There are so many statements and parables about "you are what you think" or "if you can believe it, you can do it." These often trite statements are meant to inspire and embolden individuals to be better, do better, and become commonplace in the home and the workplace. Nearly every office has a statement or quotes somewhere in the office to inspire workers. What inspires you?

QUESTION

Begin by thinking about how attitudes and perceptions are created and how they impact the workplace. Using the theories of organizational behavior related to attitudes and perceptions, create 1 quote or statement that employers can utilize to inspire employees to complete their work better and interact with coworkers. Justify your response by identifying the theory or theories that led you to createurquote and your rationale for why the theory fits.

Cognitive Dissonance We all have values and beliefs that have been shaped by many driving forces in our livessome from people who have influenced us and others from our own experiences. Have you ever considered the source of attitude formation in your own life? What or who has shaped some of your strongest attitudes and beliefs? Why do you continue to hold to those attitudes you have? Are some of your attitudes weaker than others? How open are you to a change in attitude? Are you able to determine answers to these questions and why would you want to? We also know that engaging in behaviors contrary to our attitudes and beliefs can cause distress, which is known as cognitive dissonance (Scandura, 2019). Although it may seem clichd, we also have attitudes about our attitudes! These are some factors to consider because attitudes do drive observable behaviors in many cases. Within an organization, it is not just immediate coworkers and supervisors that may impact our attitudes about work, including job satisfaction, but the entire organization has an effect on each and every one of its members. We know that satisfied employees are more productive, more committed, and happier in general. You have already reviewed the importance of the person-environment fit. Now you will explore how managers maintain satisfied workers? Emotional contagion is another aspect of retaining workers. How does this phenomenon factor into the mix? Recognizing and measuring employee satisfaction can be a complex process, as there are many components involved. One important factor which influences job satisfaction is organizational commitment. As a manager, understanding, recognizing, and properly estimating the factors that play a role in attitudes about work is a skill that is a necessity. As a manager, what skills will you choose to develop, and which tools will you use to measure these important factors? Perceptions, Decision Making, and Problem Solving Our perceptions are often biased, based upon our first impressions (primacy effect), recent interactions (recency effect), and how available our memories are to draw upon (availability bias). Understanding the importance of measuring job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, as a manager, how accurate are your assessments of your employees? What are you measuring and what actions from the data can you take to enhance your organization's performance? Recognizing that we have our own perceptual biases is of the utmost importance when evaluating employees' performance. We tend to compare employees to others and may have that "favorite" employee (Scandura, 2019). Can you think of a time you felt that you were unfairly evaluated by a supervisor? Did that supervisor perhaps suffer from perceptual bias?

Our personalities, emotions, moods, and attitudes all play a role in how we make decisions and solve problems. In today's business world, decisions are often made by teams. Deciding how to select team members for a particular purpose is highly based upon the outcome that you are looking for with that decision, as well as the type of business you are managing. How Attitudes and Perceptions Impact the Diverse Workforce A survey by Buffer found that 99 percent of those individuals working remotely want to continue in that capacity, though some indicate they suffer from loneliness and are challenged to remain motivated (Molla, 2019). It is not only a perception - employees enjoy working at work, but many also prefer working remotely more than traveling to a workplace. What is also quite interesting is how quickly attitudes and perceptions are changing. Since organizations are made up of people, it should be no wonder that organizations, too, are being rapidly impacted by changing attitudes and perceptions as a result of remote work and global business trends. How the Distributed Workforce Will Change our Relationship to Work Certainly, we will be working, and living, differently in the coming years. In previous years, we were hired and trained to work in an office with other employees on a daily basis. That expectation is changing - we are increasingly being hired without meeting anyone in human resources or having a direct conversation with our intended supervisor. This is consistent with the expectation expressed by Gwen Burrow in her most recent article, Remote Work Is on the Rise and Could Change Everything. Technology has been the driving force in this transformation, and there is little that the average person can do to prevent or forestall this move towards the remote workplace. What can be done is to ensure that organizations are prepared well to profit from this move. This leverage can be done by equipping employees with the necessary tools and abilities to not only survive, but thrive, in the new model of the distributed workplace. Emphasis on changes presented by the distributed workforce forms the core of our discussions through this week, and the article, How Remote Work is Quietly Remaking our Lives (Molla 2019) offers interesting background on how remote work will appear, and come to dominate, our future.