Problem 7 – Spector, Randall
Job satisfaction: reflects how people feel about their jobs overall, as well as various aspects of the
job. Pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job.
3 approaches on how job satisfaction develops:
1) Work attitudes such as job satisfaction are dispositional in nature. They are stable
dispositions learned through experience or they stem from a person’s genetic
inheritance. Job satisfaction has more of the properties of trait than attitude. This then
implies that attempts to improve satisfaction by changing jobs would be doomed to
fail. Impact of genetic factors means that workers need to be given opportunities to
shape their own work environments in line with inherited preferences.
2) Social information processing model: suggests job satisfaction and other work place
attitudes are developed out of experiences and information provided by others at
work. Satisfaction is in part how other people in the work place interpret and evaluate
what goes on.
3) Information processing model: accumulation of cognitive information about the
workplace and one’s job. A person’s job satisfaction is influences most directly by the
characteristics of their job and the extent to which those characteristics match with
what the person wants in a job.
Job satisfaction has both cognitive and affective components. This means that for some people
their stable disposition to feel happy or sad drives the affective component. The cognitive
component is more likely to be influenced by their experiences at work. The cognitive component
becomes less important, as there is a good amount of evidence that some people are simply more
satisfied than others by their nature.
There have been 2 approaches to study job satisfaction:
- Global approach: treats job satisfaction as a single, overall feelings toward to job.
- Facet approach: focus on different aspects of the job
- Most commonly studies facets are: pay, promotion, working conditions, communication,
fringe benefits, co-workers, supervision and nature of work
- Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) scale that assess eight popular facets of job satisfaction.
o It shows that Americans are mostly satisfied with their supervisors, coworkers and
the nature of their work but less satisfied with rewards such as pay, promotion and
fringe benefits.
- Multinational surveys: highest job satisfaction in Scandinavia, Germany and Austria; lowest
in Eastern Europe (Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria)
Cultural values:
- People from collectivist countries are more satisfied with coworkers than individualist
countries.
- Power distance also relates to job satisfaction, people who are tolerant of large power
distances are less satisfied with their jobs.
- Masculinity reflects the emphasis on achievement and Scandinavian countries are low on
this value, rather emphasize on health and well-being (feministic).
- Uncertainty avoidance reflects the level of comfort in unpredictable situations. Countries
high on dimension tend to be rule oriented. Highest are: Greece and Portugal.
, ASSESSMENT OF JOB SATISFACTION:
- Either by questionnaire or by interview.
1) Job Descriptive Index (JDI):
- Has been the most popular with researchers.
- The most thoroughly validated.
- Assesses 5 facets: work, pay, promotion opportunities, supervision, coworkers
- 72 items in total with their respective subscales.
- Limitation: it only has 5 subscales and might not cover all facets of the job
2) Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ):
- Comes in 2 forms, a 100-item long version and a 20-item short version.
- Both versions ask about 20 facets of job satisfaction: activity, independence, variety, social
status, supervision (HR), supervision (technical), moral values, security, social service,
authority, ability utilization, policies, compensation, advancement, responsibility,
creativity, working conditions, coworkers, recognition, achievement.
- Facets scores are only computed for the long version.
- The short version is used to assess either global satisfaction or intrinsic (refers to the
nature of the job and how people feel about the work they do) and extrinsic satisfaction
(concerns aspects of work situation, e.g. pay).
3) Job in General Scale (JIG):
- A scale of global satisfaction with items that don’t reflect the various facets of the job.
- JIG was patterned on JDI.
- Has 18 items about the job in general.
- This scale has good reliability and correlates well with other scales on overall satisfaction.
Others: The job satisfaction scales of Warr, job satisfaction scale of the occupational stress
indicator, overall job satisfaction scale.
FACTORS OF JOB SATISFACTION:
- Environmental perspective: features of jobs and organizations.
o But people with the same jobs and highly similar conditions can vary in their
satisfaction.
- Personality perspective: types of people are inclined to like or dislike a job
- Interactionist perspective: combines environment and personality = person-job fit
1) Environmental Factors
Job Characteristics: refers to the content and nature of job tasks themselves.
- Skill variety: number of different skills necessary to do a job
- Task identity: whether or not an employee does an entire job or a piece of job
- Task significance: the impact a job has on other people
- Autonomy: the freedom employees have to do their jobs as they see fit
- Task feedback: the extent it’s obvious to employees that they are doing their jobs correctly
- They combined these 5 core characteristics to define the scope or complexity and
challenge of a job.
- They suggest that high scope leads to job satisfaction and low scope leads to boredom and
dissatisfaction.
Job satisfaction: reflects how people feel about their jobs overall, as well as various aspects of the
job. Pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job.
3 approaches on how job satisfaction develops:
1) Work attitudes such as job satisfaction are dispositional in nature. They are stable
dispositions learned through experience or they stem from a person’s genetic
inheritance. Job satisfaction has more of the properties of trait than attitude. This then
implies that attempts to improve satisfaction by changing jobs would be doomed to
fail. Impact of genetic factors means that workers need to be given opportunities to
shape their own work environments in line with inherited preferences.
2) Social information processing model: suggests job satisfaction and other work place
attitudes are developed out of experiences and information provided by others at
work. Satisfaction is in part how other people in the work place interpret and evaluate
what goes on.
3) Information processing model: accumulation of cognitive information about the
workplace and one’s job. A person’s job satisfaction is influences most directly by the
characteristics of their job and the extent to which those characteristics match with
what the person wants in a job.
Job satisfaction has both cognitive and affective components. This means that for some people
their stable disposition to feel happy or sad drives the affective component. The cognitive
component is more likely to be influenced by their experiences at work. The cognitive component
becomes less important, as there is a good amount of evidence that some people are simply more
satisfied than others by their nature.
There have been 2 approaches to study job satisfaction:
- Global approach: treats job satisfaction as a single, overall feelings toward to job.
- Facet approach: focus on different aspects of the job
- Most commonly studies facets are: pay, promotion, working conditions, communication,
fringe benefits, co-workers, supervision and nature of work
- Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) scale that assess eight popular facets of job satisfaction.
o It shows that Americans are mostly satisfied with their supervisors, coworkers and
the nature of their work but less satisfied with rewards such as pay, promotion and
fringe benefits.
- Multinational surveys: highest job satisfaction in Scandinavia, Germany and Austria; lowest
in Eastern Europe (Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria)
Cultural values:
- People from collectivist countries are more satisfied with coworkers than individualist
countries.
- Power distance also relates to job satisfaction, people who are tolerant of large power
distances are less satisfied with their jobs.
- Masculinity reflects the emphasis on achievement and Scandinavian countries are low on
this value, rather emphasize on health and well-being (feministic).
- Uncertainty avoidance reflects the level of comfort in unpredictable situations. Countries
high on dimension tend to be rule oriented. Highest are: Greece and Portugal.
, ASSESSMENT OF JOB SATISFACTION:
- Either by questionnaire or by interview.
1) Job Descriptive Index (JDI):
- Has been the most popular with researchers.
- The most thoroughly validated.
- Assesses 5 facets: work, pay, promotion opportunities, supervision, coworkers
- 72 items in total with their respective subscales.
- Limitation: it only has 5 subscales and might not cover all facets of the job
2) Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ):
- Comes in 2 forms, a 100-item long version and a 20-item short version.
- Both versions ask about 20 facets of job satisfaction: activity, independence, variety, social
status, supervision (HR), supervision (technical), moral values, security, social service,
authority, ability utilization, policies, compensation, advancement, responsibility,
creativity, working conditions, coworkers, recognition, achievement.
- Facets scores are only computed for the long version.
- The short version is used to assess either global satisfaction or intrinsic (refers to the
nature of the job and how people feel about the work they do) and extrinsic satisfaction
(concerns aspects of work situation, e.g. pay).
3) Job in General Scale (JIG):
- A scale of global satisfaction with items that don’t reflect the various facets of the job.
- JIG was patterned on JDI.
- Has 18 items about the job in general.
- This scale has good reliability and correlates well with other scales on overall satisfaction.
Others: The job satisfaction scales of Warr, job satisfaction scale of the occupational stress
indicator, overall job satisfaction scale.
FACTORS OF JOB SATISFACTION:
- Environmental perspective: features of jobs and organizations.
o But people with the same jobs and highly similar conditions can vary in their
satisfaction.
- Personality perspective: types of people are inclined to like or dislike a job
- Interactionist perspective: combines environment and personality = person-job fit
1) Environmental Factors
Job Characteristics: refers to the content and nature of job tasks themselves.
- Skill variety: number of different skills necessary to do a job
- Task identity: whether or not an employee does an entire job or a piece of job
- Task significance: the impact a job has on other people
- Autonomy: the freedom employees have to do their jobs as they see fit
- Task feedback: the extent it’s obvious to employees that they are doing their jobs correctly
- They combined these 5 core characteristics to define the scope or complexity and
challenge of a job.
- They suggest that high scope leads to job satisfaction and low scope leads to boredom and
dissatisfaction.
