Employee Attitude

The importance of Organizational Context on Employees' Attitudes: An Examination of Working in Main Offices Versus Branch Offices

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1). Summary of the Article:

This research is presented the result of a study conducted with employees of branch banks and main office banks regarding their job related attitudes. As the organization context is important in the determination of attitudes and behaviors (Rousseau, 1978) so the purpose of this study is to examine that there are any differences in Job related attitudes between employees in branch bank and main office banks. From the past one contextual issue that has not received much research attention is the effect of physical distance from the main office on the job related attitudes of employees. But with the advances in technology such as e-mail, physical distance from the main office may not have an impact of the attitudes of employees. Any way without empirical investigation, the effect of physical distance is unknown. The actual distance measured in miles was not used in this study.

The job related attitudes that are examined are job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, partial inclusion, role conflict, and role ambiguity. Job satisfaction is defined as "the degree to which employees have a positive affective orientation toward employment by the organization" (Price&Mueller, 1986; p.215). Organizational commitment is defined as "the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization" (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979; p.226). Job involvement is defined as "the degree to which a person is identified psychologically with his work, or the importance of work in his total self-image" (Lodahl & Kejner, 1965; p. 24). Partial inclusion is defined as the "the extent to which individuals perceived themselves to be a part of the day to day activities of the organization" (Clinebell, 1988; p.5). Role conflict occurs when expectations of multiple roles are incompatible (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, & Rosenthai, 1964). Role ambiguity occurs when there is uncertainty about the expectations of a certain role (Khan et al., 1964). This study are examined all these variables between main office and branch office to determined if there are any differences in job related variables.

This study propose that the employees working in branch offices will have more negative job related attitudes than employees in the main office. The job characteristics of both samples are the same; only the organizational context in which they perform their jobs is different. So it is hypothesized that the job related attitudes are different. The study proposed that physical distance from the main office would negatively impact employees' job related attitudes. The following hypotheses are proposed;

H1: Job Satisfaction will be lower for branch employees that main office employees.

H2: Organizational commitment will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.

H3: Job involvement will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.

H4: Degree of inclusion will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.

H5: Role conflict will be higher for branch employees than main office employees.

H6: Role ambiguity will be higher for branch employees than main office employees.

2). Methodology:

The study was conducted using three different banks with 28 branches among the three banks. By using three different banks, the effect of bank specific policies is reduced. The research designs are designed by the purpose of the study and by the unit of analysis.

The Descriptive research serves the purpose to discover associations/relationships between variables. Ð'-Physical distance and the Job related attitudes. By unit of analysis the study also tried to study the current attitudes, opinions, behaviors of employees in branch bank and main office bank. It is called people/behavior-oriented research.

The research method adopted under this study is 123-item questionnaire. The questionnaires were administered to employees of branch and main office banks. At one banks the questionnaires were distributed to the employees by the researchers