organizational cynicism. an initial study

8/19/2019 Organizational Cynicism. an Initial Study.

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/organizational-cynicism-an-initial-study 1/7

ORGA NIZATIONAL CYNICISM: AN INITIAL STUDY

John P. Wanous, The Ohio State University, College of Business, 1775 College Rd., Columbus, OH 43210-1399

Amon E. Reichers, The Ohio State University, College of Business

James T. Austin, The Ohio State University, Depmiment of Psychology

ABSTRACT

Organizational cynicism is proposed as an attitude that

results from repeated exposure to mismanaged change

efforts. Components analysis revealed a two-dimensional

solution and hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated

the incremental validity of the measure over job

satisfaction and organizational comm itment in the

prediction of self-reported motivation.

INTRODUCTION

Aktouf (1992) recently questioned the assumptions that

underlie much recent work on organizational change. The

rallying cries are team spirit, empowerment, creativity,

chan ge, accountab ility, transformation, culture, and quality.

Effective leaders are portrayed as heroes who embody or

create myttis and values (Schein, 1985) that mobilize a

work force which is passively waiting for inspiration.

Aktouf criticizes this writing for its failure to consider the

qualities of the people on whom the new leadership,

strong culture, or change effort is supposed to woric. There

is another tradition of work on change (c.f. Likert, 1967)

that express ly ac know ledges individuals. The focus is on

data gathering and feedback, management support, and

participative strategies as way s of inducing comm itment to

change and/or reducing resistance to change. This

approach characterizes individual employees as thinking,

feeling be ings who can be mad e more or less receptive

to change by carefully orchestrated change strategies.

People are not portrayed as totally passive, but they are

presumed to be readily influenceable by the right

techniques applied at the right time. However, there is

little recognition of how change attempts affect employee

motivation to change.

These two views conflict with the experiences of many

organizational change agents. Frustration, delay, and

failure characterize change efforts at least as often as even

partial successes. An assumption of the present study is

that many people are simply not influenceable by the

right collection of change technique s, and that the

history of change efforts within an organization plays a

role in the success of future change efforts. This occurs

because previous attempts at change fail and employees

become cynical about the possibility of future success.

We define cynicism as a midrange construct encompassing

pessimism about the success of future organizational

changes based on the belief that change agents are

incompetent, lazy, or both. Peo ple becom e cynical as tiiey

see many attempted changes in their organization, but few

successes. Cynicism is also likely when successes are not

communicated to employees, and they presume failure. As

a result of this process, they adopt an attitude of

pessimism toward fijture change as a defense mechanism

against disappointm ent When hoped-for changes do not

occur, individuals experience disappointment and perhaps

a sense of betrayal by diose held responsible for the

change. In order to avoid similar feelings about future

changes, individuals cease to hope and come to expect

others to fail. Thus, cynicism is a leamed response to

unsuccessful attempts at change that is adaptive in the

sense that it prevents the individual fix)m feeling painful

emotions. It also serves as a perceptual screen through

which ambiguous events can be interpreted so as to

maintain consistency between beliefs and perceptions of

teality. So, for example, change efforts that are mixtures

of success and failure are interpreted by cynics as failures.

Some people may exhibit predispositions to become

cynical based on development, just as some people exhibit

predispositions to be satisfied (Staw & Ross, 1985). Our

view is that anyone can become an organizational cynic if

confronted with repeated failed attempts at change and

provided with no credible explanations.

Our definition of orgsinizational cynicism merges

expectancy (Vroom, 1964) and attribution concepts (Jones

& Davis, 1965). The former is relevant because beliefs

about the futility of chang e are similar to the expec tancy

concept (i.e., the perception that efforts will result in

successful action), except that one's frame of reference is

more organizational (in the case of cynicism) than personal

(as in expectancy theory). Attribution is relevant because

organizational cynicism refers to how an individual

attributes causation to change efforts. It is when the

attribution about motives and/or abilities of others is

intemal that cynicism dev elops. It is important to

e s t a b l i s h c o n v e r g e n t / d i s c r i m i n a n t v a l i d i t y f o r

organizational cynicism. Cynicism is

forward looking

because the referent of the belief is future change efforts.

Cynicism is not a post hoc evaluation of one's job and is

thus distinct from job satisfaction (JS), which is backward

looking (Wanous & Lawler, 1972). Cynicism is not self

directed, but at the people responsible for making change.

Thus, cynicism is distinct from leamed helplessness or low

self-efHcacy. Cynics do not necessarily experien ce

themselves as powerless individuals. Cynicism is also

conceptually related to

organizational comm itment

(OC).

Low commitment is indicated by a respondent's perception

of personal values that differ ffom those espoused by the

organization, willingness to leave the employing

organization, and unwillingness to exert effort on behalf of

organizational goals. It is this last aspect of commitment

that is similar to cynicism. However, cynicism is more

particular in its focus. Commitment refers to organizational

goals in general, whereas cynicism refers specifically to

future change efforts.

Organizational cynicism may have useful application as

one aspect of an organization's climate for change. An

organization's climate for change includes conditions and

practices that foster or inhibit change, including

management support, a vision of the fijture, employee

involvement, and reward policies that reinforce the new

269



behaviors that are desired. Cynicism may be an important

aspec t of the chan ge climate beca use of the self-fulfilling

nature of the

belief.

If the people who must participate in

the change in order for it to be successful are cynical, tiiey

will refuse to participate and thus ensure the failure.

Cynics will refuse discretionaiy opportunities to

participate, and may resist required forms of participation.

To the extent that cynics refuse to participate whole-

heartedly in change efforts, change efforts are more likely

to fail. The failure then reinforces the original cynicism.

Because changes that are partly successful are ambiguous,

they may be interpreted by cynics as failures, further

reinforcing cynicism in a negative cycle.

Although cynicism is conceptually distinct from JS and

O C, it is similar beca use all three are woric attitudes, rather

than specific beliefs. As such, they should be significantly

correlated, but not so strongly that one would begin to

question their distinctiveness. For example, although job

satisfaction and organizational commitment are positively

related in this study, they have been repeatedly shown to

be sufficiently distinct to warrant the continued use of

both meetsures (see Wanous, 1992, for a review).

Although we believe that cynicism is primarily leamed

from experiences at work, there may be a predisposition to

be cynical. Although there is one recent measure of

cynicism-in-g eneral (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989), there are

adeq uate measu res of nega tive affectivity (NA; Watson,

Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). To examine the possibility that

organizational cynicism is partly based in a dispositional

tendency, we measured NA as a control variable using the

in general tempora l frame beca use it is closest to a

dispositional tendency.

A likely consequence of cynicism is found in motivation

to engage in efforts to further change. Cynical individuals

are not expected to offer their support for change attempts

or to volunteer effort to make improvements. Accordingly,

we measured a concept called keep on trying to capture

the type of motivation likely to be dampened by cynicism.

Although cynicism is viewed as primarily affecting the

motivation to keep on trying, it may have spillover

effects on general work motivation. In order to assess this

possibility, two aspects of expectancy were measured: (a)

expectancy that effort will result in successful

performance, and (b) beliefs about the instrumentality of

performance for receiving extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewa rds/

punishments.

Three types of analyses were used. Adequacy of definition

and measurement was assessed by components analysis of

items conc em ing: (a) futility of chan ge efforts, (b) intemal

attributions for the failure of change, and (c) extemal

attributions for the failure of change. If tiie data support

the con cep tual definition, futility and intemal attribution

items should emerge as one component, whereas extemal

attribution items should fomi another. The next stage

focused on relationships among cynicism and extemal

variables. We expected that cynicism would be negatively

related to JS and OC, and positively related to NA.

Cynicism should also be negatively related to motivation

to keep on trying and possibly to general motivation to

work. The third stage assessed the incremental validity of

cynicism using hierarchical multiple regressions. The

dependent variables con cemed motivation ( keep on

tiying & general work motivation). The main control

variable in these regressions is NA, which

v/as

always

entered into the regression fiirst To assess the unique

contribution of cynicism, we compared it to JS and OC.

This comparison was done in two ways: (a) cynicism

entered as a predictor before the set of JS and OC, and

(b) cynicism entered as a predictor after the set . In Ihis

way , cynicism can be compa red to the traditional set by

examining the incremental contributions depending on

order of entry. The most stringent test of whether cynicism

adds value is whether it adds explained variance in the

criteria beyond that accounted for by JS and OC.

METHO

Sample The sample was 1,114 persons (67.4% response

rate) fiom a manufacturing plant. The obtained response

rate should not be compared to 100%, because on a given

day about 8% of the employees were out of the plant, and

the illiteracy rate was estimated to be at least 10%. An

effective response rate of about 75- 80% is more likely.

Measures

Following the conceptual definition of cynicism

above, 4 items were written to measure each of the

following: (a) futility of change (e.g., mos t of the

programs that are supposed to solve problems around here

won't do much good; (b) intemal attributions for the

failure of change (e.g., the people responsible for solving

problems around here do n't try hard enough to solve them;

and (c) extemal attributions for the failure of change (e.g.,

tfie people respo nsible for fixing problem s around here

can't really be blamed if things don't improve). These

items were scrambled, although all appeared on one page.

Although extemal attributions for change failure are not

considered part of cynicism, they were included as a check

on discriminant validity. All items were measured using a

5-point Likert format

Principal compon ent analyses were conducted using SPSS.

Because of listwise deletion the sample size is 757 (not

1,114 .

How ever, the subject-item ratio for this analysis is

63:1 ,

above recommended minimums. First, the sample

was split into odd-even groups. Separate component

analyses with varimax rotation were run with no restriction

on the number of components. Identical results were found

for the odd and even samples. In both cases extemal

attributions formed a distinct com pone nt. Intemal

attribution items alway s loaded cleanly on the first

comp onent, and futility items always loaded on both

com ponen ts. Complex loa dings for the futility items were

above .30 on both components, but the higher loadings

were on the second component Because these results

closely paralleled our definition of cynicism, we imposed

a two-component limit for the final solution (entire

sample). The alpha reliability of the

8-item

scale was

estimated a s .86. Table 1 show s the 12 items arranged

according to the results of the analysis. The results

supported the conceptual definition of cynicism as

composed of futility about change and intemal attributions

about those responsible for making change.

Other measures fall into two groups. The first concems the



effects of cynicism on an individual's motivation related

to mak ing change s. We called this keep on trying and it

is mea sured with 4 items (e.g., I personally supp ort

attempts to

m ke

things better around here , (alpha = .68).

Second, to asse ss the possible spillover of cynicism on

woric motivation, we meas ured the expectancy of on e's

own efforts resulting in successful perfonnance (alpha =

.59). Also meas ured was the instrumentality of job

periformance (good & poor) nd the consequences of tiiat

perfon nance (intrinsic & extrinsic rewards or

punishments). Nine items measured perceived

contingencies using a 5-point Likert format. Extrinsic

outcomes (E) are controlled by another person, whereas

intrinsic outcomes (I) are those under one's own control.

The items were combined into scales for intrinsic (alpha

= .77) and extrinsic (alpha = .77) outcom es.

The second type of meas ure is general attitudes likely to

correlate with cynicism. These included OC, JS, and NA.

Organizational commitment was measured with the nine-

item short form ofthe OCQ (alpha = .87). Job satisfaction

was measured using a single item rating of overall job

satisfaction with a five point response scale. This is

becau se previous research comp aring global and facet

items found that the global item was reliable and better

represented overall job satisfaction (Scarpello & Campbell,

1983). Finally, NA was measured using the scale

developed by Watson et al. (1988). Respond ents rated the

extent you gener lly feel this way

that is, how you feel

on average at work

— using a 5-point scale ( l=ve ry

slightly, 2=a little, 3=moderately, 4=quite a bit,

5=extremely). The alpha reliability was .88.

RESULTS

Table 2 shows that cynicism correlates significantly with

other measured variables in the expected directions. It is

negatively related to all variables but NA. In the case of

NA, however, the correlation with cynicism is weaker than

with all of the other attitudinal/motivational variables. In

general, NA displays weaker relationships to all other

variables than does cynicism. The average r between

cynicism and the motivational variables (Variables 5-8,

Table 2) is -.35 . This value can be compared to the

average correlations with these same variables for the

familiar attitudes of OC (.45) and JS (.29). Last, intrinsic

instrumentalities are more strongly related to cynicism,

commitment, and satisfaction than are extrinsic

instrumentalities (£ < .05).

Hierarchical multiple regressions were used to assess the

incremental effects of cynicism on the motivational criteria

relative to the effects of commitmen t and satisfaction as a

set (Table 3 was omitted du e to space limits. Write to the

first author for a copy). These regressions were conducted

on the entire sample of employees, and then on the

salaried vs. hourly em ployees separately. We subdivided

because the groups were found to be different on ahnost

every measure taken for this project. Furthennore, hourly

employees were all members of a union and performed

mostly ma nual labor in noisy, uncomfortable conditions,

whereas salaried employees were both management and

clerical employees, many of whom woriced in air

conditioned buildings separate from the hourly employees.

The regression results always had negative affectivity

entered first as the main control variable. Following this,

one ordering has cynicism entered before the commitment-

satisfaction set and another has cynicism entered after flie

comm itment-satisfaction set. The first ordering estimates

the incremental effect of cynicism after the main control

variable of negative affectivity; the last regressions are the

most stringent test of the value added by cynicism.

One way to summarize the results in is to average the

amount of explained variance across the four motivation

variables. When cynicism is entered first before the set of

commitment and satisfaction, cynicism accounts for an

average of 12.6% vs. 11.2% for the satisfaction-

commitment set (entire sample). When cynicism is added

after

the set, it explains an average of 2.9% vs. 20.9% for

the comm itment-satisfaction set. Although the average

increment in explained variance for the latter is smaller

than for the former, both increments are statistically

significant

A different picture emerges when the sample is divided

into salaried vs. hourly employees. For salaried employees,

when cynicism is entered before the set of commitment

and satisfaction, it accounts for almost tw ice as much

variance compared to satisfaction and commitment in the

four dependent variables (17.8% vs. 9.1%). However, in

the hourly group cynicism explains less average variance

(9.2%) than commitment and satisfaction (13.1%) even

tiiough it is entered before them. When cynicism is entered

after the comm itment-satisfaction set, it averag es 5.6% of

explained variance vs. 17.8% for comm itment and

satisfaction in the salaried group. Despite the smaller

amount of explained variance, the increments are

statistically significant for three of the four criteria. For

hourly employees, when cynicism is entered after

commitment and satis&ction it accounts for an average of

1.8% vs. 20 .3 % for commitment and satisfaction. Becau se

the sample size of hourly employees is large, even this

smaller incremental amount of variance (compared to that

found in the salaried group ) is statistically significant.

DISCUSSION

The dictionary defines cynicism as having little faith in

human sincerity. Organizational cynicism was defmed here

as a ftmction of &iled attempts at change, so that persons

become pessimistic about ftiture change and leam to blame

those responsible for failing to make change. Although the

dictionary definition refers to cynicism as the views held

by cynics, we have taken a situational rather than a

dispositional approach in this study. Cynical views about

organizational improvem ents are a major im pediment to

ftiture change, and they are probably the result of previous

failure rather than personal dispositions to be cynical.

Our view of cynicism incorporates elements ft-om botii

expectancy and attribution theory. In order to test the idea

that organizational cynicism is a combination of both

pessimism and blaming others (rather than blaming the

situation), we wrote items that reflected both intemal and

extem al attributions for the failure of cha nge. Principal

components analyses confirmed that intemal attributions

comm itment The moderate negative correlations between

271



TABLE 1

ORGANIZATIONAL CYNICISM SCALE INTERNAL ANA LYSES

Item

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

M

3.26

2.69

2.87

2.69

3.41

2.92

3.25

2.96

2.57

2.97

3.28

3.40

Component

SD

1.05

.98

1.01

.92

1.01

1.02

1.05

.96

.97

1.06

1.04

.95

I

.62

.64

.73

.65

.69

.64

.76

.51

.05

-.13

.05

.22

Loadings

II

.07

.01

.05

.14

.00

.01

.04

.22

.27

59

75

54

40

42

41

52

35

44

31

03

-09

12

19

54

51

40

39

44

27

06

00

01

12

57

41

42

58

34

11

-05

07

16

35

44

44

33

11

01

14

19

48

57

33

00

-11

05

18

49

40

-02

-07

05

13

45

04

-09

06

22

06

03 16

21 19 44

25 19 30

41

1

8

10 11

12

TABLE 2

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS AND CORRELATIONS FOR ALL VARIABLES

Variable

1.

Org Cynicism

2.

Org Commitment

3. Job Satisfaction

4. Neg Affectivity

5. Keep Trying

6. Expectancy

7.

Intrinsic Instrument.

8. Extrinsic Instrument.

M

3.00

3.60

3.54

1.46

3.67

3.81

3.75

2.34

SD

.74

.72

1.02

.56

.68

.72

.97

.81

Correlations

(.86)

-.46

-.32

.21

-.35

-.35

-.40

-.32

1

(.87)

.51

-.21

.47

.49

.47

.38

2

. -

-.27

.26

.37

.33

.20

3

(.88)

-.07

-.22

-.08

.03

4

(.68)

.56

.46

.27

5

(•59)

.51

.29

6

(.77)

.38 (.58)

7 8

No te: All r's significant at £ < .05 except for r between NA & extrinsic instrumentality; r's in paren theses are alpha estim ates.

converged with items assessing pessimism about change,

thus supporting our conceptualization. This result provides

some discriminant validity, because it was possible that the

two types of attributions could have combined as one

dimension, leaving pessimism as a separate dimension.

The se results are also gratifying beca use they were seen

independently on separate halves of the sample, a form of

cross-validation.

After evaluating a measure of organizational cynicism, the

next step was to exam ine its correlates. Cynicism has a

low positive correlation with NA, supporting the view of

cynicism as a reaction to circumstances rather than as a

trai t The low cynicism-n egative affectivity correlation

cannot reasonably be attributed to random error because

both variables have fairly high reliabilities. Organizational

cynicism was also examined in relationship to two

general work attitudes, satisfaction and organizational



cynicism and the two attitudes are not surprising. If the

correlation were veiy high, it would suggest that cynicism

was not measuring anything unique beyond that already

captured by satisfaction and commitment If the correlation

were very low, it would be surprising because cynicism is

probably on e important caus e of low satisfaction and

comm itment, although the reverse causality may be just as

plausible. A major reason that JS and OC were measured

and compared to cynicism is that they are so frequently

used in fteory and research on employee motivation. If

cynicism is worthy of future research efforts, it must be

empirically distinct from these two attitudes. It is probably

not sufficient to argue that cynicism is conceptually

different, unless the data confirm that cynical employ ees

react differently even whe n both JS and OC are controlled.

Organizational cynicism was correlated with the four

criteria of employee motivation as expected. As cynicism

increases , on e's motivation to keep on trying to ma ke

change, one's expectancy of success at woik, and one's

perceptions of both intrinsic and extrinsic instrumental

outcomes decrease. The decrement is stronger for intrinsic

vs.

extrinsic outcomes, probably because the former are

under the control of the individual. The final set of

analyses concemed the explanatory power of cynicism

with regard to the four motivational variables, while

controlling for both negative affectivity and for two

important job attitudes, satisfaction and commitment. Two

main findings emerged. First, cynicism is strongly related

to the four motivational criteria after controlling for the

effects of neg ative affectivity. S pecifically, nega tive

affectivity acco unted for an average of 1.7% of the

variance across the four motivational variables vs. 12.6%

for cynic ism wh en it is add ed after nega tive affectivity.

Even when both JS and OC are added after negative

affectivity as further con trol variable s, cynicis m still

accoun ts for a significant increment of 2.9% of the

variance across the motivational criteria. The latter is a

stringent test of the value added for cynicism.

The second main finding is that the effects of cynicism on

work motivation differ between salaried vs. hourly

employees. Although the increments in explained variance

in motivation are statistically significant in both groups

(after NA, OC, and JS are controlled), the amount of

incremental explained variance is greater for the salaried

(5.6%) than the hourly employees (1.8%). This occurs

despite the fact that hourly employees are consistently

more cynical and less motivated than salaried ones. One

possible explanation of this difference was restriction-in-

range for the hourly employees, which would limit the

amount of explained variance in the regressions. However,

when we exam ined the mean differences between the two

groups on all of the variables, we found that the hourly

means were not at the extreme ends of the five point

scales used here. In fact, they fiuctuated between 3.0 and

3.8, on a 1-5 scale. Thus, we rejected the likelihood of this

statistical artifa ct It may be tfiat salaried employee s are

more vulnerable to the effects of cynicism than are hourly

employees. That is, salaried employees have higher JS and

greater OC on average than hourly employees. They tend

to believe that upper level management is a credible

source. When people who have generally positive attitudes

lose faith in the ability of others to make change, the

effects of the cynicism may be more intense than among

people who had less positive attitudes to begin.

Some of the necessary next steps in the study of

organizational cynicism include the following.

First,

replication in otiier organizations is clearly indicated.

Second,

future research using other trait measures is

needed. Third, situational and dispositional antecedents of

cynicism should be explored.

Fourth,

future research

might consider the possible spillover effects of cynicism

on other attitude/behavior domains.

Fifth,

construct

validity could be used to evaluate and refine of the

measure developed here. Assessments of stability,

expansion of the nomological network surrounding

organizational cynicism, and comparative evaluations with

other measures (e.g., the Kanter & Mirvis, 1989, measure)

are needed.

R F R N S

ktouf

O. (1992). Management and theories of

organizations in the 1990s: Toward an initial radical

humanism? Acaden^ of Managem ent Review 17:407-

431.

Jones, E., & Davis, K. (1965). From acts to dispositions:

The attribution proce ss in person perception. In L.

Berkowitz

Ed.),

Advances in experimental social

psychology (Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press.

Kanter, D.L., & Mirvis, P.H. (1989).

The cynical

Americans: Living and working in an age of dis-

content and disillusion.

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-

Bass.

Likert, R- (1967). Netv pattems of managem ent. New

York: McGraw-Hill.

Scarpello, V., & Campbell, J. (1983). Job satisfaction:

Are all the parts there? Personnel Psychology 36: 577-

600.

Schein, E.H. (1985). Organizational culture and leader-

ship: A dynamic view.

San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass.

Staw, B.M., & Ross, J. (1985). Stability in the midst of

chang e: A dispositional approach to job attitudes.

Journal of Applied Psychology 70: 469-480.

Vroom, V.(1964). Work and motivation. New York:

Wiley.

Wanous, J.P. (1992).

Organizational entry: Recruitment

selection orientation and socialization of newcomers.

(2nd Edition). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Wanous, J.P., & Lawler, E.E., III. (1972). Measurement

and m eaning of job satisfaction. Journal of pplied

Psychology

56: 95-105.

Watson, D., Clark, L., & Tellegen, A. (1988).

Development and validation of brief measure of pos-

itive and negative affect: The PANAS scales.

Journal

of Personality and Social Psychology 54: 1063-1070.

7

organizational cynicism. an initial study

Documents