JOB SATISFACTION
Selection, socialization and training are all ways in which the organization acts upon the individual at work. But how might individuals react to these processes and to the experience of work in general?
Job satisfaction is a judgement we make about how favourable our work environment is (Motowildo, 1996) and can be reflected in our thoughts and feelings (Brief, 1998). It is the most researched construct in organizational psychology and the subject of literally thousands of studies. There are two approaches to assessing job satisfaction. The first sees it as a single, global affective experience. So people are asked to give an overall assessment: ‘In general, how satisfied are you with your job?’ The second, and more widely adopted, approach is to view job satisfaction as a cluster of attitudes towards different aspects of the job, such as pay, supervisory support, autonomy, variety, working conditions and promotion prospects. A mean score is calculated to represent a composite measure of job satisfaction. Table 20.1 is a typical example of this composite approach.
What makes a job satisfying?
Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) influential job characteristics theory identifies five characteristics as contributors to job satisfaction:
task identity – the extent to which the job represents a whole piece of work (e.g. running a restaurant compared with just washing the dishes);
task significance – how important the task is for society in general, and for the goals of the organization;
autonomy – the amount of freedom the person has to decide on how best to do their job;
feedback – receiving information about job performance (imagine writing essays and never receiving feedback on how well they were written); and
variety – varied tasks are important (compare the work of an organizational psychologist with that of a supermarket check-out worker), but too much variety can create conflicting
and therefore stressful demands.Many studies (e.g. Fried & Ferris, 1987) have found significant relationships between job characteristics and job satisfaction.
There is strong evidence that simple and monotonous jobs (e.g. repeatedly undertaking a simple task on a factory production line) are associated with job dissatisfaction (Melamed et al., 1995). On the other hand, some people do not respond favourably to more challenging and complex jobs (Spector, 1997), so personality factors may well also be relevant here. Other environmental factors that show significant relationships with job satisfaction include supportive supervisors and coworkers (Arvey, Carter & Buerkley, 1991) and equitable rewards (Sweeney & McFarlin, 1997). In the case of rewards, it is the extent to which employees view these as distributed fairly that affects satisfaction, rather than actual pay levels.
Job satisfaction has also been found to be related to IQ, mental health and personality variables (e.g. O’Brien, 1983; Staw, Bell & Clausen, 1986). It has even been argued that there is a geneticcomponent to job satisfaction. For example, in a survey of groups of identical twins who were reared separately, Arvey, Bouchard, Segal and Abraham (1989) found a significant association between their levels of job satisfaction. It appears from this research that our genes influence our affective reactions to life, which can in turn affect our job experiences.
J. Richard Hackman (1940– ) pioneered the Job Characteristics Model in order to help specify the content and methods of jobs. This model has influenced generations of researchers since the 1970s (Hackman & Oldham, 1976). The job characteristics model effectively linked the design of jobs with motivation theory, in what has proved to be a powerful theoretical framework. His work on groups, developed in the 1980s and 1990s, has also had a major influence (Hackman, 1990), particularly because of his championing of qualitative methods for the study of workgroups. Hackman is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University in the USA.
Consequences of job satisfaction
Does high job satisfaction lead to better job performance, or does high performance result in high job satisfaction (due, perhaps, to pride or rewards associated with high performance)? Whatever the causal direction, past research in this area indicates that if a relationship does exist, it is a weak one (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1992). But more recent research provides renewed support for the view that ‘a happy worker is a productive worker’. Two studies have related the average level of job satisfaction in an organization to measures of company performance, such as profitability. They found that organizations with more satisfied employees tend to perform better than those whose employees are less satisfied (Ostroff, 1992; Patterson & West, 1998). These organizational relationships are stronger than the association between individual job satisfaction and individual job performance, because individual measures of productivity do not take into account coordination and cooperation between employees.
So when people are generally satisfied and well treated at work, they seem more likely to be good organizational ‘citizens’, cooperating with people from other departments, taking on tasks outside their formal job descriptions and encouraging others to perform effectively. At the individual level, perhaps not surprisingly, low job satisfaction significantly increases the likelihood that the employee will leave the organization (e.g. Crampton & Wagner, 1994).
Selection, socialization and training are all ways in which the organization acts upon the individual at work. But how might individuals react to these processes and to the experience of work in general?
Job satisfaction is a judgement we make about how favourable our work environment is (Motowildo, 1996) and can be reflected in our thoughts and feelings (Brief, 1998). It is the most researched construct in organizational psychology and the subject of literally thousands of studies. There are two approaches to assessing job satisfaction. The first sees it as a single, global affective experience. So people are asked to give an overall assessment: ‘In general, how satisfied are you with your job?’ The second, and more widely adopted, approach is to view job satisfaction as a cluster of attitudes towards different aspects of the job, such as pay, supervisory support, autonomy, variety, working conditions and promotion prospects. A mean score is calculated to represent a composite measure of job satisfaction. Table 20.1 is a typical example of this composite approach.
What makes a job satisfying?
Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) influential job characteristics theory identifies five characteristics as contributors to job satisfaction:
task identity – the extent to which the job represents a whole piece of work (e.g. running a restaurant compared with just washing the dishes);
task significance – how important the task is for society in general, and for the goals of the organization;
autonomy – the amount of freedom the person has to decide on how best to do their job;
feedback – receiving information about job performance (imagine writing essays and never receiving feedback on how well they were written); and
variety – varied tasks are important (compare the work of an organizational psychologist with that of a supermarket check-out worker), but too much variety can create conflicting
and therefore stressful demands.Many studies (e.g. Fried & Ferris, 1987) have found significant relationships between job characteristics and job satisfaction.
There is strong evidence that simple and monotonous jobs (e.g. repeatedly undertaking a simple task on a factory production line) are associated with job dissatisfaction (Melamed et al., 1995). On the other hand, some people do not respond favourably to more challenging and complex jobs (Spector, 1997), so personality factors may well also be relevant here. Other environmental factors that show significant relationships with job satisfaction include supportive supervisors and coworkers (Arvey, Carter & Buerkley, 1991) and equitable rewards (Sweeney & McFarlin, 1997). In the case of rewards, it is the extent to which employees view these as distributed fairly that affects satisfaction, rather than actual pay levels.
Job satisfaction has also been found to be related to IQ, mental health and personality variables (e.g. O’Brien, 1983; Staw, Bell & Clausen, 1986). It has even been argued that there is a geneticcomponent to job satisfaction. For example, in a survey of groups of identical twins who were reared separately, Arvey, Bouchard, Segal and Abraham (1989) found a significant association between their levels of job satisfaction. It appears from this research that our genes influence our affective reactions to life, which can in turn affect our job experiences.
J. Richard Hackman (1940– ) pioneered the Job Characteristics Model in order to help specify the content and methods of jobs. This model has influenced generations of researchers since the 1970s (Hackman & Oldham, 1976). The job characteristics model effectively linked the design of jobs with motivation theory, in what has proved to be a powerful theoretical framework. His work on groups, developed in the 1980s and 1990s, has also had a major influence (Hackman, 1990), particularly because of his championing of qualitative methods for the study of workgroups. Hackman is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University in the USA.
Consequences of job satisfaction
Does high job satisfaction lead to better job performance, or does high performance result in high job satisfaction (due, perhaps, to pride or rewards associated with high performance)? Whatever the causal direction, past research in this area indicates that if a relationship does exist, it is a weak one (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1992). But more recent research provides renewed support for the view that ‘a happy worker is a productive worker’. Two studies have related the average level of job satisfaction in an organization to measures of company performance, such as profitability. They found that organizations with more satisfied employees tend to perform better than those whose employees are less satisfied (Ostroff, 1992; Patterson & West, 1998). These organizational relationships are stronger than the association between individual job satisfaction and individual job performance, because individual measures of productivity do not take into account coordination and cooperation between employees.
So when people are generally satisfied and well treated at work, they seem more likely to be good organizational ‘citizens’, cooperating with people from other departments, taking on tasks outside their formal job descriptions and encouraging others to perform effectively. At the individual level, perhaps not surprisingly, low job satisfaction significantly increases the likelihood that the employee will leave the organization (e.g. Crampton & Wagner, 1994).
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