Factors determining job satisfaction

1. Antecedents of
Job Satisfaction

2. Introduction
What makes people like or
dislike their jobs?
o Environmental perspective
o Personality perspective
o Interactionist perspective of Person-job fit

3. Environmental
Antecedents of Job
Satisfaction

4. Job
Characteristics
 refer to job content and nature of job tasks themselves.
 Only a few characteristics studied as contributors
 Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) – job characteristics
theory
5 important characteristics-
 Skill variety
 Task identity
 Task significance
 Autonomy
 Task feedback
 combined these five core characteristics- define scope
and challenge of a job.
1. high scope-job satisfaction
2. low scope-boredom and dissatisfaction

5. Research studies
 Fried and Ferris(1987)- meta-analysis of studies
relating the Hackman and Oldham characteristics to
global satisfaction.
Correlations ranged from .20 for task identity to.45
for job scope.
 Limitation- job characteristics assessed with
questionnaire given to employees themselves.
 Merely demonstrating the correlation does not mean
that one necessarily causes the other.
 More evidence necessary.
Job characteristic Mean correlation
Skill variety .29
Job feedback .29
Autonomy .34

6. 1.Different methodologies
 not always supportive of the idea that five job
characteristics lead to job satisfaction.
 Spector and Jex(1991)-both questionnaire and
job analysis techniques in a sample of
employees who represented a wide range of jobs.
 Questionnaire measures of job characteristics
correlated with job satisfaction but job analysis
data did not.

7. 2.Quasi experimental field
studies
 support for at least a short term effect of job
characteristics on job satisfaction.
1.Holman et al.(2010)- individual whose jobs had
core characteristics- job satisfaction improved
over a period of 9 months.
2.Griffin(1991)-similar quasi-experiment-
 increasing levels of core characteristics-
increased job satisfaction.
 Job satisfaction returned to the level found before
the change in jobs by the time of a 2 year follow
up.
 Changes in job satisfaction may be short-lived.

8. 4.Comparison of pay and pay
satisfaction
 across different jobs- little or no correlation
 Spector(1985)- mean correlation of only .17
between salary level and pay satisfaction in three
heterogeneous samples.
 Rice et al.(1990)- .50 correlation between pay and
job satisfaction in a sample of mental health
professionals holding the same jobs.
Pay satisfaction- affected by how an individual’s
salary is compared to those of others in the same job.
 Cohen-Charash and Spector(2001)- Distributive and
procedural justice strongly correlated with pay
satisfaction with correlation of .58 and .45
respectively.

9. 3.Generalizability of results across
countries
 Relation between employees’ reports of their job
characteristics and job satisfaction-consistent across
samples in the united states and other countries but.
not universally.
 Pearson and Chong(1997)-
1. unable to find same results in Malaysia- unrelated
in a sample of nurses.
2. Collectivistic Asian culture-more important to
focus on relationships among coworkers and
supervisors.
 Results in more developed and westernized Hong
Kong quite similar to those in United states.
 Careful about generalizing results from one country
to another country.

10. Pay
 associated strongly with global satisfaction but
even more strongly with the facet of pay
satisfaction.
 Brasher and Chen(1999)- surveyed recent
college graduates.
 level of starting pay related more strongly to pay
satisfaction (correlation = .36) than to global
satisfaction (correlation= .17)
• fairness or equity more important
determinant(Williams et al. 2006)

11. Justice
 Perceptions of fairness- important determinant of people’s
behavior and reactions to work.
 Distributive Justice and Procedural Justice- both linked to
both global and facet job satisfaction.
 Cohen-Charash and Spector(2001)-
Meta-analysis-
1. Overall job satisfaction
2. Facet satisfactions of pay
3. Supervisor satisfaction
4. Nature of work satisfaction
correlate significantly with both the forms of justice.
 Pay satisfaction-Distributive justice more important
 Supervisor satisfaction-Procedural justice more
important

13. PERSONAL
ANTECEDENTS OF JOB
SATISFACTION

14. PERSONALITY
 Hawthorn studies – Chronic Kickers –
continually complain about job .
 Job satisfaction of employers correlated across 5-
year time span . (Bowling,Beehr and Lepsito
2006 )
 Job environment as well as personality is
important . (T. Newton and Keenan 1991 )
 Dorman and Zapf (2001) conducted a meta-
analysis of such studies showing that job
satisfaction is far more stable over time when
people remain on the same job (mean correlation
.42) than when they change jobs (mean
correlation .18 )

15. Relevant Personality Traits
 Negative Affectivity – tendency for an individual to
experience negative emotions .
 Watson,Pennebaker and Folger (1986) extended
NA idea to workplace – some people just dwell on
negative aspects of life .
 This idea is supported by Conolly and
Visweswaran (2000) who conducted meta-
analysis of 27 studies found that mean correlation
between NA and job satisfaction of -27 .

16. Locus Of Control
 INTERNALS – people
who believe that they
control reinforcements
.
 Spector (1982) higher
job performance
results in more
satisfaction with their
jobs . Individuals who
perform better might
be better rewarded
and thus like their jobs
better .
 EXTERNALS –
people who believe
luck , fate or powerful
others control
reinforcements .
 Watson et al. (1986)
externals with high NA
perceives and
experiences job
negatively .
Personality might also be related to job choice

17. GENDER
 Most studies have compared men and women in
their global job satisfaction and found few
differences .
 Meta-analytic studies involving multiple samples
and thousand of employees have failed to find
gender differences .
 Greenhaus,Parasuraman and Wormley (1990)
found no significant gender differences even
though the distribution of jobs was not the same
in their sample for both genders .

18. AGE
 Legislation has made age discrimination illegal .
 Siu,lu and copper (1999) have shown that older
workers are more satisfied with their jobs than
younger workers . These studies found curvilinear
relation between age and job satisfaction .
 One factor is tenure on job – job satisfaction is
high at the time of hiring and then declines after
initial honeymoon period .
 Job satisfaction will increase perhaps as
employees adjust to working life .

19. Cultural and Ethnic Differences
 Large organizations frequently have facilities in
multiple countries and employ people from
different cultures .
 Studies shown that black employees have slightly
lower satisfaction than white employees.
 Differences in other variables – Greenhaus et
al.(1990) reported that blacks had lower mean
performance ratings than whites thus leading to
lower job satisfaction.
 Soners and Birnbaum (2001) studies black and
white employees of a hospital and found that
there were no differences between them in
demographic variables and type of work.

20. PERSON JOB FIT
 Job satisfaction will occur when there is a good
match between the person and the job.
 The difference between having and wanting
represents the amount of fit of person to job.
 Verquer,Beehr and Wagner (2003) conducted a
meta-analysis of 21 person-job fit studies and
found that various measures of fit were correlated
with job satisfaction.
 Interaction of specific person and job variables in
predicting job satisfaction
 Gender has moderated the relation between the
job condition and job satisfaction .

21. Growth need strength(GNS)
Hackman and Oldham’s(1976) theory
 A person’s desire for satisfaction of higher order
needs, autonomy and achievement.
 Meta-analyses- It moderates the relation between
job characteristics and job satisfaction. (Loher et
al. 1985)
 Correlation between these two variables greater-
individuals who are high in GNS.

23. THANK YOU