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On September 11, 2001, World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon struck by terrorist. That strike affected the American people, economic and business of the whole country. The plane hijacking shook confidence of a lot of people at air travel. People started to avoid densely populated areas that include big cities, theme parks and other popular United tourist States destinations economy was (www.howstuffworks.com). While the
already in the doldrums before this tragic event, the aftermath of the bombings pushed the economy into depression. The airline and travel industry were the worst hit. Many travelers who had booking immediately cancelled their flights, and others cancelled their big trips. In other words, the demand for air travel dived considerably (www.lotsofessays.com). 30 percent decrease in business demand was reported by number of travel and tourism companies following the terrorist attacks. Airline industry as a whole became financially approximately (Belobaba, P.P, 2002). Chief economist for the Air Transport Association (John Heimtich), the industry trade group, said that the time six biggest They carriers had reduced their employment by also 23 reduced percent their fleets by more than 2006). 38 800 On percent since the attacks that was equivalent to 169,000 fulljobs. or planes, about (www.money.cnn.com,
September 15, Continental announced cut in 12,000 jobs. United and American airlines declared 20,000 layoffs each; Northwest, 10,000, US Airways, 11,000. Delta forecast was 13,000 (Fornor,
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n., 2005). Later all airlines except Southwest had been indicted for various charges. (Forbes dot Com, 2004) Southwest Airlines first flight was of the ground on June 18, 1971. beyond off a Many 90 experts days. predicted that the company wouldn't was fly the After thirty-two years, southwest
industry's not only the profitable but also the that didn't lay single employee after 9/11(www.findarticles.com). After the December 2007 recession, southwest is the largest airline in the world as far number of passengers carried per year are concerned (as of 2009) (www.wikinvest.com). Southwest maintains the third largest fleet of aircraft among the world's commercial airlines. As of May 3, 2009, Southwest operates approximately 3,200 flights daily. Number of customer domestically and internationally carried by Southwest Airlines had been more than any other airline in U.S since August 2006 according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Southwest Airlines is among the most profitable airlines in the world, posting a profit for the 37th consecutive year in January 2010 after 9/11 till now Southwest Airlines acquired Morris Air, Muse Air, ATA Airlines, and Frontier Airlines. There are nearly 35,000 total employees throughout the Southwest system with total operating revenue of $10.4 billion: 2009 financial statistics (www.southwest.com). Colleen Barrett is with Southwest from the beginning. She won numerous honors and business awards that include "Forbes dot com", Business Women Week's in "Best Managers", and Fortunes" 100 Most 50 Most Powerful Women". Barrett spends 70-80% of her time on values of employees, and encouraged to do the right thing rather than doing things right. She has a firm belief that you cannot expect employees to be
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Business,
"World's
Powerful
saints, but you can expect commitment and integrity to the team. Her guiding rule is: To hire on attitude and then train for skills, seeking individuals who will take the businessbut not themselves seriously. (www.kantola.com)
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION:
The last of the human freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances. (Victor Frankl) There is very little difference in people, but that little (John Maxwell) There are various the these behaviors of behaviors & Quinn, a to viewed under 1975), range by many as improper or
outside
norms
Researchers labels,
have
workplace deviance (Bennett & Robinson, 2003), counterproductive (Mangione antisocial $6 Newman an in to & the $200 Roth, (Giacolone & Greenberg, 1997). Counterproductive work behaviors costs organization In be is order analyzed a attitude (Murphy, attitude because Judge). 1993). must behavior Employee understand of work behaviors,
(Harrison, is
component
attitude
(Robbins study
crucial
organization behavior but at the same time it is important to find out whether this attitude can be changed or what change the attitude in an organization. What are the factors that can change the attitude? Finding the solution will make people adapt
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to their work environment but also play a meaningful role in the process of organizational development. As human resource and and (HR) policies of human refer to the recruitment, and Dyer, the selection, Recruitment achieving deployment selection capital choosing and (Hatch people
2004, following Snell and Dean, 1992; Koch and McGrath, 1996). involves goals with right skills, screening people for the right qualifications for organizational (Hunter Schmidt, 1982; Ichniowski and Shaw, 1999; Koch and McGrath, 1996) Whereas development helps in establishing a satisfactory career path for them (following Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1992b; Black, Gregersen and Mendenhall, 1992a; Edstrom and Lorange, 1984; Gomez-Mejia, 1988). Even researcher suggest to the organization to invest in high performance or high-involvement human resource systems designed so to that enhance desire job attitude, skills, can and be productivity employees behaviors
obtained. (Pfeffer 1994 & 1998, Kochan and Osterman 1994, Lawler 1992 $ 1996 and Levine 1995). But what we should do to develop high performance or high
involvement human resource system and this research is step in this direction where we will try to analyze what are the factors that have an impact on the attitude.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
What kind of impact of demographic factors (Age, Organization and Level of work) on the attitude (commitment, involvement and satisfaction)? What type of relation is there between demographic factors (Age, Organization, Tenure and Level of work) and the attitude (commitment, involvement and satisfaction)?
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RATIONAL OF RESEARCH:
I myself am firm believer of attitude. In my opinion no matter how good a person skill or knowledge is but if he/she does not has the desire attitude then the skill and knowledge has no productive use. As I have nine year experience of stock market where I had an opportunity to interact with the employees of many organizations. I found lack of attitude in most of the employees which motivate me for research on the topic. Later the case study of Southwest Airline caught my attention and firmed my desire to work on attitude related problem. But as this is an MBA level project which actually prohibits me to go deep in to the attitude related on research the therefore I I decided if we to find to demographic impact attitude. think want
improve companies ranking and enable them to compete in globe market then we should concentrate on attitude of our employees.
OBJECTIVE OF RESEARCH:
Commitment, involvement, and satisfaction play their role in the organization. But these variables of attitude are also affected by demography. Several of the demographic variables have significant impacts on Commitment, involvement, and satisfaction. Therefore the objective of the study is:
To analyze the impact of demography (Age) on involvement of an employee. To To To analyze analyze find out the the the impact of impact of demography demography between of (Level of work) (Organization) demography and on on
(Age,
Organization,
Tenure
work)
attitude
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HYPOTHESES TESTING:
Since the objective of this study is to examine the impact of demographic factors (Age, Organization and Level of work) on the attitude (commitment, involvement and satisfaction), a set of testable hypothesis {the Null Hypotheses H0 versus the Alternative ones H1} is as follows:
SCOPE OF RESEARCH:
Instead of going through various industries in Pakistan, Telecom industry was selected. As all of their offices are located in Islamabad therefore it was easy to complete the project in time and secondly since 2002 it is the booming industry in Pakistan therefore they were attracting cream of talent. In Telecom MOBOLINK, TELENOR, UFONE and ZONG were selected as their data was in reach.
DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE:
"An internal position or feeling with regard to something else." (Merriam Webster dictionary) A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a
particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1) An attitude is objectevaluation associations. (Fazio, 1995) Other synonyms words are: feeling, opinion, sentiment, mood, temper, tone, perspective, disposition, frame of mind, view, outlook, or morale."
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As
Attitudes
are
tendencies,
or
propensities
to
react
in
unfavorable or favorable way toward an object. The object could be almost anything around us. Strong attitudes will very likely affect a persons behavior; therefore, it is important to study them (Harrison, D.A., Newman, D.A, & Roth, P.L., 2006).
SIGNIFICANCE OF ATTITUDES:
Attitudes determine satisfaction and performance of individuals. Favorable attitudes give rise to positive feelings. Attitudes reconcile contradictions in opinion. Events are perceived differently by people with divergent activities. Attitudes facilitate selection of facts.
ATTITUDE FEATURES:
Attitude affects individuals behavior by preparing him to respond unfavorably or favorably to things in his environment.
Attitude is developed through learning with the passage of time. As process of learning attitudes starts right from a childhood and continues throughout the life of a person.
Attitude is a psychological phenomenon which can only be observed by the behavior of an individual. Attitude is pervasive and every individual in an
environment has some kind of attitude towards the objects. Most people (including social psychologist) agree with the fact that attitude involve three components:
1. An attitude has an object, that object is not physical but
may be an abstraction such as capitalism. This object is something always defined by the attitude holder and is
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independent of the holder based on knowledge related to object respectively (Gawronski, B., 2007) called Cognitive or Informational component.
2. An attitude has strength, which is set of beliefs that the
object is either good or bad (Gawronski et al, 2007) and is referred as Affective or Emotional component that explains whether the attitude is positive or negative or neutral which can affect work behavior.
3. An
attitude keep or
behaviors of it and
et to
al,
2006),
behavior is the tendency to behave toward the object so as to Behavioral dimension. It is ones tendency to behave in a particular way towards an object.
Attitude can be change by demographic impact such as Age Age of an employee. Tenure
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Number of years worked in an organization. Organization Organization's environment in an industry. Level of work Management level and non management level in an organization etc. These actions involve the analysis of different variables affecting a particular action.
research
organizational
behavior has been concerned with three attitudes (Robbins, P.R. & Judge, T.A., 2007) Job commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction. Job Commitment: Job commitment is ones attitude toward ones profession or vocation (Blau, 1985, p. 20). Job commitment can be defined as a state in which an employee identifies a particular job, its goals, and wishes to keep up with the particular job. Job Involvement: Job involvement measures how much a person attaches him or her with a job and considers his or her perceived performance level important to self worth (Fletcher, D.E., 1998). Employees with a high level of job involvement do care about their work. Job Satisfaction: The term job satisfaction means individual general attitude towards a job (Cote, S., & Heslin, P., 2003). A person with a high level of job satisfaction has positive attitudes about the job, while a person who is dissatisfied with a job has negative attitudes about a job. When organization speaks of employee attitudes, more often mean job satisfaction.
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sharply between age 18 and midlife and then falls sharply during late adulthood. Attitude importance presumably motivates people to use and express their attitudes, and as a result, greater importance might be associated with the performance of more attitude-expressive behaviors. Treating importance and certainty
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as distinct constructs, rather than as indicators of a single underlying latent construct, yields more useful insights into the functioning of attitudes. (Viser P.S, Krosnick J.A, & Simmon J.P, 2003) Emotional intelligence enables management to control the stress of highly complex managerial work effectively and prevent its negative and work effects on professions. Four work Emotional commitment affective models emotional intelligence forms is examined with respect to a set of work attitudes, work behavior outcomes. job work the (career and to commitment, employees determine involvement, attitudes. relationship commitment are tried
continuance commitment) and job satisfaction are used to assess Different between intelligence,
behavior, work attitudes and outcomes. Each model had two steps. The first step involved entering the control variables and the second results senior step involved for are entering example, also more are and are by the independent variable. to The indicate, managers and that emotionally attachment to intelligent their career. to and of
develop
emotional
committed
their
Research findings also revealed that occupational commitment and commitment commitment significantly that far job the main related predictors intentions, satisfaction
turnover. (Carmeli A. 2003) Majority of the researches on employee attitudes that include job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job involvement have explored the attitude and the performance relationship at the individual level a of and analysis. role. The relationship respect between to an are employee attitudes play performance with
organization
crucial
Aggregated
attitudes
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related
to
organizational positive
performance
and
there attitudes
is
significant,
relationship
between
that
concern satisfaction with security, pay and overall job with financial performance and market performance. . Financial and market performance also result into development of some facets of employees attitudes work High in organizations by the help of high in order to maintain have a the direct work practices performance effectiveness. practices performance
effect on employee attitudes that in return improved individual and organizational performance. (Schneider B., Hanges P.J, Smith D.B., and Salvaggio A.N. 2003) There is confusion and debate among practitioners on employee attitudes and job satisfaction, at a time when employees are increasingly important capital for organizational success and competitiveness. The practitioners knowledge gaps in this area are the causes of employee attitudes, the results of positive or negative of job satisfaction, and how to measure and influence employee attitudes. Employees have attitudes about many aspects their careers their jobs, and their organizations. However, from the perspective of research and practice, the most focal employee attitude is job satisfaction. Cultural, dispositional, and work situation influences employee attitudes. Job performance and life satisfaction are affected by positive or negative job satisfaction. The need to understand, measure, and improve an employee attitude are essential for organizations of today. (Sarri L.M, & Judge T.A, 2004) Job attitudes and and job performance of are perhaps in the two most level
central
enduring
sets
constructs
individual
organizational research. The extent to which job attitudes, play their in predicting and understanding job performance, and work
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behaviors still need to be answered. Attitudes and behaviors may occur according to a particular time-ordered sequence. Attitude to behavior correlations were stronger than behavior to attitude correlations in many pairs of attitudes related behavior. Job attitude plays a key role for understanding work behavior and assessing overall job attitude. It is also considered the most useful information available to an organization about its employees. (Harrison D.A, Newman D.A, & Roth P.L, 2006) In 1928 when Thurstone declared that attitudes can be measured. His key declaration constructs not in only opened the gates for researcher social psychology. Explicit and on finding measurement techniques but also became one of the most implicit attitudes were the result of different measurement techniques. As the time pass on, conceptualization further discovered models claiming that implicit attitudes differ from explicit attitudes. Implicit attitude and how attitude represent attitudes same reflect the unconsciousness Differences and arise explicit in all consciousness.
models assumptions about what exactly constitutes an attitude should be conceptualized, but all of them that evaluative responses play a share 2007) Variables such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment often overlap with each other and could be collectively and behavior. Job both considered lateness, attitude. while examining and employee attitudes of the assumption
Attitudes are cause to outcome measures such as absenteeism, turnover Employee have some aspects are performance. driven by involvement is also considered one of the variables of employee attitudes indirect essentially on individual work context and attributes. Different factors in an organizational influence employee attitudes
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these tenure
varies the
from
organization
to
organization depending upon types of job attitude. For example, positive relationship between older employees. On the other hand, length of time in the same position, develop negative relationship between tenure and job attitudes. According to goal and social cognitive theory, employee attitudes can be predicted by conflict of role, clarity of the role, self efficacy, and feedback. Managers seeking to improve organizational effectiveness may try to change employee perceptions about the organization itself. Therefore to improve performance, organizations must first change employee attitudes. (Moynihan & Pandey, 2007) Job Involvement as a work attitude reflects the extent to which individual Job needs are is a fulfilled. changing of the Higher attitude working and the individual varies needs as the satisfaction; the higher will be the job involvement behaviors. involvement which peoples perceptions motivating employees environment establishing change. principal to
Organizational career management plays a guiding role in job involvement, could enable the employees foundation of competitive advantages. Improving job involvement to work to their potential, thus, enhance organizational efficiency and productivity. Aside
from age and working age, the other variables sex, education, position rank, and position function, have no significant impact on of job involvement. job. Age and they tenure would pose an impact have on job more involvement as older employees may have more profound knowledge their Thus, possibly identification. That is why employees at the beginning of the career exploration period will have minimal job involvement. On the other hand, employees in career establishment period highly
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care
about
their
growth,
development
and
promotion.
(Bo
&
Wenxia, 2008) Job attitude becomes one of the key variables influencing job analysis attitude ratings. variables, Although namely, a number job of studies found that satisfaction, organizational
commitment and job involvement have key effects upon job results variables, such as work performance, organizational citizenship behavior and absence from duty but at the same time demographic variables, gender age and tenure are all related to three job attitude variables and dimensions in job skill ratings scale to a certain degree.. The results showed that the job attitude speaking, job satisfaction has the variables do have a significant influence upon the two job skill scales. ratings. job, or Comparatively greatest effect upon skill importance ratings and skill level A person with a high level of satisfaction with his has a high level of affective commitment to his
organization, or is involved in his job, he tends to display a higher level of job skills. The above phenomenon can also be explained by job characteristics model, which is mainly for illustrating the job characteristics perceived by post-holders. Study also found that, in comparison with the other two job attitude variables, job satisfaction has the greatest effect upon skill importance ratings and skill level ratings. (Wendong, Kan, Dan, Jinying, Jianchun, & Jianping 2008)
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RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire developed by (Mowday, Streers & Porter, 1979), Organizational Involvement Questionnaire developed by (Kanungo, 1982) and Job Satisfaction Questionnaire method of taken from the (Gupta, type of J.k.S) are the most common assessing organizational commitment,
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Frequency distribution Correlation coefficient is used to check the relationship between demography (Age, Organization, Tenure and Level of work) and attitude (Commitment, Involvement and Satisfaction).
Internal source: Without internal source, entering the building premises was very difficult, finding time consuming and in most again cases impossible. task. But the proper source was Hercules Warid
employees assessment was dropped because of non availability of internal resource. Employees attitude: Employee attitude was not friendly. They were either not serious about filling the questionnaire or had no clue of how to go about. Another problem was that many had reservation of writing their name and were afraid of expressing them openly due to fear of being expelled in an environment where unemployment is so high. Even times management refuses to meet by pretending that they were in meeting and that meeting never ends. Non availability of books: Proper books are not available in the market because there is a lack of awareness and vision to tackle the problem. Plagiarism: Ive never fallowed the rule of plagiarism in my previous reports as it has not been emphasized on. That is why again due to lack of experience report may have plagiarism, but it is not intentional and because of lack of experience. Plagiarism may be visible in ideas, key notes, some part copy pasted and images but again it is because of time constraint and lack of experience. End product: As it is an educational research, therefore the aim of the research is to fulfill the requirement of MBA by submitting it as my final project and to get a grade.
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