Chapter 2.doc

Chapter 2 – Creating a Positive Work Environment: Attitudes, Values, Ethics Why is it Important to Create a Positive Work Environment? - Employees today are willing to give up 21 percent of their work hours and salary to achieve more balance in their person and work lives - High-performing organizations: organizations that produce extraordinary results and sustain this performance over time and over changing market conditions. These organizations adapt industry practices while preserving their unique processes. They view failures as opportunities for continuous learning - Triple bottom line: an expanded baseline for measuring performance, adding social and environmental dimensions to the traditional monetary benchmark - Best-practice methods: the processes, practices and system that an organization does particularly well and that are widely recognized as improving the organization’s performance and efficiency in specific areas What Does a Positive Work Environment Look Like? - Three critical elements all organizations must consider in creating a positive place to work: 1. Understanding Individual Differences (chapters 2 and 3) 2. The Job (chapters 4, 5, and 6) 3. Organizational Environment (7, 8, 9, 11, and 13) Organizational Environment - Culture is strong, adaptive, and strategically appropriate; leaders influence, motivate, and enable others, they create a vision and mission and help people understand what they can do to contribute Components of a Job - Organizations that create positive work environments clearly articulate the purpose of the job how the job contributes to the success of the organization, and how an individual can contribute to that success and they effectively design the jobs to optimize employee motivation Understanding Individual Differences - Organizations need to understand the differences that their employees bring and leverage these differences. These differences reflect the values that employees possess, the attitudes employees express within the workplace and understanding an employee’s personality traits and how employees respond to situations from an emotional and ethical perspective Values - The key source of individual differences is employee values - Values: 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 exist at a deep level and are broad feelings about what is good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or not - Values guide behaviour Instrumental and Terminal Values - Instrumental values: values that represent the acceptable behaviours to be used in achieve some end state - Terminal values: values that represent the goals to be achieved or end states of existence Factors That Influence Values - Primary diversity factors o Age o Gender o Physical attributes o Race/ethnicity/culture - Secondary diversity factors o Career stage o Marital status o Educational background o Religious belief o Work experience Cultural Differences in Values - Using Hofstede’s 5 main dimensions of cross-cultural values 1. Power distance 2. Individualism versus collectivism 3. Masculinity versus femininity 4. Uncertainty avoidance 5. Long- versus short-term orientation - Using GLOBE projects 9 critical dimensions 1. Assertiveness 2. Future orientation 3. Gender equalitarianism 4. Uncertainty avoidance 5. Power distance 6. Institutional emphasis on collectivism versus individualism 7. In-group collectivism 8. Performance orientation 9. Humane orientation - Exhibit 2.3 pg. 40 Power Distance - Power distance: the degree of inequality among people that a culture considers normal - Refers to the differences expressed in a society with respect to status, authority, and wealth – the degree of inequality among people that the population considers normal, from relatively equally (small power distance) to very different (large power distance) - Countries that ranked high: Russia, Spain, and Thailand - Countries that ranked low: Netherlands, Denmark, Israel Individualism versus Collectivism - Individualism versus collectivism: the degree to which individuals are expected to be part of a group in their organization or in their society - High countries: Denmark, Singapore, Japan, Sweden, expect individuals to participate in group activities - Low countries: Greece, Italy, Argentina, value autonomy, and individualism, and individual goals In-Group Collectivism - In-group collectivism: the extent to which members of a society take pride in membership in their immediate social group - High countries: china, Philippines, India and Iran, indicate societies in which family and close relationships are highly valued and highly regarded - Low countries: Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden, in which the weight of one’s inner circle is not considered as important as other cultural considerations Assertiveness - Assertiveness: the extent to which a society encourages people to be confrontational and assertive with respect to their views - High countries: Spain, United States, Germany - Low countries: Sweden, New Zealand, and Switzerland - Assertive countries are competitive Gender Differentiation - Gender differentiation: the extent to which a society views gender roles as different - High countries: Egypt, India, and Turkey, they accord men higher social status than women - Low: Canada, Denmark, Hungary, and Poland, women were accorded a higher status in society, a stronger role in decision making, and they tended to hold positions of power and authority Performance Orientation - Performance orientation: the degree to which a society values initiative, continuous improvement, and exceptional performance - High: Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Canada, US - Low: Greece, Russia, Italy Uncertainty Avoidance - Uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which people in a country prefer structured over unstructured situations - High: Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, demonstrate a strong tendency toward applying a consistent set of rules and laws to manage situations - Low: Russia, Greece and Venezuela are more tolerant of ambiguity and not so structured in their approach Future Orientation - Future orientation: the extent to which a society supports and rewards future-related behaviours - High: Canada, Netherlands, and Switzerland demonstrated a propensity to save for the future - Low: Russia, Italy, and Poland Humane Orientation - Humane orientation: the degree to which a society encourages and rewards individuals for being altruistic, caring, and generous - High: Malaysia, Ireland, and the Philippines demonstrate a sympathetic and kind approach to others - Low: Germany, Spain, Greece, Hungary, and France Employee Attitudes - Attitude: a psychological tendency expressed by evaluation an entity with some degree of favour or disfavour. It is the bases of an evaluative response to a particular situation, event, or issue - Attitudes are defined as “learned predisposition” to respond favourable or unfavourable to a specific object, event, or activity - Attitudes are formed on the basis of an individual’s affective or emotional experiences - Two major influences on attitudes are direct experience and social learning - Direct experiences are stronger, held more confidently, and more resistant to change than attitudes formed through indirect experience. o Because of their availability – attitudes derived from direct experience are easily accessed and active in our cognitive processes o In social learning, the family, peer groups, religious organizations, and culture shape an individual’s attitude in an indirect matter Work-Related Attitudes - Attitude is a major indicator for the future success of an organization - Three work-related attitudes commonly used to describe an employee’s level of positive feeling toward an organization are job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and employee engagement Job Satisfaction - Job satisfaction: a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences - It has been treated both as a general attitude and as satisfaction with give specific dimensions of the job: pay, the work itself, promotion opportunities, supervision, and co- workers - Dissatisfaction can also occur if employees’ expectations when hired are not met - Psychological contract: the unwritten set of expectations between employer and employee regarding implicit rights and obligations of each party regarding the employment relationship Organizational Commitment - Organizational commitment (OC): t