A job attitude is a set of evaluations of one’s job that constitute one’s feelings toward, beliefs about, and attachment to one’s job. Overall job attitude can be conceptualized in two ways. Either as affective job satisfaction that constitutes a general or global subjective feeling about a job, or as a composite of objective cognitive assessments of specific job facets, such as pay, conditions, opportunities and other aspects of a particular job. Employees evaluate their advancement opportunities by observing their job, their occupation, and their employer.
Research demonstrates that interrelationships and complexities underlie what would seem to be the simply defined term job attitudes. The long history of research into job attitudes suggests there is no commonly agreed upon definition. There are both cognitive and affective aspects, which need not be in correspondence with each other. Job attitude should also not be confused with the broader term attitude, because attitude is defined as a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor, whereas job attitude is a particular instance as an entity. In the definition above, the term “job” involves one’s current position, one’s work or one’s occupation, and one’s employer as its entity. However, one’s attitude towards his/her work does not necessarily have to be equal with one’s attitudes towards his/her employer, and these two factors often diverge.
Job facet satisfaction
Job facet satisfaction refers to feelings about specific job aspects, such as salary, benefits, and relationships with co-workers.
- Satisfaction with work: The emotional state of a worker while working is critical to job attitudes. Although a person may self-identify in terms of profession, for example as a doctor, lawyer or engineer, it is their well-being at work which is significant in characterizing job attitude. Satisfaction with work can be analyzed by evaluation (I like or dislike my job), cognitively (my work is challenging) and behaviorally (I am reliable).
- Supervision: Supervision has a significant relationship with productivity. However, supervision can only be taken positively with acceptance. Therefore, it is important to ensure a positive attitude to work.
- Co-workers: Co-workers are a common source of job stress, as demonstrated by studies using role theory.
- Pay and promotion: Given employee commitment and organizational personality orientation, compensation and advancement function as positive reinforcement, demonstrating that the worker is valued and reinforcing loyalty.
Influencing factors
Emotional exhaustion
Interpersonal conflict affects job attitudes: cut-throat competition resulted in a bitter relationship with co-workers. The exacerbated stress leads to emotional exhaustion, and this negatively affects job attitude.
Personality
Subordinates’ job attitude, such as job satisfaction and turnover intention, does not influence “Satisfaction with the supervisor“. The supervisor’s personality strongly influences the subordinate’s “satisfaction with the supervisor”. Personality traits of the supervisor, in particular agreeableness, extroversion and emotional stability, are positively related to subordinate attitude and have a greater effect on subordinate satisfaction with supervision than do more general work-related attitudes. Supervisor agreeableness and emotional stability were positively related with employee satisfaction with the supervisor, and supervisor extroversion was negatively correlated with turnover intentions.