ABSTRACT
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THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF WORK
If someone were to ask us about our jobs or careers, we would probably report some positive feelings, as well as indicating some aspects of the job with which we were dissatisfied. This chapter more than any other pulls together a number of issues and topics from I/O psychology. We will look at the positive aspects of jobs—what causes workers to be engaged in their jobs, their organizations, and their careers. We will explore how positive employee attitudes and behaviors are connected to job performance. This is really an issue of motivation, similar to those examined in Chapter 8. This chapter also deals with some measurement issues that were introduced in Chapter 2. The measurement of employee attitudes, for example, presents a number of measurement problems. The connection between attitudes and their ability to predict important behaviors has a long and important history in both social and industrial/organizational psychology.
