Chapter

Job Satisfaction

Slide 4-1 Copyright 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Copyright 2011 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Learning Goals
What is job satisfaction? What are values, and how do they affect job satisfaction? What specific facets do employees consider when evaluating their job satisfaction? Which job characteristics can create a sense of satisfaction with the work itself? How is job satisfaction affected by day-to-day events?
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Learning Goals, Contd

What are mood and emotions, and what specific forms do they take? How does job satisfaction affect job performance and organizational commitment? How does it affect life satisfaction? What steps can organizations take to assess and manage job satisfaction?
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Discussion Questions
Think about the worst job you have ever held in your life.
How do you feel during the course of the day?

How do those feelings influence the way you behaved?

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Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of ones job or job experiences.
It represents how you feel about your job and what you think about your job. 49 percent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 58 percent a decade ago.

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Why Are Some Employees More Satisfied than Others?

At a general level, employees are satisfied when their job provides the things that they value. Values are those things that people consciously or subconsciously want to seek or attain.

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Commonly Assessed Work Values

Table 4-1

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Value-Percept Theory
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 = (Vwant - Vhave) (Vimportance)
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

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The ValuePercept Theory of Job Satisfaction

Figure 4-1

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Value-Percept Theory, Contd

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. Promotion satisfaction refers to employees feelings about the companys promotion policies and their execution, including whether promotions are frequent, fair, and based on ability.
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Value-Percept Theory, Contd

Supervision satisfaction reflects employees feelings about their boss, including whether the boss is competent, polite, and a good communicator.
Can they help me attain the things that I value? Are they generally likable?

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.
Can they help me do my job? Do I enjoy being around them?
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Value-Percept Theory, Contd

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.

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Correlations Between Satisfaction Facets and Overall Job Satisfaction

Figure 4-2

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Critical Psychological States

Meaningfulness of work reflects the degree to which work tasks are viewed as something that counts in the employees system of philosophies and beliefs. Responsibility for outcomes captures the degree to which employees feel that they are key drivers of the quality of the units work. Knowledge of results reflects the extent to which employees know how well (or how poorly) they are doing. What type of tasks create these psychological states?
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Job Characteristics Theory

Figure 4-3

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Job Characteristics Theory, Contd

Variety is the degree to which the job requires a number of different activities that involve a number of different skills and talents. Identity is the degree to which the job requires completing a whole, identifiable, piece of work from beginning to end with a visible outcome. Significance is the degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives of other people, particularly people in the world at large.
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Job Characteristics Theory, Contd

Autonomy is the degree to which the job provides freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual performing the work. Feedback is 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.
Reflects feedback obtained directly from the job as opposed to feedback from coworkers or supervisors.
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Job Characteristic Moderators

Knowledge and skill Growth need strength
Captures whether employees have strong needs for personal accomplishment or developing themselves beyond where they currently are.

Both of these increase the strength of the relationships within the model

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Growth Need Strength as a Moderator of Job Characteristic Effects

Figure 4-4

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Job Enrichment
Job enrichment is the process of using the five items in the job characteristics model to create more satisfaction
Duties and responsibilities associated with a job 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 as a result of such changes.
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Moods and Emotions

Job satisfaction reflects what you think and feel about your job.
Rational Emotional

A satisfied employee feels good about his or her job on average.

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Moods and Emotions, Contd

Moods are states of feeling that are often mild in intensity, last for an extended period of time, and are not explicitly directed at or caused by anything.
Pleasant Activated Im feeling grouchy

According to the affective events theory, workplace events can generate affective reactionsreactions that then can go on to influence work attitudes and behaviors.
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Hour-by-Hour Fluctuations in Job Satisfaction during the Workday

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Different Kinds of Mood

Figure 4-6

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Moods and Emotions, Contd

Emotions are 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 include joy, pride, relief, hope, love, and compassion. Negative emotions include anger, anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, sadness, envy, and disgust. Im feeling angry at my boss Emotions are always about something.

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Different Kinds of Emotions

Table 4-2

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Discussion Questions
What emotion do you think an employee experiences reading a disrespectful e-mail from their boss? What emotion do you think an employee enjoys during a funny conversation with a friend?
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Moods and Emotions, Contd

Emotional labor is the need to manage emotions to complete job duties successfully.
Flight attendants

Emotional contagion shows that one person can catch or be infected by the emotions of another person.
Customer service representative

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Figure 4-7

Why Are Some Employees More Satisfied than Others?

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How Important is Satisfaction?

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.
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Effects of Job Satisfaction on Performance and Commitment

Figure 4-8

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Life 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.

OB on Screen
Michael Clayton
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How We Spend Our Days

Table 4-3

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Application: Tracking Satisfaction

Several methods assess the job satisfaction of rank-andfile 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.
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.
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Excerpts from the Job Descriptive Index and the Job in General Scale

Table 4-4

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Takeaways
Job satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of ones job or job experiences. It represents how you feel about your job and what you think about your job. Values are things that people consciously or subconsciously want to seek or attain. According to value-percept theory, job satisfaction depends on whether you perceive that your job supplies those things that you value.
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Takeaways, Contd
Employees consider a number of specific facets when evaluating their job satisfaction. These facets include pay satisfaction, promotion satisfaction, supervision satisfaction, coworker satisfaction, and satisfaction with the work itself. Job characteristics theory suggests that five core characteristicsvariety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedbackcombine to result in particularly high levels of satisfaction with the work itself.
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Takeaways, Contd
Apart from the influence of supervision, coworkers, pay, and the work itself, job satisfaction levels fluctuate during the course of the day. Rises and falls in job satisfaction are triggered by positive and negative events that are experienced. Those events trigger changes in emotions that eventually give way to changes in mood.

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Takeaways, Contd
Moods are states of feeling that are often mild in intensity, last for an extended period of time, and are not explicitly directed at anything. Intense positive moods include being enthusiastic, excited, and elated. Intense negative moods include being hostile, nervous, and annoyed. Emotions are states of feeling that are often intense, last only for a few minutes, and are clearly directed at someone or some circumstance. Positive emotions include joy, pride, relief, hope, love, and compassion. Negative emotions include anger, anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, sadness, envy, and disgust.
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Takeaways, Contd
Job satisfaction has a moderately positive relationship with job performance and a strong positive relationship with organizational commitment. It also has a strong positive relationship with life satisfaction. Organizations can assess and manage job satisfaction using attitude surveys such as the Job Descriptive Index (JDI), which assesses pay satisfaction, promotion satisfaction, supervisor satisfaction, coworker satisfaction, and satisfaction with the work itself. It can be used to assess the levels of job satisfaction experienced by employees, and its specific facet scores can identify interventions that could be helpful.
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