Methods Section, Part 2

The three variables I have chosen for this week’s assignment to predict job attitudes in the Walden Sports, Inc. scenario are trust, perceived organizational support, and role conflict. According to the information given through out this class concerning Walden Sports, Inc., those employed by Walden Sports lack work motivation that can be linked to the acquisition of Earth Travelers (Laureate Education, 2012a).

Walden Sports, Inc. is experiencing low-performance from their employees, some examples include absenteeism, poor attendance at company sponsored social events, as well as increased turnover (Laureate Education, 2012a). Also, newer employees have formed a negative perception of the company within their short stint at Walden Sports due to the organization’s lack of support. Overall, the employees at Walden Sports have altered their behavior possibly because of the organizational changes. As their organizational consultant, I hope to diagnose the overlying cause and offer up techniques to help guide them in making some positive changes that will not only manage the employee dynamics and increase profitability at Walden Sports, Inc.

First Variable: Trust

Trust is an important factor in everyday life, it is a mix of feeling and rational thinking as defined by Lewis & Weigert (1985). Most importantly, trust in the workplace has been linked to increased levels of organizational performance and competitiveness (Vineburgh, 2010). When employees feel that their organization is not trustworthy, they tend to find ways to reduce their vulnerability such as reducing their performance (Culbert & McDonough, 1986). From the outside looking in, Walden Sports Inc. employees appear to have a feeling of mistrust toward their employer and their management teams. The trust variable shares a common thread with perceived organizational support in that if employees do not perceive a balanced working environment, it could affect their expectations and their level of trust in their employer (Celep & Yilmazturk, 2012). I believe that the Organizational Trust Inventory (OTI) will properly examine Walden Sports and their employee’s level of organizational trust. By its very definition, the Organizational Trust Inventory measures the level of trust within an organization (Cummings & Bromiley, 1996). The OTI has an internal validity of 0.84 (dimension 1), .78 (dimension 2), and .88 (dimension 3) respectively (Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997; Butler, 1991). The model is a 12-item, and 7-point Likert scale that inquiries on my organization conducts operations in an ethical manner and the organization listens to their employees, and the organization provides proper feedback to their employees.

Second Variable: Perceived Organizational Support (POS)

According to industrial and organizational psychology expert Dr. John Meyer, organizational commitment reflects loyalty and willingness to work toward organizational objectives that have been identified by the organization (Meyer, 1997). To measure perceived organizational support, I believe that the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) scale would be effective and will be used to assess just how well Walden employees think their organization supports them (Celep & Yilmazturk, 2012). The SPOS is a 36-item questionnaire which incorporates a 7-point Likert scale with 1=strongly disagree, and 7=strongly agree (Eisenberger, Jones, Aselage, & Sucharski, 2004). The survey requires employees to answer statements such as the organization provides all materials for employee success or the organization values my suggestions. The scale has a reliability coefficient of .93 on the long version and .89 on the short 8-item and on the original 36-item long version carries a very high internal validity being close to 1.00 (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001).

Third Variable: Role Conflict

The role conflict variable occurs when employees experience incompatible work demands (Karkel & Frone, 1998). Some individuals may experience role conflict while working in a certain field that may be incompatible with their personal values or beliefs, such as working on certain days that may be reserved for religious practices (Karkel & Frone, 1998). The new Walden Sports employees found themselves working for an organization that was not the same one that was presented at the time of their hire (Laureate Education, 2012c). One individual was told that he could travel at least once a month so he could talk about the vacation spots to potential buyers and has yet to take one trip (Laureate Education, 2012c). Another employee was told that the company was like a big family and that may have been true at one point, but since she has been employed the organization has failed to live up to those remarks (Laureate Education, 2012c). These employees are working for an organization that has not lived up to their side of the expectations and some employees would rather work elsewhere but feel trapped in their current position Laureate Education, 2012b). One question that each employee may be asking themselves is can I work for an organization that does not do what they say they will? This scale is composed of 14-items of which eight measures the strength of the role conflict variable while the others measure role ambiguity on a 5-point Likert scale (1=totally disagree to 5=totally agree) (Rizzo, House, & Lirtzmam, 1970). The Cronbach’s Alpha indicates coefficient of .65 (Palomino & Frezatti, 2015; Rizzo, House, & Lirtzmam, 1970). Walden employees will be asked statements such as I would prefer to work for another company or My organization keeps their commitments to their employees.

Results Section

155 employees at Walden Sports Inc. were surveyed regarding their job attitude. Measured quantities included job satisfaction “JS” overall, which was subdivided into AC (affective commitment), NC (normative commitment), CC (continuance commitment) and JI (job involement. Variables leading to these attitudes were identified as TR (trust), POS (perceived organizational support, and RC (role conflict) at the company. Variables were quantified along a 7-point scale as per Likert, with 1 for strong disagreement, up to 7 for strong agreement. This helped determine which variables were most significant. All antecedents turn out to be reliable in predicting job attitude, with affective commitment (AC) ranking highest with a correlation of (α = 0.956) (see Table 1). Cronbach’s alpha for RC (7 items; α = .924), POS (9 items; α = .892) and TR (7 items; α = .952), are all also highly correlated; these precursors do indeed predict job attitudes.

In fact, all the measured antecedents exceeded the usual reliability range, usually suggested as an alpha beyond about .7 to .8. AC (6 items; α = .956), NC (6 items; α = .931), CC(6 items; α = .933), and JI (6 items; α = .944) all showed high reliability.