Satisfaction at work

Theories of Job satisfaction

 Two-factor theory states that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction work independently of each other – each entity is separate, consisting of

separate job characteristics.

 Herzberg states that workers are not satisfied with jobs that simply meet lower-level needs.

 Gratification of higher-level needs are sought, which are met by the nature of their work rather than just the salary.

Sample

 200 engineers and accountants in Pittsburg area were chosen for interviews.

Procedure

 Participants were asked to give a detailed description of periods in which they were ‘exceedingly happy’ and ‘exceedingly unhappy’ with their

jobs.

Results

 Factors of the job that caused gratifying characteristics such as a sense of achievement lead to satisfaction

 However, if these gratifying characteristics were absent, it did not lead to dissatisfaction.

 Dissatisfaction is caused by different factors such as working conditions, technical problems and salaries.

 Hygiene factors: factors that don’t contribute to satisfaction but their absence causes dissatisfaction eg:

o Job security

o Salary

o Working conditions

o Benefits: paid holidays, insurance

Motivating factors: factors that produce satisfaction but their absence does not lead to dissatisfaction eg:

 Challenging and rewarding work

 Responsibility and autonomy

 Recognition and sense of accomplishment

Hygiene Motivating
Description
factors factors
High High Highly motivated with few complaints
Few complaints but not highly motivated. Job is viewed as a pay-
High Low
packet
Motivated with lots of complaints. Job is exciting and challenging
Low High
but salaries and working conditions are poor
Low Low Not motivated and have many complaints
Job characteristic theory (Hackman and Oldham, 1976)

 A theory that includes the following set of characteristics which lead to appealing and motivating jobs:

o Skill variety: jobs should require a variety of skill set and utilise the pre-existing skills of the worker

o Task identity: jobs should require completion of entire work and involve workers holistically rather than in a disjointed element.

o Task significance: jobs should have significance and impact on other people

o Autonomy: jobs should allow workers to have some autonomy and flexibility in planning, scheduling and doing their work etc.

o Feedback: the job itself should give information on how well the worker is performing
 Techniques of job design

 Job enrichment: involves giving workers a greater variety of tasks to perform increasing skill set and responsibility. This gives workers a

greater sense of control over their job and makes their job interesting.

 Job rotation: having regular changes in tasks within normal role eg workers in a kitchen can rotate around all the different preparation

areas.

 Horizontal job enlargement: giving workers more tasks to do but usually at the same level of skills and responsibility.

 Vertical job enlargement: addition of further decision making responsibilities and/higher level, challenging tasks without formal promotion.

This increases competence and sense of empowerment. Allowing teams to manage themselves is an example.

Evaluation

 Two factory theory (Herzberg):

o Application to real life: Herzberg clearly differentiated between factors that create satisfaction and those that create dissatisfaction.

Organisations can use this information to improve satisfaction at work.

o Generalisability was high due to a large sample of 200 people.

 Job characteristics theory (Hackman and Oldham’s):

o Application to real life: by identifying critical job characteristics that affect motivation, satisfaction and work performance, organisations can

design jobs around these characteristics.

o Several studies demonstrate that core characteristics do correlate with motivation and satisfaction.

o Individual and situational debate: relatively small changes to job characteristics (situation) can impact individuals and attitudes.
 Measuring job satisfaction
Job Descriptive Index (Smith et al., 1969)

 Measures 5 aspects of job satisfaction:

o Experience of the work

o Salary

o Promotion prospects

o Experience of supervision

o Experience of co-workers

 Advantages:

o Answered using simple language: yes, no or can’t decide

o Results are compared with standardised norms based on regularly updated data from large samples

o Scores between similar individuals can be compared with normative/baseline scores to establish whether a person is more/less satisfied.

o It measures specific, objective areas of job satisfaction rather than in general terms

o Easy to read and doesn’t use complex language, making it easy to use within large variety of people
 Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss et al., 1967)

 Measures a range of aspects around the job including:

o Company policies
o Scope for advancement

o Security

o Independence

o Recognition

o Responsibility

o Variety and working conditions

 It originally used the following 5 response choices:

o Very satisfied

o Satisfied

o N (neither satisfied nor dissatisfied)

o Dissatisfied

o Very dissatisfied

o However, results obtained tended to be ‘skewed’ and generally alternated between ‘satisfied’ and ‘very satisfied’

 Thus, a later version was created with the following responses:

o Not satisfied

o Somewhat satisfied

o Satisfied

o Very satisfied

o Extremely satisfied

o Results from this version tended to be more varied and had more symmetrical distribution around ‘satisfied’, the central point.

Quality of working life (QWL) questionnaire (Walton, 1974)

 Quality of working life involves a range of factors such as job security, reward system, pay, opportunities for growth, etc

 Walton developed a typology which can be used to assess the QWL and it consists of eight key components:

o Fair and adequate payment, which can be measured by:

 Asking questions to find whether pay received is enough and whether it is equivalent to that received by other workers

 Rating their agreement to statements such as ‘I am satisfied with the amount I earn’

o Safe and healthy working conditions: multiple factors such as appropriate clothing and safety procedures must be in place to increase

QWL.

o Providing opportunities to use and develop skills: autonomy, independence and skill development will increase QWL.
o Opportunity for career growth and security: job security and growth will increase QWL. Fixed term or zero hour contracts (no guaranteed

working hours) will drop QWL.

o Positive social relationships: this will increase productivity, satisfaction and decrease stress, absenteeism and turn over – increasing

QWL.

o The total life space: the extent to which employees could maintain their work-life balance.

o Constitutionalism (policies and procedures): such as those to limit bullying, harassment, etc and the extent to which employees agree

with the organisational procedures, cultures etc.

o Social relevance: the extent to which the work you –or the organisation- does is relevant to society.

Evaluation

 All three:

o Psychometric form of testing that have demand characteristics and social desirability bias

o Widely used and the results can be applied to improve aspects of working environment, satisfaction, motivation and productivity.

 Job Description Index:

o Most thoroughly tested and carefully validated based on standardised norms

o This means that scores can be compared to a huge sample of participants from different occupations

o Thus, scores can be used to identify whether the individual is more or less satisfied than others of the same occupation, sex, age, etc

 Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire:

o Well validated however offering respondents only slightly different responses to choose from can have significant effects on the answers

o This reduces reliability and validity of the test

 QWL is useful and has helped initiate policies regarding bullying, compassionate leave and working flexibly allowing social activities that

promote the quality of work life.

Attitudes to work
Workplace sabotage (Giacalone and Rosenfeld, 1987)

 Behaviours that plan to break rules and try to stop work in the workplace; it is usually a result of dissatisfaction and powerlessness.

Sample

 38 unionised electrical factory workers

Procedure

 Workers were asked to rate a set of reasons and methods that would justify work sabotage on a scale of 1 (not at all justifiable) to 7 (totally

justifiable)

 The 4 major general method categories were:

o Slowdowns

o Destructiveness
o Dishonesty

o Causing chaos

 The reasons for sabotage were:

o Self defence

o Revenge

o An eye for an eye

o Protect oneself from boss/company

o Protect one’s job

o The foreman/company deserved it

o The foreman/company hurt me previously

o No one was hurt by the action

o Release of frustrations

o Just for fun

 A median split was performed on the reasons creating two groups- high-reason acceptors and low-reason acceptors.

Results

 High-reason acceptors justified production slowdowns more than low-reason acceptors.

 High-reason acceptors also justified destruction of machinery, premises or products more than low-reason acceptors.

 High-reason acceptors justified causing chaos more than low-reason acceptors.

 However, high reason acceptors did not justify dishonesty more than low reason acceptors.

Conclusion

 Regardless of acceptance justifying multiple forms of sabotage, it doesn’t justify dishonesty as it is different than others.

 Work slowdowns, destruction and causing chaos may be aimed to hurt the company, but they don’t promote monetary gains for employees.

 Dishonesty threatens self-esteem in a way that the other forms of sabotage do not.

Absenteeism (Blau and Boal, 1987)

 Voluntary absenteeism: when the worker choses not to attend work due to dissatisfaction

 Involuntary absenteeism: absence usually due to illness

 The paper by Blau and Boal uses the concepts of job involvement and organisational commitment to predict an individual’s turnover and

absenteeism.

 Both can be either high or low allowing 4 possible situations:

I. High job involvement and high organisational commitment.

1. ‘Stars’ of the organisation.

3. They are highly involved with group activities that help maintain the organisation.

4. They represent the most valued members of the organisation and are likely to move up in the firm.

5. This group is likely to show the least level of turnover and absenteeism and their loss is detrimental

II. High job involvement and low organisational commitment.

1. ‘Lone wolves’ of the organisation.

2. Although their work is important to them, they don’t identify with the organisations or its goals

3. They will often show high levels of effort for individual tasks but not for group tasks.

4. They are highly sensitive to working conditions and pay.

5. They are ready to take better opportunities.

6. Despite their high levels of individual efforts, they do not integrate themselves within the organisation, which could create problems during

group tasks.

7. Their absenteeism is likely due to career enhancing opportunities or attending to a personal goal.

III. Low job involvement and high organisational commitment.

1. Known as the ‘corporate citizens’ of the organisation.

2. Their work is not personally important to them, but they identify with the organisation and their goals.

3. They put a lot of effort into group maintenance tasks but not on individual tasks.

4. Their absence can have a significant impact on others.

IV. Low job involvement and low organisational commitment.

1. Known as the ‘apathetic employees’ as they are the least valuable people in the organisation.

2. Work is not viewed as being important to their self-image and so they do not put a great deal of effort into individual tasks.

3. As the organisation is not strongly identified with, they do not contribute to group maintenance.

Measuring organisational commitment

 According to Mowday et al., 1979, organisational commitment is defined as ‘the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and

involvement in an organisation’.

 Some people believe there are three forms; the desire to remain within the organisation, belief in and acceptance of the organisations

values, and willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organisation.

 Other people like Allen and Meyer (1990) identify three types of organisational commitment:

o Continuance commitment: where workers remain in their post (or organisation) as the costs and risks of leaving might be too high. E.g:

they need the salary or don’t have better alternatives.

o Affective commitment: workers might remain because they have an emotional attachment to the organisation; might be because they firmly

agree with its goals and overall beliefs.

o Normative commitment: workers stay because of pressure from others or a feeling of obligation.

Study by Mowday et al. (1979)

Aim
 The study was designed to assess the reliability and validity of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) as well as its ability to

discriminate.

o The OCQ is a 15 item scale used to measure organisational commitment. It consists of items such as:

 I feel very little loyalty to this organisation

 I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organisation be successful

 I really care about the fate of this organisation

Sample

 The scale was administered to 2563 people who worked in a large variety of jobs in nine different organisations in a number of separate

studies.

 The jobs and organisations included public employees such as those working in a range of hospital, social services etc.

Results

 Mean scores ranged from a low 4 to a high 6.1, suggesting the scale produces an acceptable level of discrimination.

 No items stood out as producing odd results or being less related to the overall score than other items.

 Test-retest scores were good, suggesting high reliability.

 Correlations between the OCQ and other scales were high suggesting good validity.

 Validity was also measured by correlating the OCQ with he individuals’ intention to stay in the organisation.

 This single item measure was collected in five of the studies and all five revealed significant correlations.

 Evidence was also found to support the discriminant validity of the scale.

 Predictive validity was also checked by seeing if scores on OCQ would accurately predict how long an employee would stay/leave the

organisation (low scores meant more likely to leave)

 Significant relationships were also found between low organisational commitment and absenteeism and to a lesser extent between

commitment and performance.

Conclusion

 Although the above seems to support the OCQ, it is possible that individuals may change answers if they feel that the results may be used

against them.

 It is therefore suggested that the shorter 9 item questionnaire would be a better alternative than the 15-item questionnaire.

 They end by identifying several areas for further research, including the need to consider the relationship between behavioural and attitudinal

commitment and some of the other factors (occupation, age, sex, etc.) that may influence organisational commitment.

Evaluation

 Giacalone and Rosenfeld conducted a survey on workplace sabotage that may have caused social desirability bias.

 This study used a quasi-experimental approach when comparing the high-reason acceptors with the low-reason acceptors which gave

useful results.
 One of the useful results was that both groups saw ‘dishonesty’ as qualitatively different from all other forms of sabotage which might allow

employers to react to dishonesty differently from other forms of sabotage.

 Someone who commits an act of sabotage may be sending a message to their employees about their working conditions or their quality of

work life proving that this study shows how the workplace environment (situation) can impact on the individual’s behaviour.

 The study by Blau was useful in bringing job involvement and organisational commitment, allowing organisations to predict potential staff

turnover so they can take measures accordingly.

 Mowday’s measurement of organisational commitment was done by self-reports as the person however, it can be biased (or responding to

demand characteristics) reducing validity and reliability.

 Interestingly, a study by Goffin and Gellatly suggested that self-reported measures of commitment showed a weak correlation with reports of

commitment observed by others.