Can a Work Organization Have An Attitude Problem? The Impact of Workplaces on Employee Attitude and Economic Outcomes

In this study we examine whether a workplace can induce good or bad attitudes among its employees andwhether any such ¿workplace attitudes¿ affect economic outcomes. This study analyzes responses ofthousands of employees working in nearly two hundred branches to the emp loyee opinion survey of amajor US bank in 1994 and 1996. The results document the existence and persistence of a genuineworkplace effect in how workers view their jobs and organizations. Employee attitudes differ significantlyacross branches in ways that cannot be explained by branches randomly drawing workers from adistribution of workers with different innate attitudes. Furthermore, newly hired workers adopt thefavourable or unfavourable attitudes that the branches exhibited before they arrived. These workplaceattitudes also have significant effects on economic outcomes. Branches with less favourable attitudes havehigher turnover, lower levels of sales, and lower rates of sales growth than branches where workers havemore favourable attitudes. Less favourable branch attitudes are also a significant predictor of subsequentbranch closings. The study¿s results show that there are happy and unhappy workplaces, as well as happyand unhappy workers, with very different patterns of turnover and productivity in these workplaces.