
Work values are more specific than personal values, and have direct implications for behavior and attitudes in organizations. The work values most relevant to individuals are achievement, concern for others, honesty, and fairness.
C.Cultural Differences in Values
Culture exerts a significant influence on individuals’ values and the differences in values within various cultures become increasingly important as workforce diversity broadens. Central values such as loyalty, contribution, and authority can vary greatly from one culture to another, making it more important than ever that managers seek to understand, tolerate, and capitalize on those differences.
IV.ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
Ethical behavior refers to actions consistent with one's personal values and the commonly held values of the organization and society. A review of one week’s issues of the Wall Street Journal illustrates the difficulty of developing ethical norms within organizations.
A.Value Systems
Individuals are bombarded with shocks and challenges to their value systems in work settings. If the situations are not in harmony with their perspectives, the outcomes can have far-reaching ramifications.
B.Locus of Control
Internals are more likely than externals to take personal responsibility for the consequences of their ethical or unethical behavior. Externals are more apt to believe that external forces caused their ethical or unethical behavior. An interesting self-assessment of external locus of control was made by the second murderer in Shakespeare's Macbeth: "I am one my liege, whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world."
C.Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism is a personality characteristic indicating one's willingness to do whatever it takes to get one's own way. A high-Mach individual has little concern for conventional notions of right and wrong, and believes that the end justifies the means.
It is not surprising that recent research has discovered that high-Machs are less likely to punish unethical behavior.
D.Cognitive Moral Development
The cognitive moral development model comes from the research of Lawrence Kohlberg, proposing that as individuals mature, their moral development also matures. Cognitive moral development is the process of moving through stages of maturity in terms of making ethical decisions.
V.MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: ATTITUDES, VALUES, AND ETHICS AT WORK
VI.LOOKING BACK: Values-Based Training
CHAPTER SUMMARY
The ABC model of an attitude contends that an attitude has three components: affect, behavioral intentions, and cognition. Cognitive dissonance is the tension produced by a conflict between attitudes and behavior.
Attitudes are formed through direct experience and social learning. Direct experience creates strong attitudes because the attitudes are easily accessed and active in cognitive processes.
Attitude-behavior correspondence depends on attitude specificity, attitude relevance, timing of measurement, personality factors, and social constraints.
Two important work attitudes are job satisfaction and organizational commitment. There are cultural differences in these attitudes, and both attitudes can be improved by providing employees with opportunities for participation in decision making.
A manager's ability to persuade employees to change their attitudes depends on characteristics of the manager (expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness), the employees (self-esteem, original attitude, and mood), the message (one-sided versus two-sided), and the route (central versus peripheral).
Values are enduring beliefs and are strongly influenced by cultures, societies, and organizations.
Instrumental values reflect the means to achieving goals; terminal values represent the goals to be achieved.
Ethical behavior is influenced by the individual's value system, locus of control, Machiavellianism, and cognitive moral development.
REVIEW QUESTIONS: Suggested Answers
1. Describe the ABC model of an attitude. How should each component be measured?
The ABC model includes three components: affect, behavioral intentions, and cognition. Physiological indicators such as galvanic skin response measure affect. These indicators show changes in emotions by measuring physical arousal. Behavioral intention is measured by observing behavior or by asking a person about behavior or intentions. Cognition is measured by attitude scales or by asking about thoughts.
2. How are attitudes formed? Which source is stronger?
Direct experiences and social learning form attitudes. Attitudes formed from direct experience are stronger because they are readily available and called on quickly by our consciousness.
3. Discuss cultural differences in job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Because organizations face the challenge of operating in the global environment, managers must understand that job satisfaction is significantly affected by culture. Therefore, employees from different cultures may have different expectations of their jobs. Similarly, organizational commitment studies have shown variances among cultures in terms of commitment to the organization.
4. What are the major influences on attitude-behavior correspondence? Why do some individuals seem to exhibit behavior that is inconsistent with their attitude?
Attitude-behavior correspondence is affected by attitude specificity, attitude relevance, timing of measurement, personality, and social constraints. For some individuals, attitude-behavior correspondence is not so important. High self-monitors are more concerned that their behavior is situationally appropriate than that their behavior reflects their attitudes.
5. What should managers know about the persuasion process?
Managers use persuasion to change or enhance values, and can act as a catalyst for encouraging attitude change. In order to influence individuals, managers must be conscious of characteristics that are likely to enhance their persuasive capabilities. These characteristics include attractiveness, trustworthiness, and credibility.
6. Define values. Distinguish between instrumental values and terminal values. Are these values generally stable, or do they change over time?
Values are enduring beliefs that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence. Instrumental values represent the acceptable behaviors used to achieve some end state. Terminal values represent the goals to be achieved, or the end state of existence. These values are relatively stable, yet influences such as age and gender do affect individuals' values over time.
7. What is the relationship between values and ethics?
Ethical behavior is acting in ways consistent with one's personal values and the commonly held values of the organization and society; thus values underlie ethical behavior.
8. How does locus of control affect ethical behavior?
Internals are more likely than externals to take personal responsibility for the consequences of their ethical or unethical behavior.
9. What is Machiavellianism, and how does it relate to ethical behavior?
Machiavellianism is a personality characteristic indicating one's willingness to do whatever it takes to get one's own way. High-Machs believe that any means justify the desired ends.
10. Describe the stages of cognitive moral development. How does this concept affect ethical behavior in organizations?
Cognitive moral development has three levels, each consisting of two stages. At the pre-conventional level, Stage 1 individuals' base decisions on rewards, punishments, and self-interest. Rules are obeyed to avoid punishment. In Stage 2, individuals follow the rules only if it is in their immediate interest to do so. At the conventional level, Stage 3 individuals try to live up to the expectations of people close to them. In Stage 4, the perspective is broadened to include the laws of the larger society. At the principled level, Stage 5 individuals base decisions on principles of justice and rights. In Stage 6, individuals follow self-selected ethical principles. If training can enhance moral development, it is in the interest of organizations to provide educational seminars to assist employees.
DISCUSSION and communication QUESTIONS: Suggested Answers
1. What jobs do you consider to be most satisfying? Why?
Some of these answers may be idealistic because they are expectations. Most students will state motivator reasons for satisfaction, rather than hygiene factors, such as salary.
2. How can managers increase their employees’ job satisfaction?
One of the keys is to examine all five components of the core job characteristics model. Many students will answer only one aspect of the model, such as suggesting an increase in skill variety. Managers must have accurate perceptions of what employees want in a job.
3. Suppose you have an employee whose lack of commitment is affecting others in the work group. How would you go about persuading the person to change this attitude?
Students should analyze characteristics of the persuader, the target, and the message to address this problem.
4. In Rokeach's studies on values, the most recent data are from 1981. Do you think values have changed since then? If so, how?
One of the strengths of the Rokeach studies is that they were longitudinal. There are suggestions of differences between males and females, yet there is a tendency to keep core values in relationships. Students may wish to contrast their values with those of their parents and grandparents in discussing this question.
5. What are the most important influences on an individual's perceptions of ethical behavior? Can organizations change these perceptions? If so, how?
Ethical behavior is influenced by two major categories of factors: individual characteristics and organizational factors. Organizations can affect individuals' perceptions of ethical behavior by creating a culture that rewards ethical behavior and employee involvement, training, and modeling ethical behavior.
6. How can managers encourage organizational citizenship?
By promoting a climate of honesty and rewarding the "helping" behaviors. Students may need to analyze their current environment (work organization or university) to see if the organization encourages citizenship.
7. Suppose you are a manager in a customer service organization. Your group includes seven supervisors who report directly to you. Each supervisor manages a team of seven customer service representatives. One of your supervisors, Linda, has complained that Joe, one of her employees, has “an attitude problem.” She has requested that Joe be transferred to another team. Write a memo to Linda explaining your position on this problem and what should be done.
Encourage students to apply the concepts learned in class about attitudes to their resolution of this problem. This problem also provides a good opportunity to discuss how values, personality, perception, etc. could be affecting this situation.
8. Select a company that you admire for its values. Use the resources of your university library to answer two questions. First, what are the company’s values? Second, how do employees enact these values? Prepare an oral presentation to present in class.
Following the oral presentations, discuss differences in values that were identified across organizations. Get student input on why the values differ among organizations and how companies sometimes enact the same values in different ways.
9. Think of a time when you have experienced cognitive dissonance. Analyze your experience in terms of the attitude and behavior involved. What did you do to resolve the cognitive dissonance? What other actions could you have taken? Write a brief description of your experience and your responses to the questions.
During discussion of these responses, encourage students to examine how people respond differently to cognitive dissonance. Discuss how an understanding of cognitive dissonance can be beneficial to a manager.
ETHICS QUESTIONS: Suggested Answers
1. Is it ethical for an organization to influence an individual's ethical behavior? In other words, is ethics a personal issue that organizations should stay away from? Is it an invasion of privacy to enforce codes of conduct?
Manipulation is related to this question. Some organizations receive notoriety for attempting to influence their members (Cracker Barrel, Coors Brewery), and these efforts have been seen as an invasion of privacy. Codes of ethics reinforcements are about business practices, not personal lifestyles.