Management Ch. 4: Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction: Pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences. It represents how you feel about your job and your thoughts on it. “45% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% two decades ago.”
Q: “Why are some employees more satisfied than others?”
A: At a general level, employees are more satisfied when their job provides the things that they value.
Values: Those things that people consciously or subconsciously want to seek or attain.
Value-Percept Theory: Argues that job satisfaction depends on whether you perceive that your job supplies the things that you value. People evaluate job satisfaction according to specific “facets” of the job.
Dissatisfaction = (*V*want - Vhave) x (*V*importance)
Vwant: Reflects how much of a value an employee wants.
Vhave: Indicates how much of that value the job supplies.
Vimportance: Reflects how important the value is to the employee.
Value-Percept Theory, Satisfaction:
Pay/Promotion Satisfaction:
1. Pay Satisfaction: Refers to employees’ feelings about their pay, including whether it is as much as they deserve, secure, and adequate for both normal expenses and luxury items.
2. Promotion Satisfaction: Refers to employees’ feelings about the company’s promotion policies and their execution, including whether promotions are frequent, fair, and based on ability.
Satisfaction of People:
1. Supervision Satisfaction: Reflects employees’ feelings about their boss, including whether the boss is competent, polite, and a good communicator. à “Can they help me attain the things that I value,” or “Are they generally likable?”
2. Coworker Satisfaction: Refers to employees’ feelings about their fellow employees, including whether coworkers are smart, responsible, helpful, fun, and interesting as opposed to lazy, gossipy, unpleasant, and boring. à “Can they help me do my job?” or “Do I enjoy being around them?”
Overall Satisfaction:
1. Satisfaction with the Work Itself: Reflects employees’ feelings about their actual work tasks, including whether those tasks are challenging, interesting, respected, and make use of key skills rather than being dull, repetitive, and uncomfortable.
Job Characteristics Theory: Factors that affect satisfaction with the work itself.
Core Job Characteristics:
1. Skill Variety: The degree to which the job requires several different activities that involve several different skills and talents. ß Meaningfulness of Work
2. Task Identity: The degree to which the job requires completing a whole, identifiable, piece of work from beginning to end with a visible outcome. ß Meaningfulness of Work
3. Task Significance: The degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives of other people, particularly people in the world at large. ß Meaningfulness of Work
4. Autonomy: The degree to which the job provides freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual performing the work. ß Responsibility for Outcomes
5. Feedback: The degree to which carrying out the activities required by the job provides the worker with clear information about how well he or she is performing. ß Knowledge of results Taking the “boss” out of the feedback equation – the feedback is coming from the job itself.
Critical Psychological States:
1. Meaningfulness of Work: Reflects the degree to which work tasks are viewed as something that “counts” in the employee’s system of philosophies and beliefs.
2. Responsibility for Outcomes: Captures the degree to which employees feel they are key drivers of the quality of the unit’s work.
3. Knowledge of Results: Reflects the extent to which employees know how well (or poorly) they are doing.
Job Characteristic Moderators: Both increase the strength of the relationships within the model
- Knowledge and skill.ß The experience/skill needed for a job.
- Growth need strength. ß Captures whether employees have a strong need for personal accomplishment or for developing themselves beyond their current level (personal motivation).
Job Enrichment:
- Process of using the five items in the job characteristics model to create more satisfaction.
- Duties are responsibilities associated with a job that are expanded to provide more variety, identity, autonomy, and so forth.
- Enrichment efforts can indeed boost job satisfaction levels and heighten work accuracy and customer satisfaction, though training and labor costs tend to rise because of such changes.
Moods and Emotions: Job satisfaction reflects what you think and feel about your job. A satisfied employee typically feels good about their job. ß Rational/Emotional
Moods: States of feeling that are often mild in intensity, last for an extended period, and are not explicitly directed at or caused by anything. ß Ex.: Pleasant, activated, “I’m feeling grouchy.”
- According to the affective events theory, workplace events can generate affective reactions. ß Reactions that can then go on to influence work attitudes and behaviors.
Emotions: States of feeling that are often intense, last for only a few minutes, and are clearly directed at (and caused by) someone or some circumstance.
- Positive Emotions: Joy, pride, relief, hope, love, and compassion.
- Negative Emotions: Anger, anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, sadness, envy, and disgust.
- Emotions are always about something à “I’m feeling angry at my boss,” often a function of goal congruence.
- Emotional Labor: Need to manage emotions to complete job duties successfully. ß Flight attendants.
- Emotional Contagion: Shows that one person can “catch” or “be infected by” the emotions of another person. ß Customer service representative or waitress.
“How important is satisfaction?”
Job satisfaction is strongly related to life satisfaction, or the degree to which employees feel a sense of happiness with their lives.
- People feel better about their lives when they feel better about their jobs.
- Increases in job satisfaction have a stronger impact on life satisfaction than do increases in salary or income.
- Job satisfaction does influence job performance: It is moderately correlated with task performance. Satisfied employees do a better job of fulfilling the duties described in their job descriptions.
- Job satisfaction is correlated moderately with citizenship behavior: Satisfied employees engage in more frequent “extra mile” behaviors to help their coworkers and their organization.
- Job satisfaction influences organizational commitment: Job satisfaction is strongly correlated with affective commitment, so satisfied employees are more likely to want to stay with the organization.
Tracking Satisfaction Levels: Several methods assess the job satisfaction of rank-and-file employees, including focus groups, interviews, and attitude surveys.
- Attitude surveys can provide a “snapshot” of how satisfied the workforce is and, if repeated over time, reveal trends in satisfaction levels. ß Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
- Attitude surveys ideally should be a catalyst for some kind of improvement effort.
- An organization that struggles with satisfaction with the work itself could attempt to redesign key job tasks or, if that proves too costly, train supervisors in strategies for increasing the five core job characteristics on a more informal basis.