Re: RE: Staff Attitude

["joseph kelada" <joseph.kelada@hec.ca>]

Interesting discussion by Steven_S_Prevette@rl.gov re: Staff Attitude

He writes :Culture and attitude are important, but I do not believe can 

be "directly"influenced.  I do tend to believe in "behaviorist" 
> theories, which say I can change a person's behaviors (physical 
actions they do), but I cannot change their attitude.  Behavior 
modification will eventually impact attitude,however.

1.- According to physology, an attitude is the result of a rational 
belief. If a worker firmly believes that producing a quality product 
will make customers buy it thus providing income which allows the 
company to pay the shareholders some dividend (or any form of return 
such as growth of share value). In turn, the shareholder will invest in 
the company thus keeping the existing jobs and creating new jobs. Then 
the worker will have the attitude that I should produce quality products 
for my own sake (e.g. keeping my job). From that attitude a behavior 
results, information and other means is sought then actions are 
undertaken to produce the quality product. Belief --> attitude --> 
behavior --> preparation --> action --> results.
2.- According to a Harvard Business Review article on Sears (when they 
lost more than 3 billion dollars), they developed a management model 
which determined that worker can satisfy the customer and the customer 
can satisfy the shareholder who in turn satisfies the worker.
To apply this «model» they first tried to empower the personnel in order 
to make them work on customer satisfaction. To make a long story short, 
they ended up, after a few trials, deciding that what makes a person 
work to satisfy the customer is not (in their case at least) empowerment 
but attitude. Then customer satisfaction should not be the issue but 
rather customer retention.
They measured the personnel attitude (towards their job and towards 
Sears), they measured the resulting increase in customer retention and 
the resulting increase in sales, thus demonstrating how the management 
model works.

Joseph Kelada
Full professor
HEC Business School, University of Montreal
joseph.kelada@hec.ca