Attitudes at Work and Managing People
ATTITUDES AT WORK AND THEIR EFFECTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF PEOPLE
Introduction
“ Virtually any response can serve as an indicator of attitude toward an object so long as it is reliably associated with the respondent’s tendency to evaluate the object in question.” This is an argument made by Ajzen (2002) that in my opinion holds true, as research over the years has shown that attitudes are developed over time, therefore they form an integral part of an individuals inclination to act a certain way toward anything or anyone. The differentiating variable is how strongly one holds the attitude. Being an aspect of psychology that is widely researched, there are numerous definitions of an attitude some of which seem to compete with or contradict one another. The scope of this paper covers two of those definitions.
The first definition is that given by Clark and Miller (1970) as “…disposition acquired through previous experience, to react to certain things, people or events in positive ways.” It goes on to say that attitudes represent ones tendency to approach that, which conserves or avert that which jeopardizes the things one values. A better-rounded definition is that given by Secord and Backman (1969) as cited in Arnold (2011) as “…certain regularities of an individual’s feelings, thoughts and predispositions to act toward some aspect of their environment.” It follows that attitudes are evaluative and indicate the likely outcome of how a person’s feelings, thoughts and behaviours affect the object of the attitude.
At this point two things are clear; first a person’s attitude is built over time and varies only according to the circumstances. Second, attitudes are always towards a specific target such as a person, place, thing or idea. Most of the mainstream literature on attitudes indicates that they are made up of three components (Arnold et. al., 2010); affective cognitive and behavioural. The affective component is seen in a person’s physiological response to
Introduction
“ Virtually any response can serve as an indicator of attitude toward an object so long as it is reliably associated with the respondent’s tendency to evaluate the object in question.” This is an argument made by Ajzen (2002) that in my opinion holds true, as research over the years has shown that attitudes are developed over time, therefore they form an integral part of an individuals inclination to act a certain way toward anything or anyone. The differentiating variable is how strongly one holds the attitude. Being an aspect of psychology that is widely researched, there are numerous definitions of an attitude some of which seem to compete with or contradict one another. The scope of this paper covers two of those definitions.
The first definition is that given by Clark and Miller (1970) as “…disposition acquired through previous experience, to react to certain things, people or events in positive ways.” It goes on to say that attitudes represent ones tendency to approach that, which conserves or avert that which jeopardizes the things one values. A better-rounded definition is that given by Secord and Backman (1969) as cited in Arnold (2011) as “…certain regularities of an individual’s feelings, thoughts and predispositions to act toward some aspect of their environment.” It follows that attitudes are evaluative and indicate the likely outcome of how a person’s feelings, thoughts and behaviours affect the object of the attitude.
At this point two things are clear; first a person’s attitude is built over time and varies only according to the circumstances. Second, attitudes are always towards a specific target such as a person, place, thing or idea. Most of the mainstream literature on attitudes indicates that they are made up of three components (Arnold et. al., 2010); affective cognitive and behavioural. The affective component is seen in a person’s physiological response to
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