Modern Science and Arts University

Faculty of Management Sciences

Marketing Department
Spring 2011

Organizational Behavior
MGT 301

‘’Attitudes and Job satisfaction’’

Application on Piraeus Bank – Egypt

Submitted to
Prof. Dr. Emad Elwy
T.A. Nouran Fayed

Submitted by
Mahdy Mohamed El Labben 085691
Saad Harraz 070651
Omar Hesham Abd El Atty 104789
Rami Ashraf
Contents

Abstract 3
Introduction 4
Piraeus Bank History 5
Piraeus Vision and Mission 6
What are Attitudes? 7
How do we form Attitudes? 8
Job Attitudes 9
Interview questions 10
Theoretical Frame Work 11
Sample of answer 13
Recommendations 14
Conclusion 15
References 16
Appendix 17

2
Abstract

In this research, we examine the relationship between ‘’Attitudes

and Job satisfaction’’ and their impact on each other. We decided to
apply this research on Piraeus Bank in Egypt, by interviewing five
employees and one manager, we found that there is a weak relationship
between attitude and job satisfaction so we cannot say that attitudes can
affect behavior 100 % but have a slight impact on how an employee can
behave. Concerning the job satisfaction, the employees are satisfied with
some of the important general aspects but not satisfied with others. We
can go first more in deep with this paper and then we will see what we
found and what we recommend for better job satisfaction for Piraeus
Bank in Egypt.

3
Introduction

Attitudes are the base of many decisions that people take in their
daily life. People can quite their job and look for another one, can think
about leaving their neighborhood and move somewhere else, they can
also brake up with others, just because they are forming new attitudes
toward idea, brand name, product, persons, places …etc.

It started in 1970’s, where researchers asked when and why attitudes

guide behavior, with putting into consideration the strength of attitudes.

Actually, attitudes are playing an important role in understanding the

human behavior, since long time ago in the very early beginning of the
scientific psychological studies.

4
Piraeus Bank Group

.Brief History
Piraeus Bank Group is one of the most dynamic and activ
  organizations in Greece today. Founded in 1916, Piraeus B

through a period of state-ownership and management (197

it was privatized in December 1991. Since then, it has cont
.in size and activities

Today, Piraeus Bank leads a group of companies covering

and banking activities in the Greek market (universal bank
possesses particular know-how in the areas of retail bankin
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), capital markets and inv
.banking, leasing

These services are offered through the Bank's nation-wide

 
also through the electronic banking network of Winbank. T
launched in the beginning of 2000, as the first complete ele
service in Greece, offering a full set of services through fo
.channels of distribution (Internet, mobile phone, call cente

5
.Vision

The main medium term goals of Piraeus Bank Group are

balanced growth in terms of loans and deposits, achieve hi
and sustain superior asset quality and satisfactory capital a
Piraeus will continue to focus on SMEs and retail banking
where it holds strong expertise, while capitalizing on its yo
.network, both in Greece and abroad

.Mission

The Group's fundamental policy direction for human resou

development is based on the efficient management of hum
leading to the creation of skillful and dedicated personnel a

6
Attitudes

What are attitudes?

Attitudes are the disposition or tendency to respond positively or
negatively toward a certain thing (idea, object, person, and situation). [1]

As we all know, people behave differently to a same thing, and one

person can have different behavior towards different things. It depends on
his attitudes and how a person forms his attitudes.

Generally speaking, attitudes have main components.

1- Cognitive = evaluation
is the way how an employee describes the way things are.
''Too much working hours and no recognition.''
2- Affective = feeling
is the way how people feel things.
''I dislike the work environment.''
3- Behavioral = action
is the way people will behave as a cause of things happened before.

''I decided to talk to the HR department.''

These three components are related to each other and in particular

cognition and affect. They help to understand the effect of attitudes on
choices and actions that people take. It is important to mention that these
components interact among each other and cannot be separated.

Previous research showed up the relationship between attitudes and

behavior. It is logical that attitudes are followed by actions. However, as
Leon Festinger said in the late 1960's that attitudes follow behavior.
''People change what they say so it doesn’t contradict what they do.'' [2]

Festinger explained attitudes that follow behavior tend to reduce

contradiction (dissonance), because he believes that any inconsistency is
uncomfortable, and that is why individuals will try to reduce this

7
inconsistency between attitudes and behavior. But in fact, it is impossible
to completely reduce dissonance.

?How do we form Attitudes

No one is born with a certain attitudes or tendency toward a

specific thing. As we all know that one person can have numerous
attitudes towards several things. That’s means that attitudes are not equal,
it depend on the level of involvement or attachment of the person with
this thing.

8
 As previously mentioned, there are many attitudes. For this reason,
I am going to focus on job attitudes and the relationship between
''Attitudes and Job satisfaction.''

Three Major Job Attitudes.

 Job satisfaction.
 Job involvement.
 Organizational commitment.

1- Job satisfaction is the contentment (or lake it) arising out of

interplay of employee's positive and negative feelings toward his or
her work.[3]

2- Job involvement is how much the employee is taking part in his or

her job. Good leaders, empower their employees by authorizing
them to participate in decisions, in order to make them feel that
they are there to help in the management of the company and
somehow more important than just receiving orders.

3- Organizational commitment is how much an employee can be loyal

to a particular organization. There are three different dimensions to
organizational commitment.

 Affective commitment is the emotional attachment.

 Continuance commitment is the perceived economic value that
relates the employee to a certain organization.
 Normative commitment is the moral or ethical reasons that make an
employee to remain with a certain organization

After discussing ‘’Attitudes and Job satisfaction’’ we can figure out

the relationship raised between both of them. If an employee feels
discrimination aroused between him and his co-worker from his superior
or from other co-workers because of his origin or religion or color (kind
of racism), this employee will notice that he is disliked (cognition), so he
will feel bad (affect), and as a result he will look for another job
(behavior) where the work environment is better than his current job.
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Interview questions

1. Can you describe your job environment

2. Rate your level of job satisfaction. Justify your answer please.

level of Aspects of current job
satisfaction
Work Coworkers Work Pay Load and Internal
place hours stress promotion
Extremely
satisfied
Satisfied

Neutral

Dissatisfied

Extremely
dissatisfied

If there are any other aspect you feel that can affect the employee
attitudes and the job satisfaction, please mention.

3. What attitude did you formed? How will you behave?

4. What relates you to your current job?

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 Theoretical Frame Work

From what I read before, I noticed that previous research proved

that most of the people seek for consistency among their attitudes and
between their attitudes and behavior. As Leon Festinger said, seeking
consistency in attitudes and between attitudes and behavior is reducing
. dissonance

Also they assumed that there is a causal relationship between attitudes

and behavior, in other words, the attitudes that people hold towards
something or someone explain his or her behavior towards this thing or
. toward this person

More modern research came up with proving the attitudes helps only to
predict future behavior and they are only slightly related to each other,
therefore, we can not set a general rule that says that attitudes come
before behavior or behavior comes first, it depends on the person and on
’’.how he form his attitudes ‘’ Learning Hierarchy

Concerning the job attitudes; when we talk about job satisfaction is

when a person has a positive feeling toward his job. It comes after a
mental evaluation and after performance. Job involvement is when we
talk about psychological empowerment; it is the degree to which a person
is taking part in his job. The level of participation of an employee in
.decisions that concerns the company he working for, and strategies

A good organization should measure its employee’s satisfaction level

continuously. By making questionnaires to push them to express their
feelings toward many factors that can affect their satisfaction such as the
pay, the team work, managers, or the company’s strategy itself. After
clarifying the employee’s attitudes to the company’s management
through these questionnaires, it helps to avoid the turnover rate of
employees and increase their loyalty, also can help in improving their
.performance and to avoid problem in work environment

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How Piraeus does measure the attitudes and the job satisfaction of his
employees and what Piraeus management is doing to increase their
?employee’s satisfaction

By monitoring their employees, by being involved in their life (i.e. by

taking care about their needs and wants, their children education, the
psychological statement, offering a health care and medical insurance for
them and their families, retirement insurance …etc) and making for them
a lot of programs that make them attached to the organization and kind of
.creating a family soul between the organization and the employee

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In the following interview, I used an open ended question to elicit random
answers for my question from the manager of the credit card department.

How do you feel about your job?

I am satisfied about job.

What about your job environment?

It is a good environment to perform my job with accuracy, from the side
of team working.

What kind of relation you have with your supervisors?

Relation is based on changing ideas, in other words I am involved in
taking decisions. My supervisors give me the chance to apply my work
strategy.

What about the Group work?

Every one of us is a point in a circle, everyone has a task to perform, in
others words we complete each others. We are doing a good job by
following and applying the team work definition.

What kind of relation you have with your current job?

What relates me to my current job is a moral relationship, I was there
when we established this department, so it has been growing while I was
a part of it, and we shared a lot of emotional, hard, success, critical,
stressful moments so it is not easy to quit and to forget the about this
place.

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Recommendations.
I recommend to Piraeus Bank in Egypt to reduce the turnover rate of the
employees. Because it is irrational to sack employees for a change in the
organization structure, or ask them to accept the downgrade in positions if
they do not want lose their jobs.

Piraeus management is good with the psychological empowerment of

employees. Piraeus management should keep this strategy and work on
improving it.

Piraeus management should work on making a transparency in the

internal promotional system, because as I found while interviewing their
employees that they expected higher positions comparing to what they
offered to their organization.

Otherwise employees there are satisfied, there is kind of balance between

levels of satisfaction and level of dissatisfaction in their job but this does
not mean that their attitudes are positive toward the company.

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Conclusion

A job is more than receiving orders and obeying without contribution

in the decisions, more than shuffling papers, waiting for the end of the
month to be paid or waiting for the end of the working day in your office
to leave the building. It requires a soul among co-workers and
supervisors, spiritual soul and positive attitudes inside the organization
that is raised among the working team that makes them achieve their
highest performance, even exceed it, and stand the hard moments and the
stressful working condition that any organization pass by.

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Phase 2: Motivation (from concepts to application)
You are satisfied in your job, persistent in your work, looking forward to
wakeup every morning go to your office and make an effort in the
direction of the organizational goals. In organizational behavior this
equals a motivated employee.

By definition Motivation is: The processes that accounts for an

individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort toward attaining
a goal.

Motivation has two components: internal needs (intrinsic motivation)

and external objects (extrinsic motivation).

Extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards (including besides

money other benefits that can satisfy your inner needs) and feedback
when you are treated as a human being. In the case in which you are a
“very important resource”, motivation will come from getting paid,
punishment if you break something and critics.

Internal forces that energize and direct you towards your goals represent
intrinsic motivation. The inner needs do not address only your work
environment, but your purpose of living. Therefore there is not always a
good fit between what your job requires from you and what you really
need.

It is said that incentives play a major role in motivating your employees

and encouraging them to achieve higher goals. In any organization,
incentives work because employees are then goal-driven and push
themselves to achieve their targets.

However I believe that motivation is not defined only in terms of money

or vacations, motivation could be in the shape of communication between
employees and their employer or even employees among each other, also
competition would result in motivation among employees (even in the
same team) in other words competition would produce a positive

16
motivational energy in the work place. Also the environment that an
organization form in its own work place would be a form of motivation, a
manager could motivate his team by words, or even by being a good
example of exerting an effort in order to achieve organizational goals,
Motivation is one of the key factors that lead to employee productivity, in
any organization, human resource is one of the biggest resources that an
organization has, which contributes to its overall growth and profitability.
To maximize employee productivity, organizations need to focus on two
areas: personal employee motivation and the work environment.

It seems that there are three specific personality characteristics that are
important in the study of organizational behavior and influence the level
of satisfaction of the employees: locus of control, self-esteem and self-
monitoring.

Locus of control refers to what a person believes that has a good or bad
influence about his/her life. More specific in a work environment: if
mostly external factors or internal forces influence the career path.
Weak people believe in fate, luck and powerful people that can help them
on the way. It works if you accept to have your freedom and rights as a
human being limited.Strong people believe in themselves. Their future is
determined by their career planning process, their actions and initiatives.
These people ask not why you have money, but “how did you do it so I
can do it too?”

Self-esteem is the result of self-evaluation. A favorable image about

yourself can make you more resistant to external influences, consequently
much more inclined to be perseverant and focused.

Self-monitoring is about self-control or how much of a show you put in

interacting with others. There are jobs that require acting (from my
personal experience, law is one of them) and there are natural actors that
have the wrong job.

Three main personality characteristics should be taken in consideration

when motivating employees, in order to increase productivity and
enhance PERFORMANCE, Motivation is seen in the quantity and quality

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of the effort you put in reaching the goal of the organization. Performance
is how the organization quantifies how closer you are of reaching the goal
and how properly they are using motivation.

Connecting attitudes formed by the employees and motivation used by

their own employers, motivation is one of the main aspects affecting
attitudes, a good motivated and satisfied employee would tend to act
positively and in favor of the organization and would also exert an effort
in order to meet assigned goals, and form a positive attitude of
organizational commitment, job involvement and job satisfaction, and
vice versa.

That does not mean that motivation is the main and only reason that
forms attitudes; however, motivation is a must and a main aspect among
others, to form a positive attitude of employees.

Away from theoretically talking, in real life organizations finds that

application of the previous comes naturally and in favor of getting closer
towards meeting their own goals, for example “PIRAEUS BANK”
culture is based on compensations as a strategy to motivate employees in
order to improve productivity and create an employee’s job satisfaction,
involvement and organizational commitment.

Compensation and benefits as stated on the official web-site for

“PIRAEUS BANK”:

“The intention of the Piraeus Bank Group is to attract and keep the most
capable employees. Compensation and benefits schemes provided to
employees play a major role in achieving the above objective. The
objective is to create competitive structures, as regards both to
compensation and benefits, so as to ensure a high degree of coverage for
the needs of employees.

Compensation and benefits schemes are assigned to employees depending

on their job role, experience, abilities and their degree of responsibility.

Moreover, market developments are monitored continuously so as to

maintain compensation and benefits at competitive levels, while the
objective is to acknowledge and reward additional effort made by each
employee. For this reason, additional, short-term or long-term, bonus

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schemes have been designed.

Social Policy Aiming at improving the standard of living for all

employees, Piraeus Bank ensures that it provides competitive
compensation and benefits schemes.”

Moreover, the Bank offers its employees a set of extra benefits such as
those presented in the following table:
• Free annual check up for all employees in cooperation with the
Employees' Association.
• Full coverage of the cost of a Group insurance scheme
(hospitalization, medical care, life insurance, accident insurance,
permanent total disability insurance).
• Coverage of childcare expenses.
• Rewards to employees’ children studying at any university in
Greece and abroad.
• Extra days of leave (motherhood and child hospitalization).
• Monthly allowance for the transportation of blind and disabled
employees.
• One-off special benefit for large families.
• Privileged price policy.

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Recommendations
I recommend to Piraeus Bank in Egypt to keep on applying their policy
regarding motivation using compensations and other benefits to
employees, also to create a happy working place and a positive
environment for the employees

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References

Electronic References:

www.tip.psychology.org/attitude.html

www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-satisfaction.html

www.research.berkeley.edu/ucday/abstract.html

http://www.piraeusbank.gr/ecpage.asp?id=233249&nt=19&lang=2

http://www.motivatingemployees.org/

Academic References:

Organizational Behavior, 14th edition, Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A.

Judge.

Consumer Behavior

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Appendix

Here we have two chapters from two different books that

discuss the attitudes and job satisfaction
We have the Interview questions
Interview answers
Some other electronic references

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