How Important are Job Attitudes? Meta-Analytic Comparisons of Integrative Behavioral Outcomes and Time Sequences

Drawing on the compatibility principle in attitude theory, we propose that overall job attitude (job satisfaction and organizational commitment) provides increasingly powerful prediction of more integrative behavioral criteria (focal performance, contextual performance, lateness, absence, and turnover combined). The principle was sustained by a combination of meta-analysis and structural equations showing better fit of unified versus diversified models of meta-analytic correlations between those criteria. Overall job attitude strongly predicted a higher-order behavioral construct, defined as desirable contributions made to one's work role (r = .59). Time-lagged data also supported this unified, attitude-engagement model.