Job attitudes: A meta‐analytic review and an agenda for future research

Abstract

SummaryGiven the importance and popularity of employee job attitudes in academics and practice (e.g., annual engagement surveys), it is crucial to explore and summarize previous developments in the literature to identify ways to advance the field. The current review takes a systematic approach to exploring the nomological network, including investigating redundancy, of seven common job attitudes. We present a portfolio of evidence relying on three primary studies and one meta‐analytic study (total k = 6631; total n = 3 309 205). Our results raise concerns about the measurement of select job attitudes. Further, job attitudes are moderately to strongly correlated with each other (most relations landing between ρ = .50 and .69) and have similar patterns of relationships with antecedents, correlates, and outcomes. Yet, relative weights analyses illustrate that some attitudes have more validity in predicting key employee outcomes than others, which points to theoretically relevant utility concerns among specific job attitudes. This review offers a contribution by synthesizing the literature and developing a future research agenda based on the current findings that will advance the field further. Finally, this work offers a primer on job attitudes, with definitions, applicable theoretical frameworks, scales and items, and empirical relationships between key constructs.